The FCC is planning new net neutrality rules. And they could enshrine pay-for-play. - The Washington Post

Mon Apr 28 14:18:25 UTC 2014

On 4/28/14, 9:23 AM, "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <ops.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>And it has a settlement free peering policy - with a stated
>requirement that traffic exchanged be symmetrical.
>
>http://www.comcast.com/peering
>
>> Applicant must maintain a traffic scale between its network and
>> Comcast that enables a general balance of inbound versus
>> outbound traffic. The network cost burden for carrying traffic
>> between networks shall be similar to justify SFI
>
>Now, that big elephant in the room taken into account, where do the
>middlemen come in here?

People seem to forget what Comcast is doing is nothing new. People have
been paying for unbalanced peering for as long as peering has been around.
It's a little different because Netflix doesn't have an end network
customer to bill to recoup those charges, they have customers on someone
else's network.  

It's not like all broadband providers are anti-Netflix, some are even
starting to include NF as an app on their STB.  There are also many who do
peer with Netflix settlement-free even with very unbalanced ratios.  The
key in the future is moving the bandwidth closer to the users, and we will
see more edge caching exist either within the broadband provider
facilities or at more localized 3rd party datacenters.

Phil 