3 ms·
Simplifying a bit here--but essentially, what happened before is that AT&T owned a wire. Two parties wanted to talk to each other over this wire, and so AT&T on
by MAGZine 13y ago
Simplifying a bit here--but essentially, what happened before is that AT&T owned a wire. Two parties wanted to talk to each other over this wire, and so AT&T only charged one party for bi-directional use of that wire.
In the past few years, AT&T has said, "we're going to limit how much a single party can transfer on that wire in a month." Now, they're saying "both parties need to pay to use the wire." Again, a bit of a simplification.
Ultimately though, nobody should care where the traffic is coming from or where it is going--be it Netflix, Steam, Amazon, or anywhere else. AT&T offered their customers use of a wire, hoped that traffic between backbone peers was equal, and then started to cry when people saturated their connections to a single source.
Your customers already paid for delivery on your network--the whole idea of double dipping is ridiculous. UPS doesn't charge amazon because they send a lot of packages--the cost is the burden of one party, and one party only.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Who cares where the traffic is coming from--be it Netflix, Steam, Amazon, or anywhere else. AT&T does. Particularly, AT&T, who has a quite lucrative business selling video content, doesn't really want video content being sold and delivered over their network unless they are getting a payment for it to compensate for the potential loss to their own video content sales from the competition, in addition to getting paid for the bandwidth. There is a reason why this exact scenario with regard to video content and discriminating against competition was highlighted in the Open Internet Order as one of the things it was intended specifically to prevent, and that its the one specific instance of non-neutral policies that immediately became a huge deal when the Order was struck down.
- lucb1e 13y ago> UPS doesn't charge amazon because they send a lot of packages Actually they do, and then Amazon charges us. But yeah I get your point, UPS receives money from one side only, which makes the most sense of course.