| > Netflix is sending a lot more than it's receiving, in which case their ISP needs to pay for peering. All Internet traffic has more download than upload (for the end-consumer). This is literally why ISPs offer faster download speeds in end-consumer packages than upload speeds - they know that consumers will need to download more than they upload. In vector calculus, this is known as divergence. Traffic on the highway has divergence of 0, meaning that if you draw a closed loop of any shape, over the course of a day/week, the number of cars crossing that loop in both directions (in/out) will be the same.[0][1] Internet traffic does not have zero divergence, because bits are interchangeable and easy to create, destroy, and copy (whereas cars and humans are not). Comcast isn't dumb. They know this is the way the Internet works. They just also know that it's more profitable to pretend they don't and extort money based on a false definition of "equality". [0] https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/just-what-does-it-mean... [1] It's not exactly the same, due to births, deaths, and migration, but you get the idea. |
Yes, but they also have commercial customers that send out lots of data. Netflix is an outlier all by itself, outweighing the connection.