Inevitable death, was Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Tue Jul 15 06:14:39 UTC 2014

On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 11:51 PM, Brett Glass <nanog at brettglass.com> wrote:
> Netflix's arrangement isn't "peeering." (They call it that, misleadingly, as
> a way of attempting to characterize the connection as one that doesn't
> require money to change hands.)

'peering' here probably really means 'bgp peer', and it probably also
means to be used in a 'mutually benefiting the two parties' way. which
it seems it would be beneficial to use the pipe to pick up netflix
traffic from the exchange switch, AND to pick up other peer networks'
traffic at the same switch.

This does mean you'd need to use an ASN and do BGP in a public sort of
fashion though.

You COULD just get a single link to netflix in DEN, but that seems
dumb (or wasteful, or silly... or sub-optimal)... when there's a
switch fabric to exploit in offloading some of your traffic and
reducing hopcount between your customers and their interested content.

> ISPs peer to connect their mutual Internet customers. Netflix is not an ISP,
> so it cannot be said to be "peering." It's merely establishing a dedicated
> link to an ISP while trying to avoid paying the ISP for the resources used.

ISP's peer to avoid costs, not all costs, but some costs. Hopefully
the 'peering arrangement' is more beneficial than just straight
transit between the two parties.... else you'd just use transit.

-chris