Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Fri Jul 11 02:12:54 UTC 2014

On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 6:40 PM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
wrote:

> Jimmy Hess wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Miles Fidelman
>> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Randy Bush wrote:
>>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> At the ISPs expense, including connectivity to a peering point. Most
>>> content
>>> providers pay Akamai, Netflix wants ISPs to pay them. Hmmm....
>>>
>> Netflix own website indicates otherwise.
>> https://www.netflix.com/openconnect
>>
>> "ISPs can directly connect their networks to Open Connect for free.
>> ISPs can do this either by free peering with us at common Internet
>> exchanges, or can save even more transit costs by putting our free
>> storage appliances in or near their network."
>>
>>
>>  From another list, I think this puts it nicely (for those of you who
> don't know Brett, he's been running a small ISP for years
> http://www.lariat.net/)
>
> --------
>
>
> At 02:42 PM 7/10/2014, Jay Ashworth wrote:
>
>  Netflix's only fault is being popular.
>>
>
> Alas, as an ISP who cares about his customers, I must say that this is not
> at all the case.
>
> Netflix generates huge amounts of wasteful, redundant traffic and then
> refuses to allow ISPs to correct this inefficiency via caching.

I'm sorry.  You cannot take that sentence...

> It fails to provide adequate bandwidth for its traffic to ISPs' "front
> doors" and then blames their downstream networks when in fact they are more
> than adequate. It exercises market power over ISPs (one of the first
> questions asked by every customer who calls us is, "How well do you stream
> Netflix?") in an attempt to force them to host their servers for free

...together with this sentence, without hitting a WTF
moment.

He rants about Netflix generating huge amounts of traffic
and refusing to allow ISPs to cache it; and then goes on to
grumble that Netflix is trying to force them to host caching
boxes.  Does he love caching, or hate caching?  I really
can't tell.  Netflix is offering to provide you the cache boxes
*for FREE* so that you can cache the data in your network;
isn't that exactly what he wanted, in his first sentence?
Why is it that two sentences later, free Netflix cache boxes
are suddenly an evil that must be avoided, no matter how
much Netflix may try to force them on you?

I'm sorry.   I think someone forgot to take their coherency
meds before writing that paragraph.

If you like caching, you should be happy when someone
offers to give you caching boxes for FREE.  If you don't
like caching, you shouldn't bitch about inefficient it is to
have traffic that isn't being cached.

Trying to play both sides of the issue like that in the
same paragraph is just...dizzying.

Matt