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I thought this discussion was whether it's reasonable to expect Comcast to peer for free, which it is. (AnthonyMouse's answer is exactly right.) But now somehow

I thought this discussion was whether it's reasonable to expect Comcast to peer for free, which it is. (AnthonyMouse's answer is exactly right.) But now somehow this discussion is about the distribution of costs across Comcast's customers? Er, OK: Comcast does have a problem there in that it charges its customers flat rates for access instead of charging them per byte. That creates all sorts of weird incentives both for those customers and for Comcast. At some level, that's the root cause of a lot of this; as an ISP its incentive should be to route as much traffic as it can as efficiently as it can, and weird stuff like this comes up because it isn't. That's messy and Comcast should fix how it distributes the cost of its customers using the internet, but what does it have to do with Netflix paying for anything? Similarly, you don't pay Comcast to route the packets from your website to your visitors, even though only a subset of them use your site, thus asking everyone else to take on those costs. How is this different?

throwaway235622 13y ago
You think metered internet access is a better solution? Seems to align the costs and who pays for them a bit better. So if I'm sitting here watching Netflix 24/7 365 my bill is understandably higher. It'd prolly make me how much I used Netflix but that's understandable. Any plan where I don't directly pay per byte I download seems destined to run into problems like these - Comcast doesn't want to deal with the increased traffic Netflix is pulling into their network, but really what are there customers paying for but that traffic?
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  > You think metered internet access is a better solution? A better solution to what? There isn't a problem to be solved here. There is no danger of Comcast becoming insolvent as a result of Netflix traffic going to Comcast customers. The threat to Comcast of people using too much Netflix has nothing to do with Netflix using too much bandwidth and everything to do with Netflix taking too many customers away from Cable TV. Comcast doesn't seem to have any trouble with bandwidth consumption from people watching their on-demand video services. The idea that there exists some large collection of people who would prefer metered billing is nothing but a talking point in favor of a policy that damages the ISPs' video service competitors. AT&T did studies in the 1970s that showed that people prefer unmetered plans over usage-based billing even when usage-based billing would save them money.[1] Because it's not worth $10/month to have to incur the mental cost of having to constantly measure your usage. [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/why-we-should-worry-about-the-decline-of-the-unmetered-internet/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/why-we-should-wor...

throwaway235622 13y ago

You think metered internet access is a better solution? Seems to align the costs and who pays for them a bit better. So if I'm sitting here watching Netflix 24/7 365 my bill is understandably higher. It'd prolly make me how much I used Netflix but that's understandable. Any plan where I don't directly pay per byte I download seems destined to run into problems like these - Comcast doesn't want to deal with the increased traffic Netflix is pulling into their network, but really what are there customers paying for but that traffic?

AnthonyMouse 13y ago
> You think metered internet access is a better solution? A better solution to what? There isn't a problem to be solved here. There is no danger of Comcast becoming insolvent as a result of Netflix traffic going to Comcast customers. The threat to Comcast of people using too much Netflix has nothing to do with Netflix using too much bandwidth and everything to do with Netflix taking too many customers away from Cable TV. Comcast doesn't seem to have any trouble with bandwidth consumption from people watching their on-demand video services. The idea that there exists some large collection of people who would prefer metered billing is nothing but a talking point in favor of a policy that damages the ISPs' video service competitors. AT&T did studies in the 1970s that showed that people prefer unmetered plans over usage-based billing even when usage-based billing would save them money.[1] Because it's not worth $10/month to have to incur the mental cost of having to constantly measure your usage. [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/why-we-should-worry-about-the-decline-of-the-unmetered-internet/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/why-we-should-wor...