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I won't defend Wheeler, he's a jackass. However, no one else anywhere seems to be telling the truth. And we're never going to arrive at a solution that everyon

I won't defend Wheeler, he's a jackass. However, no one else anywhere seems to be telling the truth. And we're never going to arrive at a solution that everyone enjoys or thinks fair if we continue to chant internet activist slogans. In 1997, peering worked because we need a simple solution whereby dozens of private companies could hook their networks together without going through the complicated accounting of who owed who how much. Most networks sent as much as they received, there was little point in nitpicking the slight differences. In 2014, this may not be the case. Level3 wants to send much more traffic to Comcast than Comcast would ever send to Level3. This is because Netflix (a Level3 customer) is asymmetric in nature. Why is Comcast obligated to do this for free? Comcast doesn't offer its customers "Netflix service". Indeed, if it did, people would go crazy screaming net neutrality slogans. Comcast offers internet service, and they don't guarantee access to Netflix especially when Netflix doesn't bother to acquire sufficient network connectivity. This doesn't mean Netflix is evil. It doesn't mean that Comcast is anything other than evil. But Comcast does feel cheated if they're forced to pay for the upgrades, and Netflix feels cheated if they're forced to pay for the upgrades (even though they are the ones who benefit from this). This means that peering in general may not work anymore. That is the real problem that no one seems smart enough to address. And if it does not work, what replaces it? So if you're suggesting Wheeler isn't smart enough to fix it... well, that sort of figures. > Just reclassify broadband as a 'telecommunications service' already. That wouldn't really fix anything though. It's very likely to have not only unintended consequences, but bad ones.

