[_ikke_]

Without customers asking for content, L3 wouldn't provide anything to Comcast. It's at the specific request of the customers that L3 relays the replies. The customers initiate the request, and L3 provides the response.

Without the service L3 provides, Comcast wouldn't be able to (as efficiently) provide the service to their customers. In a sense, Comcast should pay L3 for their access to the content.

[diminoten]

But they're not asking for L3, they're asking for Netflix. So maybe Netflix should hire a CDN that can play ball with Comcast, instead of L3, who is apparently being shut out.

[vidarh]

So what you are saying is that Netflix should pay extortion money to Comcast - either directly, or via a CDN - because Comcast have a monopoly situation.

You can try to package it any other way you like, but that's what you are suggesting: The only reason Comcast is in position to try this gambit is because there are alternatives (albeit very few) to backbone providers, and major content providers can be bullied directly, but most Comcast customers do not have alternatives to Comcast.

If anything, that Comcast even dares ask for this should be evidence that they are abusing a monopoly situation, and ought to be a trigger for massive reform - in a free market, they'd get told to take a hike.

[pdonis]

> So maybe Netflix should hire a CDN that can play ball with Comcast, instead of L3

Um, didn't someone upthread point out that Level3 doesn't actually carry any Netflix content?