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Extortion fees? Netflix wanted Comcast to provide them with free bandwidth. While some ISPs may appreciate that arrangement as it offloads the traffic from thei
by RKearney 5y ago
Extortion fees? Netflix wanted Comcast to provide them with free bandwidth. While some ISPs may appreciate that arrangement as it offloads the traffic from their transit links, Comcast is under no obligation to do so.
You could argue then that Comcast wasn't upgrading their saturated transit links, which they weren't with Level 3, but to assume that every single ISP should provide free pipes to companies is absurd.
- sedatk 5y agoIf Netflix pays for the bandwidth, what do Comcast's customers pay for?
- pstuart 5y agoCustomer service!
- freedomben 5y agoI don't normally upvote jokes unless they're funny but also make a legitimate point. This was a good one :-D
- sedatk 5y ago"I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"
- cbg0 5y agoComcast were purposefully keeping those links under capacity so they could double dip - get money from both their customers and Netflix.
- RKearney 5y agoSo no business should ever have to pay for bandwidth because customers of said business are already paying? Or should I get free internet because businesses are already paying ISPs for their network access?
- dmead 5y agohttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extortion https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extortion
- leereeves 5y agoBusinesses have to pay for bandwidth to get data to the customer's ISP, but they generally don't pay the customer's ISP for the same bandwidth the customer has already paid for.
- RKearney 5y agoNetflix did not have to pay Comcast either. One of their ISPs Level 3 already had peering arrangements with Comcast to deliver the content. Instead of paying their own ISP, Netflix wanted to get free bandwidth from Comcast. There's a difference.
- leereeves 5y agoConsider it from a customer's point of view. Comcast threatened to throttle customers' bandwidth, refusing to deliver the speeds they had promised. The data was available to Comcast, customers had paid for the service of delivering that data, but Comcast wouldn't provide the full service they had sold unless Netflix paid them more. The deeper issue is that Comcast is lying to their customers, promising them more bandwidth than they are able to deliver, so when Comcast's customers wanted to use all the bandwidth they bought to watch Netflix, Comcast couldn't afford to honor their promises. But Comcast has a monopoly in the markets they serve, while Netflix exists in a competitive market, so Comcast got away with it.
- RKearney 5y agoNo ISP can guarantee speeds outside of their network. Once it leaves their network it's considered best effort. Comcast has about 30 million subscribers. If they were to guarantee bandwidth out of their network, and if every subscriber had a laughably slow 10Mbps connection, Comcast would need 300Tbps of connectivity to every single company and network. For this reason, every ISP in the world "throttles" in one way or another.
- deadbunny 5y agoThe bandwidth paid for by their customers you mean?
- dmead 5y agoDo you work for comcast or some other isp? it seems like you're biased in favor of the pipe companies here mate...