e28eta 12y ago
Comcast would very quickly start paying for upgrades if they were losing customers over it. I'd love to switch to someone else. Peering is only broken because consumer ISPs are monopolistic, and the big ones are some of the most hated companies in the US, and don't seem to care.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  > Comcast would very quickly start paying for upgrades if they were losing customers over it. This seems irrelevant. They're not losing customers. Is Comcast obligated to "lose" those customers themselves, as some sort of self-punishment? > I'd love to switch to someone else. About 3 weeks ago, I had an idea. It might have not been a very good idea. But I turned to my coworker, and I said "hey, those signs Google gives out in Kansas City for people to put in their yards... do you think we could make the local news if we could get 100 people to put them in their yards?". He said he thought that might actually be possible. And if we could get on the evening news, maybe we could drum up support for our city council to actually do something about it. The signs cost about $600 (give or take), and we launched an indiegogo campaign that will end soon. No one is helping though. We've got hundreds and maybe even thousands of Facebook likes, but people won't even donate $5. Hell, they'd end up getting the yard sign that the $5 buys. But they're not just cheapskates, they're also dumb as rocks. One person was complaining about the idea that someone else might get a yard sign if they donated... as if it matters whose yard the sign ends up in, supposing this works. Another said it was a waste of money, that we should just go speak at city council... absent the display of public support of the idea, apparently. Despite all the griping and complaining, I'm having alot of trouble believing anyone who says they want something different. Maybe you would want something different, if it just happens to you. But none of you really deserve anymore than you're getting. > Peering is only broken because consumer ISPs are monopolistic, That's dumb. I've already described how and why peering might be broken. If you had Comcast and Evil Universe Comcast both available where you live right now... we'd still be going through the same crap. Why? Because Netflix would be flooding both of them with asymmetric traffic. And both would still refuse to pay for the upgrades that only benefit Netflix. It's not a monopoly problem. You'd get that if you bothered to think about it. > some of the most hated companies in the US, Some of that hatred is deserved. But that doesn't change the fact that it may not be their fault here. So blaming them, even punishing them... that's not going to fix it.
  - jbooth 12y ago
    > And both would still refuse to pay for the upgrades that only benefit Netflix. Those upgrades benefit the consumer, not netflix. The consumers that are paying the ISP for alleged internet service. Then they're paying netflix for the right to access netflix's content using their existing internet provider. The means of moving the bytes is a cost on netflix's end of the network, just like on the ISP's end.
BryantD 12y ago
I don't think "Netflix feels cheated" is necessarily accurate. It's entirely plausible that Netflix's PR stance is not aligned with the internal understanding of appropriate pricing.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  That would be even worse if true. That means the public is composed of blithering imbeciles who rally to inane causes without even understanding what's going on. Please, I beg all the gods that you are wrong.
  - Aloha 12y ago
    > That means the public is composed of blithering imbeciles who rally to inane causes without even understanding what's going on. This has been my overall experience when dealing with people on the internet or otherwise. I agree with you, for what its worth - Settlement only works if traffic is near symmetrical otherwise some money needs to change hands. It's just a matter of who is doing the paying for the extra bandwidth, it all has an incremental cost, and someone at least has to pay for the bearer.
eridius 12y ago
Why does it matter who sends who how many bits? It seems like that would only matter if one peer is sending traffic over another peer's network that's has yet a third peer as the real destination. But if e.g. Level3 is sending bits to Comcast because they're going to Comcast customers, then that seems entirely ok. These aren't bits that Level3 is forcing on Comcast. Comcast asked for these bits. Or rather, Comcast's customers did, but that's the same thing as far as I'm concerned. If Comcast is asking Level3 for massive amounts of traffic, it makes no sense at all for Comcast to then turn around and accuse Level3 of sending them too much traffic. I suspect the real problem is that Comcast simply didn't expects its customers to actually use all the bandwidth Comcast promised them. They can't very well accuse their own customers of using too much traffic (for legitimate purposes, I'm ignoring BitTorrent here). Comcast just needs to admit their equipment simply isn't up to the task of servicing their own customers, and they need to upgrade. Trying to charge Netflix for all the traffic is just pure greed.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  >Why does it matter who sends who how many bits? Because that's what peering is. No one gets to connect to a network, any network, for free. But if you have your own network, the company that owns another network might decide to hook up to yours for free, and you to his for free. Supposing, of course, that your networks are roughly equal. Why bill each other, if your bill to him will be about as much as his bill to you? Doing all that accounting costs money, so it's easier to just connect to each other for free. But this only works if both your networks are roughly equal. If some jackass walks up to you and says "I'm selling crap to your customers, let me hook up to your network for free!" you aren't going to agree to that. It'd be dumb. I really, really have trouble making sense of why so many people are ignorant of peering. It's going to be a really big problem too, because ignorant people are screaming for politicians to fix it, and neither the people nor the politicians have any clue at all. > If Comcast is asking Level3 for massive amounts of traffic Comcast is a network. It doesn't ask for traffic. It lets people who are connected to their network communicate with each other. If only one party connects to their network, it is impossible in a practical sense to facilitate communication between the two. Comcast doesn't guarantee connectivity to any specific host. It is a best effort service. > Comcast just needs to admit their equipment simply isn't up to the task of servicing their own customers, A kernel of truth in a turd of mistruths. Yes, I suspect this too. But it's not their equipment... that stuff gets switched out every few years. It's their network itself. HFC isn't sufficient for a modern network. Also, there's no point in them admitting this. That helps them not at all. And, since they're familiar with all the numbers, I also suspect that they know they can't afford to build a modern network.
noxxten 12y ago
