Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Fri Jul 11 04:02:43 UTC 2014

On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 11:10 AM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
> wrote:
>
> 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/
> )
>
> --------
>
>
Netflix generates huge amounts of wasteful, redundant traffic and then
> refuses to allow ISPs to correct this inefficiency via caching. 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 and to build out
> network connections for which it should be footing the bill. (Netflix told
> us that, if we wanted to improve streaming performance, we should pay
> $10,000 per month for a dedicated link, spanning nearly 1,000 miles, to one
> of its "peering points" -- just to serve it and no other streaming
> provider.) It then launches misleading PR campaigns against ISPs that dare
> to object to this behavior.
>
> --Brett Glass

As I see it, Netflix seem to have provided a reasonable set of options to
provide data to an ISP's customers:

- Over a certain volume, they'll provide caches to be hosted within the
eyeball AS
- Under that volume, you can pick it up via peering IXes
- If you don't peer with them anywhere, you can get it via transit

The complaint here seems to be that Netflix won't build out to
any/every/many smaller locations and/or pay to have their caches hosted.
Appreciate that there may be different views, but I'd say Netflix provide a
reasonable set of options here for the smaller ISP. I'd have thought
factoring in the assorted costs to access Netflix content (building to a
mutual peering IX vs. transit vs. the cost to run a local cache) would fall
into the standard sort of analysis you'd make running an ISP same as when
assessing if it makes sense to hosts a Google or Akamai cache.

Sam