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Comment by Touche | Hacker News Reader

> This is not true. Netflix has to pay for transit of the bits leaving their servers just like everyone else. They just pay their transit provider for this, not Comcast (well, except when it is Comcast, but that's beside the point).

Netflix doesn't have a transit provider any more. They are piping directly into Comcast and wanted to do so for free. I want my website to be delivered to all Comcast customers for free, do you support that?

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The alternative is for Comcast to buy enough transit to receive those bits from Netflix. I'm sure Netflix would be happy enough to deliver those bits to Comcast via transit, if enough capacity was available.

Shouldn't Comcast be required to purchase enough capacity to provide high-quality service to their residential customers? SFI between a content provider and an eyeball network should be a mutually beneficial cost reduction, but Comcast has enough market power (captive broadband subs) that they can get away with intentionally not buying enough capacity to serve their customers.

Comcast does transit with many peers, but Netflix doesn't do business with any of them because they want to lower their own costs by cutting out the middlemen.

A peering agreement is free when both sides are accepting traffic for the others, but that's not what is happening in this case. Netflix -> Comcast is one way.

Still waiting for an answer to my previous question, should Comcast delivery my personal website to their customers for free?

Netflix never attempted to directly send data one-way to Comcast for free. It paid tens of millions of dollars a year to a transit provider, Cogent, that has a peering agreement with Comcast. It only stopped paying Cogent and started paying Comcast (an estimated $25-50M/year) after Comcast refused to provide adequate connectivity between its customers and Cogent for months, despite their links being maxed out at peak hours. Netflix was becoming a casualty of a long-term contract dispute between Comcast and Cogent over peering fees. Comcast was being greedy, trying to get paid twice for the service its customers already pay it to provide.

Netflix is attempted to send one-way data right now. That's what their whole campaign is about, shifting their costs onto everyone else. They don't want to go back to paying Cogent, that was much more expensive.

Where are you getting this info that Netflix didn't want to pay Cogent and Level3?

It seems like Comcast entered a shitty peering arrangement with Cogent and decided not to upgrade the interconnect links in retaliation. Netflix gets caught in the crossfire and ends up having to pay Comcast directly to avoid a few million angry customers. Is there any transit provider that Netflix could have gone with that has enough interconnects with the Comcast network? If not, Netflix is forced to pay whatever price Comcast names for their customers to receive adequate video streams.

Cogent is the bottom of the barrel transit provider. You use Cogent when you have a lot of bits to push and don't particularly care if they're going to get there (seriously, Cogent has like 25% packet loss at peak times.) Most companies use Cogent for overflow; i.e. they purchase enough transit through other providers for 80-90% of peak load, then fill out the rest with Cogent. It's not that Cogent is a terrible company or anything; they just provide an inferior product at an appropriate price point. Cogent wasn't interested in paying Comcast for better service because quality of service is not the product that Cogent provides. Their business model is to take advantage of their free peering status to sell unreliable transit at rock-bottom prices. Again; it's not evil or anything, but when you use Cogent that has to be what you expect.

But Netflix was using them for almost 100% of their traffic delivery. That's insane. There are other transit providers they could have paid more to and gotten better service, but that would have meant higher costs.

The whole irony of this situation is that I've heard rumors that Netflix is paying less per gigabit to Comcast than they paid Cogent while getting better service than they would get from a top-tier provider. If that's true, other companies will be lining up to get a similar deal because they'd just be cutting out the middlemen.

Yes they do. They buy transit from (e.g.) Cogent. The reason Netflix has peering agreements with Comcast is that Comcast's peering links with those providers don't have the capacity to carry the volume of traffic its users are requesting. I suspect Netflix would be equally happy if those peering links just got fixed.

> I want my website to be delivered to all Comcast customers for free, do you support that?

Sure, if your website has a peering arrangement with Comcast. Comcast isn't required to offer one to you, though.

If you'll read the comments of most people here they believe that Comcast should peer with Netflix for free. So why should Netflix be the only ones?

Anyone that's willing to deliver content at all interchange points into the Comcast network should be able to do it for free. That's the only policy that makes sense. Once the traffic is inside Comcast's network it's their responsibility to upgrade the network to be able to deliver the service their clients are paying for.

Where exactly is Netflix getting all this free network equipment?

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