"IP networks will feel traffic pain in 2009" (C|Net & Cisco)

Wed Jan 21 16:44:07 UTC 2009

Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
>
> I do not work for GOOG or YouTube, I do not know why they do what they 
> do.  However, it is trivial to think up perfectly valid reasons for 
> Google to intentionally break caches on YouTube content (e.g. paid 
> advertising per download).
>
> Doesn't matter if you have small links or no infrastructure or 
> whatever.  Google has ever right, moral & legal, to serve content as 
> they please.  They are providing the content for free, but they want 
> to do it on their own terms.  Seems perfectly reasonable to me.  Do 
> you disagree?

This brings me back the peering problem - if network A's customer sends 
network B's server a small packet, and network B's server sends back a 
video, why should Network A be forced to pay the lion's share of the 
bandwidth costs to deliver Network B's video (and ads) to the viewer?  
Networks which send large amounts of content should do their best to 
reduce the bandwidth load on end-user networks whenever and where ever 
possible, by hot-potato routing, by allowing the content to be cached, 
etc. 

They can't do otherwise and also claim they "do no harm".

Adrian, what did your contacts at Google say when you asked them how 
this policy was consistent with their Do No Harm motto?  If you didn't 
ask, I suggest you go ask!

jc