[kevin_thibedeau]

Uh no. Comcast's customers are requesting more traffic than they send. That is how residential asymmetric ISP services are specifically designed to be used. Netflix isn't the bogey man just because they offer a service consumers want and have already paid their ISP to deliver. If Netflix was split into 1000 smaller VOD services streaming the same traffic volume who would Comcast blame for having to shoulder the same burden?

[ikeboy]

>If Netflix was split into 1000 smaller VOD services streaming the same traffic volume who would Comcast blame for having to shoulder the same burden?

In that case many of those would be Comcast customers, and peering would end up equal.

Netflix has a problem because it's an outlier. I'd like to see the chart without Netflix and see if comcast still receives more than it sends then.

[msandford]

> In that case many of those would be Comcast customers, and peering would end up equal.

NOT HARDLY!

They would mostly be customers of small datacenters in various places all around the country, and thus, customers of Cogent and Level3.

Datacenters generally go for tier1 bandwidth, not consumer ISP bandwidth.

Look at the plans that they offer on their website. The fastest upload I can find is 20Mbps for $200/mo. http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/plans...

That's $10/meg which is A LOT.

Three years ago if you were willing to buy in bulk, you could get bandwidth for as low as $0.65/meg as this HN user points out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3892854 Based on his comments I suspect that you could get it for less than $0.50/meg today, maybe less than $0.25/meg.

Sure looks like Comcast wanting to have its cake and eat it too.

[ikeboy]

Let me ask you something else. How large should a company need to be to get free connections to last mile ISPs? If any company could do it, then instead of paying for hosting or internet, I'd just pay for one computer and hook it up directly to the ISP. That isn't possible for every website.

Why should Netflix be able to do that and not smaller sites?

[dpark]

I think you've misunderstood the scenario at play. Netflix did not want to connect to Comcast for free. Netflix did not want to connect directly to Comcast at all. They wanted to connect to their own ISPs, and they were paying to do so. Comcast didn't want to upgrade the peering links to Netflix's ISPs, though, because they'd then lose their leverage over Netflix. Comcast's refusal to upgrade peering links effectively forced Netflix to connect directly to Comcast.

Comcast sells asymmetric connectivity that's skewed as far as 10:1 download vs upload. And then they claim that peering should be symmetric as if they aren't a huge contributor to the asymmetry.

[msandford]

While we're asking each other silly questions, let me ask you this: if my ISP says that they're providing me with "internet access" but actually only provides me with "most of the internet minus a few people we'd like to shake-down access", this is OK?

[ikeboy]

No, and luckily nobody was doing that.

And my question was serious. If you think that what Netflix was asking for should be given as a matter of principle, then it shouldn't matter how large they are, and absolutely every website should never have to pay for bandwidth again. What exactly am I missing?

[tzs]

Netflix does pay for their bandwidth. They pay their ISP for it. What you are missing is that Comcast is not Netflix's ISP, and Netflix does not use any of Comcast's bandwidth.

When a Comcast customer uses their Comcast internet connection to use Netflix, or Google, or HN, or any other site, it is that customer who is using Comcast's bandwidth. It is not Netflix, Google, or HN using it.

[wmf]

The principled way to solve this is to give Comcast a choice of receiving traffic over transit or free peering, but either way they have to deliver customer traffic without congestion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9193591