Inevitable death, was Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Tue Jul 15 15:12:55 UTC 2014

On 15 July 2014 04:51, 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.)

In my book (As a network operator in the UK) Netflix's proposed
arrangement is peering. They have traffic they need to get onto my
network. I don't want to pay transit. They don't want to pay transit.
I'm happily going to connect to them for free. Why should I charge
them? My (our?) customer wants the data they are sending, so I need to
find some way to get it to them. This is the most cost affective,
deterministic, controllable way I have.

> 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.

They may not be an ISP in the traditional sense, ie you can't buy
hosting, an access circuit etc from them, however they are a provider
of a service that is accessible via the Internet.

Dave