Level 3 Communications Issues Statement Concerning Comcast's Actions

Mon Nov 29 23:34:52 UTC 2010

On 11/29/2010 15:24, Phil Bedard wrote:
> Is L3 hosting content for Netflix?  Netflix has become a large source of
> traffic going to end users.  L3 likely could have held out on this one if
> the content they were hosting is valuable enough to Comcast's customers,
> but maybe what Comcast was asking for wasn't much in the grand scheme of
> things.  
> 
> Obviously someone has to pay for the access infrastructure and Comcast
> would much rather get the content provider to pay for it versus passing it
> along to their customers.  I think they probably just took a stab and L3
> complied. 
> 

My take on this is that settlement free peering only remains free as
long as it is beneficial to both sides, i.e. equal amounts of traffic
exchanged. If it becomes wildly lopsided in one direction, then it
becomes more like paying for transit.

Perhaps this is the "cost" of acquisitions and mergers, like acquiring a
CDN product that dramatically screws with your peering ratios.

~Seth