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Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

Netflix pays for connectivity just like consumers do.

They can pay for better QoS, which will result in better QoS for their customers if they want.

Or their customers can, or both.

"Can you imagine an electric company trying to get some sort of fee from Samsung because they sell a lot of electronics that people use in their houses..."

That analogy doesn't work because Samsung, in that case, has nothing to do with the data flow. Netflix obviously does.

Netflix should not have to pay special fees because they are 'Netflix' or 'it's video' or 'it's movies' - but they should definitely have to pay fees relevant to QoS of their upload bandwidth. Just like you, I and everyone else.

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> They can pay for better QoS, which will result in better QoS for their customers if they want.

Please, stop using QoS as a synonym for explicit prioritization. QoS strategies have advanced greatly since the 1990s, and the goal of providing better quality of service should not be used to defend obsolete non-neutral techniques. Net neutrality and QoS are not conflicting goals, and enforcing net neutrality is an excellent way to incentivize ISPs to transition to better QoS strategies.

I used to work in networking to help define such QoS terms, and clearly you didn't read what I wrote because I'm using QoS as an example of how to properly do Net Neutrality.

You seem to be using QoS to refer exclusively to stuff like DiffServ. That's wrong, even if it was widely accepted back in whatever decade you were working in networking. The DiffServ/DSCP mindset for how to achieve QoS is obsolete and inferior, and encourages non-neutral network management to the detriment of everybody except the ISPs that get to charge third parties extra for fast lanes and the few content providers who can afford to pay for the fast lane.

If your mental model of QoS treats packet scheduling as a zero-sum game and views latency and bandwidth as inversely related (implied by one of your other comments in this thread), then you're more than a decade out of date. Business models based on such wrong ideas do not deserve any protection from public policy.

> Netflix pays for connectivity just like consumers do.

Yes, Netfix pays their ISP. They should never need to pay the customer's ISP. Peering should be cost neutral. ISPs shouldn't be allowed to double dip.

NNetflix can pay their customers ISP if they want some kind of improved QoS on behalf of their customers.

But they shouldn't have to pay 'just because'.

If my neighbor streams a movie from Netflix and I download a Linux ISO at the same time, there's no reason why the ISP should be allowed to charge extra from my neighbor or from Netflix, but not charge me or the guy hosting the Debian mirror.

Netflix, the Debian mirror, my neighbor and I are all paying for our connections. If we saturate the agreed-upon bandwidth then the ISP's could offer to sell more bandwidth. If we don't, then it's up to the ISP's to fulfill their part of the bargain.

Imagine if Office 365 started charging email senders for storage, not recipients people were using all the storage they pay for, but because Microsoft oversold their product and didn't want to invest in new storage servers.

You're confusing things a bit.

Item 1) 'nor reason to charge extra for Netflix'.

Of course there is a reason: QoS. You neighbour might want a low-latency, high bandwidth service that doesn't worry about packet loss. You might want a service which is better for downloads: no worries about latency, medium speed, no packet loss.

Different prices for different services.

Also - Netflix may choose to subsidize their service i.e. you don't even need an ISP bill with Netflix - it comes with the package.

2) Netflix, Debian, you and your neighbour are all paying different kinds of bills for different kinds of things. If Netflix's deal is that they get massive fast service until a certain threshold, after which their service is degraded ... when then users will see that degradation at their end.

What cannot happen is ISPs arbitrarily charging Netflix more for no reason, or charging for different kinds of content.

Everyone pays for a 'pipe' with different characteristics, ideally without price discrimination (i.e. if you want the same pipe as Netflix then you pay the same prices ass them), and that's that.

Frankly, I don't see why both me and my neighbor can't have low-latency, high-speed connectiosn without packet loss. We manage to have such things outside the US so I assume you lot should manage on the other side pf the pond too.

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