In a traditional peering arrangement the traffic is bidirectional and costs would balance out. With Netflix traffic, that's no longer true
You are missing the point. The traffic for Comcast will always be less bidirectional than for a transit provider, because they are a last-mile provider. In other words, the majority of traffic entering Comcast's network is for delivery to its customers, not transit to another network. This has always been true and has not changed because of Netflix.
That border is congested because Netflix is sending data through it in large volumes. Netflix is profiting from this traffic, and is paying their ISP -- but not Comcast, who is now expected to upgrade their border connections to make Netflix happy and more profitable. Who pays for that?
Nonsense. If this were about a few thousand dollars worth of hardware upgrades, it could have been settled a long time ago in a number of different ways,
1) Comcast and Cogent renegotiate their peering arrangement. This doesn't happen because the peering arrangement actually works fine. Cogent can definitely pass the costs of a new peering arrangement back up to Netflix. This hasn't happened.
2) Level 3 offers to buy Comcast routers for their congested points. This has happened. Comcast refused.
3) Netflix offers to host a CDN within Comcast's network, paying all the costs of maintaining and running that CDN. This has happened. Comcast refused.
4) Comcast asks its customers to pay more for the extra bandwidth they are using. This hasn't happened.
Instead, Comcast went with,
5) Let the service degrade to such a point that Netflix has no other option but to pay their extortion fee.
Don't be fooled. Comcast knows exactly what they are doing. They don't want Netflix competing with their cable and video-on-demand services, that they sell to the same customers that also buy their ISP service. They want a cut of Netflix's profits, the same way a traditional cable delivery arrangement is made with other content providers.
This article breaks it down pretty well,
http://qz.com/256586/the-insid...
Pay attention to the figure at the end. After Netflix started paying, quality returned to 720p within one week. There are no hardware issues here. Comcast flips a switch and it is done.
Uhh, no. Neither "net neutrality" as a concept nor "net neutrality" as enacted by the FCC ruling is about cable companies. Both are about ISPs. Cable television is a different service.
You are missing the point again. Comcast is a cable company. It makes money selling cable channels and service to its customers. Those same customers also buy ISP service. Comcast has seen demand for cable decrease as online video has become more popular: Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, etc. This is a problem for Comcast because it makes a lot more money, and has a much stronger negotiating position, with its cable services than its ISP service. It doesn't want to lose the control it has over content providers on its cable service to "the Internet".
It wasn't going to take long for all of the last-mile networks to try to turn themselves into cable companies.
What an interesting statement.
Verizon, not being a traditional cable company, does want to sell their own video-on-demand service. So it makes complete sense that they would be in the same boat as Comcast. As soon as there is precedence for differential agreements on content, every ISP will want a piece of the action. Don't think Comcast will be the only one trying to get a piece of Netflix.
So go to a different ISP.
Sure, as soon as there is another one in my area (not seeing that happen any time soon). Would also have to move from my apartment, because they helpfully buy Suddenlink for us and charge us extra rent for that.
Suddenlink is wrong for doing that, but it has nothing to do with, and is in no way similar to, the Comcast/Netflix issue
Yes, it is, you just don't see it. This is about Internet services competing with cable services. Comcast can't block Netflix (it is too big and Netflix is too obvious a target), but it can put pressure on Netflix to pay up.
One can be a staunch advocate for net neutrality but still be opposed to the federal regulations now imposed on all ISPs in an attempt to solve the problems of a few.
Ok, but nobody is talking about that in this thread. They are just saying "government=bad because its government".
And I said that when? Never. Maybe smaller words would help.
Well, I wasn't replying to you, but since you bring it up:
1) True, not talking about this.
2) Maybe true in a few areas, but mostly not true.
3) True, but this isn't the real problem.
4) Yes, but it must treat all services as a class (ie: "streaming video", not "Hulu is ok, but Netflix has to pay"). Nobody is saying Comcast can't use QoS on their network.
5) True, but monopoly status is an issue that is hard to get rid of and beyond the scope of the FCC anyway. What the FCC can do is classify ISPs as common-carriers. It helps because it forces ISPs to be "dumb pipes", so that conflicts-of-profit don't affect their service decisions.
I don't doubt that there are better, more complete, solutions to be had. Possibly breaking up Comcast into separate cable and ISP divisions. But this isn't forthcoming. It wasn't anywhere on the radar of our Congress or the justice department to deal with monopolies or net neutrality. In fact, the only reason the Time Warner merger must pass public review and will hopefully be blocked is because of the FCC. Until we can get other people to pay attention to these issues, I'm in support of the FCC's band-aid. I think it is a decent stop-gap measure.