[ikeboy]

Why aren't the customers that send less data than they receive balanced out by those that send more than they receive? For every byte being sent, there's someone on both sides, so an ISP serving a large enough area should balance out. Except with huge outliers like Netflix.

[tzs]

Netflix is not an outlier when it comes to asymmetrical traffic. The typical Comcast customer receives from Google far more data than they send to Google. They receive far more data from Amazon than they send to Amazon. Same for their interaction with Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, the bank, their email provider, their gaming guild forum, and so on. About the only time they might be sending as much as they receive is when they are using the internet for a voice or video chat.

[ikeboy]

But some of those sites are going to be Comcast customers, who serve customers from other places.

I'm not saying that an average consumer is sending as much as they receive, but Comcast doesn't only have consumers, they also serve websites. That should balance out for small websites in and out of their network.