> some ISP refusing to peer with them for free The issue, as I remember it being presented decades ago, is that both the ISP and Netflix were using a common

> some ISP refusing to peer with them for free The issue, as I remember it being presented decades ago, is that both the ISP and Netflix were using a common carrier or an internet exchange. The ISP is noticing that much of the inbound traffic from this peering point originates from Netflix. They approach Netflix and say "we are going to actively deprioritize your traffic unless you enter in to an exclusive direct peering agreement with us, where we set the terms, and you will pay extra to have all of this traffic delivered reliably on our network." Allowing this opens the door for the ISP to do this to anyone it thinks it extract extra fees from. Further, since many of these ISP networks also own content delivery networks and some eventually just became content producers themselves, all on top of a natural infrastructure monopoly, the arrangement were less likely to benefit consumers and more likely to create permanent illegal monopolies. We've tried to solve this problem in multiple ways. The peering "net neutrality" would be one. The forcing ISPs to act as "common carriers" and allow third parties to operate on top of their networks the way we did with DSL would be another. > But that's orthogonal to the meaning of Net Neutrality. Perhaps the original case was always just subset of the overall problem?