[pedrocr]

>These agreements were based on a understanding that, over time, the traffic would wash out even between the two, so let's just not keep track and call it even from the start.

I don't think that's the case. Transit providers will always tend to deliver more traffic to the ISP than the ISP delivers to them, because users download more than they upload. That's still fine because the transit provider's network is paid for by the content provider and the ISPs network is paid for by the user so the settlement free peering always makes sense. Without it the ISP wouldn't have content so no users and the transit provider wouldn't be able to deliver traffic so would have no clients. The fact that Netflix is now a significant single content provider in the transit network doesn't change this dynamic at all, it just makes it easier for ISPs to squeeze them for money. Compensation for unbalanced peering only makes sense between transit providers since for each connection only one of them is being compensated (the one whose client sent the traffic) so the other one will only accept that peering if it is balanced.

I've explained this more clearly elsewhere in the thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9264734