Richard Bennett, NANOG posting, and Integrity

Mon Jul 28 04:33:53 UTC 2014

On Jul 27, 2014, at 9:08 PM, Richard Bennett <richard at bennett.com> wrote:
> The essence of NN is for the eyeballs to pay for the entire cost of the network and for edge providers to use it for free; isn't that what Netflix is asking the FCC to impose?

I won’t presume to speak for Netflix, and I won’t presume to provide a canonical definition of “network neutrality.”  However, I can say what global prevailing business practice is, since I’ve actually surveyed and quantified it:

Each network (regardless of whether they term themselves “eyeball,” “content,” “edge,” or whatever) delivering a packet pays their own way to the IXP of their choice that the other party is present at, each network receiving a packet pays their own way from the IXP of their counterpart’s choice that they’re present at, independently in each direction.  Thus, where content networks interconnect with eyeball networks, when they follow the best practice engaged in by 99.73% of all network-pairs, the eyeball network’s customers pay them to deliver traffic to an IXP of their choice and from an IXP of the content network’s choice, while the content network’s customers pay them to deliver traffic to an IXP of their choice and from an IXP of the eyeball network's choice, long in, short out.  No money changes hands between the two networks, because no value is exchanged between the two networks.  Each network pays their own way, and is in turn paid by their customer. Because they’re each providing value to their customers, not to each other.

In 0.27% of cases, the parties aren’t able to see their way to following best practices, and some fraction of those are disputes between content and eyeball networks of the sort that you’re describing.  

                                -Bill

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