TWT - Comcast congestion

Wed Dec 1 14:31:39 UTC 2010

In a message written on Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:59:25PM -0600, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
> I believe that's what I said. To be perfectly clear, what I'm saying is:
> 
> * Comcast acted first by demanding fees
> * Level 3 went public first by whining about it after they agreed to pay
> * Comcast was well prepared to win the PR war, and had a large pile of 
>   content that sounds good to the uninformed layperson ready to go.

I think I can make this very simple.  What I am saying is that
you're missing a step before your 3 bullet points.  Before any of
the three things you describe, Level 3 demanded fees from Comcast.
Level 3 is doing a great job of getting folks to ignore that fact.

Comcast is a customer of L3, and pays them for service.  Brining
on Netflix will cause Comcast to pay L3 more.  More interestingly,
in this case it's likely Level 3 went to Comcast and said we don't
think your existing customer ports will handle the additional
traffic....so...um...you should buy more customer ports.

Does network neutrality work both ways?  If it is bad for Comcast
to hold the users hostage to extort more money from Level 3, is it
also bad for Level 3 to hold the content hostage to extort more
money from Comcast?

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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