[GhotiFish]

  Comcast claims that Netflix was sending traffic at such 
  high volumes as to intentionally congest the links 
  between different transit ISPs and Comcast, essentially 
  taking a page from Norton’s “peering playbook” and 
  forcing Comcast and its peers (i.e., the transit 
  providers, Cogent, Level 3, Tata, and others) to upgrade 
  capacity one-by-one, before sending traffic down a 
  different path, congesting that, and forcing an upgrade.

>Resolving the dispute: Paid peering (March 2014). Both sides of this argument are reasonable and plausible—this is a classic “peering dispute”

Both sides of this argument are reasonable and plausible?

Are you kidding me? If Netflix was intentionally shaping their traffic to disrupt Comcast, how is that not a denial of service attack? That sounds like a criminal accusation more than a bargaining position.

If Netflix actually was doing that, shouldn't comcast be sueing rather than asking for money for a peering arrangement?

also, and this is more to my own ignorance than it is to a counterpoint. I thought peering arrangements were things that happened between ISPs. Netflix is a customer of an ISP.