> Why is Comcast obligated to do this for free? Because of a hundreds of thousands of people paying them already over-priced networking fees? Comcast wouldn't be doing it for free... I'm already capped at 300Gb per month on my Comcast internet... If I choose to spend that 300Gb in a week on streaming netflix, fucking let me; That's why I pay for it. At this point not only are ISPs trying to limit how much of their service I can use, but when, where, and how. This isn't how free-flowing information works.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  > Because of a hundreds of thousands of people paying them already over-priced networking fees? 1. Those people are free to stop paying. 2. Why are they obligated to give something to party A for free, because they overcharged party B? You're not really offering any sort of logical point here. You're not thinking, you're just reacting. > If I choose to spend that 300Gb in a week If you chose to use that 300gb downloading from my website, would Comcast be obligated to let me put a server in their data center for free? No. You're just being absurd. > That's why I pay for it. Nothing in your contract with Comcast says anything remotely resembling the claims that you're making. If you are mistaken and think you're paying for this, then perhaps you should end your relationship with Comcast. Or, if that is too uncomfortable to consider, then perhaps you should realign your expectations with those laid out in the contract. No judge would ever listen to some juvenile whining for very long, and god help us all if you get the politicians to do so. We'll be in real trouble then.
  - jbooth 12y ago
    >If you chose to use that 300gb downloading from my website, would Comcast be obligated to let me put a server in their data center for free? No, but they're obligated to get those GB to the consumer in some frickin way, because they have a signed contract with the consumer obligating them to get them their damn bytes. Who cares if it's netflix or 1,000 myriad other sites. The only reason netflix is an issue is because they're a big enough target to extort.
    - 12y ago
hatbert 12y ago
> In 2014, this may not be the case. Level3 wants to send much more traffic to Comcast than Comcast would ever send to Level3. This is because Netflix (a Level3 customer) is asymmetric in nature. Oh, you're so right! That awful, no-good, pesky L3 just keeps sending these packets that nobody wants and nobody ever asked for... oh wait. Oh yes. I just remembered. L3 sends those packets because Comcast's customers requested them. People pay Comcast to transfer packets between themselves and the internet services they wish to use. In a free market, Comcast's inability to do that would result in customers leaving in droves. It really shouldn't matter (within the bounds of legal reason) what's in the packets.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  > That awful, no-good, pesky L3 just keeps sending these packets that nobody wants You don't seem to understand peering at all. That's ok. Be quiet, listen to the rest of us that do. No one gets to connect to Comcast's network unless they pay. You and me, we pay a monthly bill. Peers pay the way by accepting Comcast's traffic in (roughly) equal amounts. Level 3 isn't paying. You're absolutely right, Comcast doesn't want those. If you want them despite this, then the onus is on you to connect to Level 3 directly. > People pay Comcast to transfer packets between themselves and the internet services No they do not. If they believe this, they are mistaken. If that is a problem for them, they're free to discontinue doing business with Comcast. Comcast cannot even charge them and offer a special "Netflix connectivity" service, because your herders have already taught you how to chant "network neutrality". If all of this bothers you very much, then I would hope that you take the time to think carefully and profoundly and realize (as I have) that perhaps peering no longer works. > In a free market, Comcast's inability to do that would result in customers leaving in droves. They can leave now. > It really shouldn't matter (within the bounds of legal reason) what's in the packets. It doesn't matter. It matters where they're from, and that they're in roughly equal amounts to what Comcast sends.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    "You don't seem to understand peering at all. That's ok. Be quiet, listen to the rest of us that do." You don't seem to understand reality at all. If you can't say something nice, STFU. As to reality: Yes, peering often works the way you describe, but Netflix tweaking their player to ship back a bunch of garbage traffic to something on L3 (Netflix themselves, or otherwise) would balance those ratios and change "who should pay" in terms of your analysis, while being a total non-solution. The simplistic analysis here is inappropriate. This is about 1) the fact that Comcast has a virtual (or actual) monopoly in many markets, and 2) Netflix competes with Comcast's other business. Abuse of market power to restrict unrelated trade is awful and often appropriately illegal.
Spooky23 12y ago
I think you're missing the overall point. This isn't a nerd problem, its a MBA probelm. From a networking engineering point of view, these problems are very solvable the way they always have been -- more stuff.. You increase bandwidth to the peering points, or find other ways to deliver the traffic (ie. have Netflix use dark fiber to deliver traffic to different regions, etc) The cost of doing this is negligible, and on the business ISP side, the ISPs are doing an excellent job of solving these problems as enterprises start sending gigabits/sec of data to O365, etc. The reason they are doing this is that the increased traffic is attacking television distribution. When you are Comcast, a wholly owned subsidiary of NBC, you tend to care about that.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  > The reason they are doing this is that the increased traffic is attacking television distribution. I disagree. I admit that this is subtle, and I don't fault you for seeing it immediately. If it were only true that Comcast was afraid of Netflix as a media competitor, then Comcast could easily beat Netflix at that game, and likely reap a few cost savings. So it's not this. I suspect that at least some of the executives know that Comcast as a tv distributor is already a lost cause, and that this doesn't bother them too much. What does bother them is, having run the numbers, they realize that Netflix traffic will only continue growing, on a very steep curve. While some chump change upgrades could fix the immediate problem (probably cheap enough that they'd do it just for PR), it won't fix the bigger problem: what happens in 4 years when the HFC network itself is inadequate? They can't afford to go to an all-fiber network. That's billions of outlays that they'd have to recoup over decades. They're afraid of losing their internet business, not their tv business.
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    These aren't local-loop issues, it's core network. Will they have issues with the local coax networks getting saturated in the coming years? Sure -- they do anyway, which is why they are investing in DOCCIS 3 in all markets, and experimenting with coax/fiber hybrids in a few places. None of their equipment works forever, they refresh the networks in 5-10 year cycles. The issue is that they are like an old-school bank or telephone company. They own infrastructure, and extract a fee for running it that doesn't fluctuate much. They want to be higher growth companies, but the only way to do that is to generate more revenue. If you surrender and let them say "Netflix's bandwidth needs are soooo complicated, we must be compensated!", then tomorrow they'll say "VoIP and Gaming latency needs are soooo complicated, we need more $$$ for that too!"

