It might be because the norm for internet peering is if there is a significant imbalance in traffic, the party sending the most pays so the residential ISPs should be paying their residential customers this one doesn't quite work, because it's not actually a peering relationship, and the norm is transit customers pay the transit provider for traffic in either direction. I would say it's because the residential customer is stuck with a very limited set of choices, and can't pick an ISP that distinguishes itself with open peering. A big factor, of course, is that internet video services compete with the ISPs video services, and there's some implicit unfairness there. The reason also can't be because Comcast is charging both ends of the connection for the service it is providing to both, namely connecting the two parties because both sides paying for connectivity is the norm in telecommunications. So, the reason it's bullshit can't be because Netflix has to pay for a service that Comcast is providing because paying for network services is the norm. If Comcast wasn't large enough for Netflix to want peering, Netflix would probably use paid transit to get there (they might even use paid transit that Comcast would also have to pay for). I agree, that it's bullshit, but please consider:Ī telephone company charges me to have a phone line and per minute to place and receive calls, and charges whoemever I'm conversing with to have a phone line, and to call me. > Is it really that difficult a concept? Comcast charging Netflix for access to Netflix's customers, when Netflix's customers are paying Comcast for Internet access, is bullshit. I would rather see mandatory line sharing for residential ISPs, it's a lot easier to define and with proper regulation offers a path towards consumer choice, and gives people a way to take action if their provider has poor network policies - if your provider runs an acceptable last mile service, but provides poor interconnection to the rest of the world, you could become a line sharing partner and provide better interconnection to the world without having to build out an overlay last-mile network (which is incredibly capital intensive and difficult) It's still a problem that it doesn't match reality, and it doesn't provide user choice, but it has gotten a lot of support. So, network neutrality is a policy to (attempt to) regulate residential ISP behavior, in order to provide a reasonable policy for users. You don't have meaningful choice in a single residence, and moving residences to get better choices isn't a meaningful option either. Or, it's not too hard to build a storage box or two and get them into a colocation somewhere.įor your residential ISP though, for most people, if you don't like the network policies, you might have another option, but they will likely have similar policies. Of course, if you don't like how Backblaze manages its network, there's a bunch of other network storage vendors who you could switch to (many of which are members of the Bandwidth Alliance). If your provider charges you the same amount for both types of packets, they're not being transparent about their network costs which is bad for you, and is also bad for them, because you may be able to adjust your traffic so more is settlement free and less is paid - but you won't do that without an incentive. Packets sent to other destinations may pass through a paid transit link and cost the provider. The bandwidth alliance partners are exchanging traffic via peering links, so there's only the fixed costs of equipment and any port charges/interconnection fees to the peering facility. The problem is that different packets take different network paths and have different costs to your provider. The core concept, in my mind, is that all packets should be treated equally, and should cost the customer the same amount per byte. Network neutrality is a difficult concept to apply because its core concept doesn't map well to reality.
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