This goes back to peering between Cogent and Verizon, and possibly "legitimately" has nothing to do with netflix the business. Verizon's public peering policy s

This goes back to peering between Cogent and Verizon, and possibly "legitimately" has nothing to do with netflix the business. Verizon's public peering policy states: "1.2 Traffic Exchange Ratio. The ratio of the aggregate amount of traffic exchanged between the Requester and the VERIZON Internet Network with which it seeks to interconnect shall be roughly balanced and shall not exceed 1.8:1." Their equal traffic ratio has been in every tier 1's peering policy since the 90s. The issue is that Cogent (One of Netflix's ISPs) is used almost exclusively by content providers, and thus traffic ratios are going to not going to be balanced. Traditionally peering was only free between those with similar traffic ratios, and it was free as payments to each other would cancel each other out anyway. Verizon, you could say legitimately, believes Cogent is not a peer and should either pay them for the interconnection, or purchase transit from someone who is a peer. This is not new with Cogent. At one time they were practically giving away IP transit to any eyeball heavy ISPs to help balance their ratios. They muscled themselves into Tier One-ish status by buying cheap fiber after the bubble burst and sold transit for cheaper than anyone to build up traffic. Rather than paying settlement fees to make up for the traffic inbalance, Cogent has played hard ball and went through numerous de-peerings where Cogent's customers were unable to access the other network. Peering is a messy world. It used to be the content providers and the eyeball networks both had to pay the national Tier 1s for access and the Tier 1s interconnected for free. Now the ma bells ended up buying the Tier 1s. (Verizon bought MCi/UUnet, SBC/BellSouth bought ATT) and so the eyeball networks are the Tier 1s. And the Tier 1s also own cable networks that compete with one Cogent's customers (netflix). This is a newer development and so while Verizon's network team may rightly be suggesting Cogent should pay them, this ignores the bigger picture. The old peering paradigms may need adjusting now.