e28eta 12y ago

Comcast would very quickly start paying for upgrades if they were losing customers over it. I'd love to switch to someone else. Peering is only broken because consumer ISPs are monopolistic, and the big ones are some of the most hated companies in the US, and don't seem to care.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
> Comcast would very quickly start paying for upgrades if they were losing customers over it. This seems irrelevant. They're not losing customers. Is Comcast obligated to "lose" those customers themselves, as some sort of self-punishment? > I'd love to switch to someone else. About 3 weeks ago, I had an idea. It might have not been a very good idea. But I turned to my coworker, and I said "hey, those signs Google gives out in Kansas City for people to put in their yards... do you think we could make the local news if we could get 100 people to put them in their yards?". He said he thought that might actually be possible. And if we could get on the evening news, maybe we could drum up support for our city council to actually do something about it. The signs cost about $600 (give or take), and we launched an indiegogo campaign that will end soon. No one is helping though. We've got hundreds and maybe even thousands of Facebook likes, but people won't even donate $5. Hell, they'd end up getting the yard sign that the $5 buys. But they're not just cheapskates, they're also dumb as rocks. One person was complaining about the idea that someone else might get a yard sign if they donated... as if it matters whose yard the sign ends up in, supposing this works. Another said it was a waste of money, that we should just go speak at city council... absent the display of public support of the idea, apparently. Despite all the griping and complaining, I'm having alot of trouble believing anyone who says they want something different. Maybe you would want something different, if it just happens to you. But none of you really deserve anymore than you're getting. > Peering is only broken because consumer ISPs are monopolistic, That's dumb. I've already described how and why peering might be broken. If you had Comcast and Evil Universe Comcast both available where you live right now... we'd still be going through the same crap. Why? Because Netflix would be flooding both of them with asymmetric traffic. And both would still refuse to pay for the upgrades that only benefit Netflix. It's not a monopoly problem. You'd get that if you bothered to think about it. > some of the most hated companies in the US, Some of that hatred is deserved. But that doesn't change the fact that it may not be their fault here. So blaming them, even punishing them... that's not going to fix it.
- jbooth 12y ago
  > And both would still refuse to pay for the upgrades that only benefit Netflix. Those upgrades benefit the consumer, not netflix. The consumers that are paying the ISP for alleged internet service. Then they're paying netflix for the right to access netflix's content using their existing internet provider. The means of moving the bytes is a cost on netflix's end of the network, just like on the ISP's end.

BryantD 12y ago

I don't think "Netflix feels cheated" is necessarily accurate. It's entirely plausible that Netflix's PR stance is not aligned with the internal understanding of appropriate pricing.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
That would be even worse if true. That means the public is composed of blithering imbeciles who rally to inane causes without even understanding what's going on. Please, I beg all the gods that you are wrong.
- Aloha 12y ago
  > That means the public is composed of blithering imbeciles who rally to inane causes without even understanding what's going on. This has been my overall experience when dealing with people on the internet or otherwise. I agree with you, for what its worth - Settlement only works if traffic is near symmetrical otherwise some money needs to change hands. It's just a matter of who is doing the paying for the extra bandwidth, it all has an incremental cost, and someone at least has to pay for the bearer.

