This would make sense but for one point. The graph of service quality spiked as soon as Netflix began paying Comcast. If they're weren't throttling then how could such a spike be possible? You can't see those kind of performance gains by throwing a ton of hardware at it. You couldn't even provision the amount of hardware needed to see those gains in that short of a time frame (less than one day by the chart).
It's not a question of hardware but routing. The deal cut out the middle-man between Netflix's and Comcast's networks, Cogent. Because Comcast and Cogent were in a constant feud over their peering agreements (Comcast wanting Cogent to pay more to transit all that Netflix data), service through that link was pretty much at capacity and slowly degrading the Netflix experience for Comcast customers.
The two networks are directly connected now, which eliminates that bottleneck. That's why performance spiked. There wasn't a capacity issue on either side of that Cogent link; Netflix is willing to pay for its bits, and Comcast's network has adequate capacity to deliver them. This routing change actually occurred two days before the deal was announced; you could see through a traceroute already that the route between Netflix and Comcast had shortened and no longer went through Cogent.
> Comcast wanting Cogent to pay more to transit all that Netflix data
That doesn't make sense to me. Comcast's customer isn't Cogent; Comcast's customer is the end user who sends them a check every month for access to the internet, regardless of where it comes from. If Cogent is being paid by Netflix on the other side, then Cogent and Comcast are exactly aligned (each wanting to deliver the Netflix packets because their respective customers are paying them to) and should peer without any money changing hands. If Comcast wants Cogent to pay it so that Comcast's own subscribers can get access to Cogent's customers' content, then they're being shady.
> If Cogent is being paid by Netflix on the other side, then Cogent and Comcast are exactly aligned (each wanting to deliver the Netflix packets because their respective customers are paying them to) and should peer without any money changing hands.
Should Comcast cache my personal website for free so that it's super fast half way across the country? Or am I responsible for making my website faster (by using CDNs and such)? If it's the latter, why should Netflix not have the same experience I have?
Your question confuses me. If your website is cached on a CDN, Comcast users still have to connect to the network that hosts that CDN, and Comcast accomplishes that by using a peering or transit relationship. The CDN won't magically speed up Comcast's network, which is still responsible for getting the content to people's homes. Netflix is already making its website faster by paying Cogent a lot of money to deliver its data to the ISPs and by (clears throat) using and even building its own [1] CDN. Where Comcast comes in is delivering that content to its customers, who, again, pay it to do exactly that.
Yes, and others in this thread believe Netflix shouldn't have to pay to peer with Comcast. What I'm saying is, I too want to peer with Comcast for free. Do you support this as well, or just Netflix?
If you have traffic for Comcast's customers and you bring it to Comcast's facilities, what service do you imagine Comcast is providing that you should have to compensate them for?
It's not transit. They're not delivering your traffic to some other ISP. They're delivering it to their own customers, which is what those customers have already paid them to do.
They're delivering it to some of their customers. Those who are also Netflix customers.
Netflix wants to distribute it's costs back onto everyone else (everyone but themselves). Even though this new arrangement reduces their costs vs. using Cogent.
I thought this discussion was whether it's reasonable to expect Comcast to peer for free, which it is. (AnthonyMouse's answer is exactly right.) But now somehow this discussion is about the distribution of costs across Comcast's customers? Er, OK: Comcast does have a problem there in that it charges its customers flat rates for access instead of charging them per byte. That creates all sorts of weird incentives both for those customers and for Comcast. At some level, that's the root cause of a lot of this; as an ISP its incentive should be to route as much traffic as it can as efficiently as it can, and weird stuff like this comes up because it isn't.
That's messy and Comcast should fix how it distributes the cost of its customers using the internet, but what does it have to do with Netflix paying for anything? Similarly, you don't pay Comcast to route the packets from your website to your visitors, even though only a subset of them use your site, thus asking everyone else to take on those costs. How is this different?
You think metered internet access is a better solution? Seems to align the costs and who pays for them a bit better. So if I'm sitting here watching Netflix 24/7 365 my bill is understandably higher. It'd prolly make me how much I used Netflix but that's understandable.
Any plan where I don't directly pay per byte I download seems destined to run into problems like these - Comcast doesn't want to deal with the increased traffic Netflix is pulling into their network, but really what are there customers paying for but that traffic?
> You think metered internet access is a better solution?
A better solution to what? There isn't a problem to be solved here. There is no danger of Comcast becoming insolvent as a result of Netflix traffic going to Comcast customers. The threat to Comcast of people using too much Netflix has nothing to do with Netflix using too much bandwidth and everything to do with Netflix taking too many customers away from Cable TV. Comcast doesn't seem to have any trouble with bandwidth consumption from people watching their on-demand video services.
The idea that there exists some large collection of people who would prefer metered billing is nothing but a talking point in favor of a policy that damages the ISPs' video service competitors. AT&T did studies in the 1970s that showed that people prefer unmetered plans over usage-based billing even when usage-based billing would save them money.[1] Because it's not worth $10/month to have to incur the mental cost of having to constantly measure your usage.
This is a straw man: Netflix doesn't want to peer with Comcast at all. Netflix would like Comcast to provide their (Comcast's) customers with the bandwidth those customers are already paying (Comcast) for.
But this still doesn't explain why Netflix is paying Comcast, not the other way around, or, even better, with noone paying anyone. This clearly shows that Comcast had an upper hand in the negotiations, probably because of its monopolistic position.
All internet services pay for their bandwidth, they don't get paid to be online. Usually that means paying a hosting company, which pays a data center, which pays some transit provider like Cogent or Level 3 to get onto the internet. Netflix was paying Cogent to link it to the internet. Now Netflix's servers are directly linked to Comcast, so Comcast is connecting it to the internet [ed: to Comcast's customers], and that's who they're paying instead.
Why would they want to pay Comcast instead of Cogent? Because Comcast's fight with Cogent was resulting in poor performance for Netflix customers. They had the option of waiting for it to get bad enough that one side or the other gave in on the negotiations and increased capacity, meanwhile losing customers frustrated with buffering at peak hours, or choosing an alternate route to get their bits to those customers.
It also nicely sets up barriers for entry to new video streaming services, which is something maturing companies tend to do. Netflix has grown big enough to buy transit directly from ISPs instead of through middle-men like Cogent, while startups don't have the capital for that.
Netflix was paying Cogent to link it to the internet. Now Netflix's servers are directly linked to Comcast, so Comcast is connecting it to the internet, and that's who they're paying instead.
No, Netflix is paying Comcast to connect them to only Comcast's customers, not the Internet. Suggesting that they're paying Comcast for transit is disingenuous.
All internet services pay transit providers but they don't typically pay last mile networks for access to their subscribers.
Comcast is able to fight with Cogent while their own customer's connectivity suffers precisely because the customers often don't have an alternative ISP. Netflix argues that if the TWC merger proceeds the situation will get even worse.
No, what is shows is that it was going to be more expensive for Netflix to buy market-rate transit through another provider than to peer directly with Comcast. (Or Netflix is playing the long game here and taking an unnecessary financial hit by peering with Comcast to put them in a favorable PR position, but I think that's less likely.)
Cogent's thing is selling massively cut-rate transit. They've been involved in constant peering disputes over their method of doing so since at least 2002. This isn't new for them - Netflix is just big enough that people really took notice this time.
