3 ms·
There are more complex aspects of net neutrality beyond "companies can't make consumers pay a Facebook surcharge". One that I remember in detail is interconnec
by SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
There are more complex aspects of net neutrality beyond "companies can't make consumers pay a Facebook surcharge".
One that I remember in detail is interconnect fees. Some companies like Netflix operate at such a scale that they're constrained by physical reality as much as network policies. So to provide good service, it's often necessary to deploy additional physical connections between the ISP and the Netflix CDN.
Separately, such connections are widespread foundations of the Internet itself. In that context they're typically settlement-free, with providers on both sides working cooperatively to get the bits where users want them. For Netflix, providers typically require a fee to interconnect, because they wouldn't otherwise want to accept the maintenance costs of this link which serves no purpose other than providing Netflix.
So Netflix pays a fee that other organizations with an interconnect don't have to pay. Is that a net neutrality violation? Netflix argues yes - they say it's just a backdoor to discriminate against Netflix traffic. But you can see why ISPs would be concerned about a rule that they can't charge random CDNs for plugging in stuff to their servers.