eridius 12y ago

Why does it matter who sends who how many bits? It seems like that would only matter if one peer is sending traffic over another peer's network that's has yet a third peer as the real destination. But if e.g. Level3 is sending bits to Comcast because they're going to Comcast customers, then that seems entirely ok. These aren't bits that Level3 is forcing on Comcast. Comcast asked for these bits. Or rather, Comcast's customers did, but that's the same thing as far as I'm concerned. If Comcast is asking Level3 for massive amounts of traffic, it makes no sense at all for Comcast to then turn around and accuse Level3 of sending them too much traffic. I suspect the real problem is that Comcast simply didn't expects its customers to actually use all the bandwidth Comcast promised them. They can't very well accuse their own customers of using too much traffic (for legitimate purposes, I'm ignoring BitTorrent here). Comcast just needs to admit their equipment simply isn't up to the task of servicing their own customers, and they need to upgrade. Trying to charge Netflix for all the traffic is just pure greed.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
>Why does it matter who sends who how many bits? Because that's what peering is. No one gets to connect to a network, any network, for free. But if you have your own network, the company that owns another network might decide to hook up to yours for free, and you to his for free. Supposing, of course, that your networks are roughly equal. Why bill each other, if your bill to him will be about as much as his bill to you? Doing all that accounting costs money, so it's easier to just connect to each other for free. But this only works if both your networks are roughly equal. If some jackass walks up to you and says "I'm selling crap to your customers, let me hook up to your network for free!" you aren't going to agree to that. It'd be dumb. I really, really have trouble making sense of why so many people are ignorant of peering. It's going to be a really big problem too, because ignorant people are screaming for politicians to fix it, and neither the people nor the politicians have any clue at all. > If Comcast is asking Level3 for massive amounts of traffic Comcast is a network. It doesn't ask for traffic. It lets people who are connected to their network communicate with each other. If only one party connects to their network, it is impossible in a practical sense to facilitate communication between the two. Comcast doesn't guarantee connectivity to any specific host. It is a best effort service. > Comcast just needs to admit their equipment simply isn't up to the task of servicing their own customers, A kernel of truth in a turd of mistruths. Yes, I suspect this too. But it's not their equipment... that stuff gets switched out every few years. It's their network itself. HFC isn't sufficient for a modern network. Also, there's no point in them admitting this. That helps them not at all. And, since they're familiar with all the numbers, I also suspect that they know they can't afford to build a modern network.

noxxten 12y ago

> Why is Comcast obligated to do this for free? Because of a hundreds of thousands of people paying them already over-priced networking fees? Comcast wouldn't be doing it for free... I'm already capped at 300Gb per month on my Comcast internet... If I choose to spend that 300Gb in a week on streaming netflix, fucking let me; That's why I pay for it. At this point not only are ISPs trying to limit how much of their service I can use, but when, where, and how. This isn't how free-flowing information works.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
> Because of a hundreds of thousands of people paying them already over-priced networking fees? 1. Those people are free to stop paying. 2. Why are they obligated to give something to party A for free, because they overcharged party B? You're not really offering any sort of logical point here. You're not thinking, you're just reacting. > If I choose to spend that 300Gb in a week If you chose to use that 300gb downloading from my website, would Comcast be obligated to let me put a server in their data center for free? No. You're just being absurd. > That's why I pay for it. Nothing in your contract with Comcast says anything remotely resembling the claims that you're making. If you are mistaken and think you're paying for this, then perhaps you should end your relationship with Comcast. Or, if that is too uncomfortable to consider, then perhaps you should realign your expectations with those laid out in the contract. No judge would ever listen to some juvenile whining for very long, and god help us all if you get the politicians to do so. We'll be in real trouble then.
- jbooth 12y ago
  >If you chose to use that 300gb downloading from my website, would Comcast be obligated to let me put a server in their data center for free? No, but they're obligated to get those GB to the consumer in some frickin way, because they have a signed contract with the consumer obligating them to get them their damn bytes. Who cares if it's netflix or 1,000 myriad other sites. The only reason netflix is an issue is because they're a big enough target to extort.
  - 12y ago

hatbert 12y ago

> In 2014, this may not be the case. Level3 wants to send much more traffic to Comcast than Comcast would ever send to Level3. This is because Netflix (a Level3 customer) is asymmetric in nature. Oh, you're so right! That awful, no-good, pesky L3 just keeps sending these packets that nobody wants and nobody ever asked for... oh wait. Oh yes. I just remembered. L3 sends those packets because Comcast's customers requested them. People pay Comcast to transfer packets between themselves and the internet services they wish to use. In a free market, Comcast's inability to do that would result in customers leaving in droves. It really shouldn't matter (within the bounds of legal reason) what's in the packets.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
> That awful, no-good, pesky L3 just keeps sending these packets that nobody wants You don't seem to understand peering at all. That's ok. Be quiet, listen to the rest of us that do. No one gets to connect to Comcast's network unless they pay. You and me, we pay a monthly bill. Peers pay the way by accepting Comcast's traffic in (roughly) equal amounts. Level 3 isn't paying. You're absolutely right, Comcast doesn't want those. If you want them despite this, then the onus is on you to connect to Level 3 directly. > People pay Comcast to transfer packets between themselves and the internet services No they do not. If they believe this, they are mistaken. If that is a problem for them, they're free to discontinue doing business with Comcast. Comcast cannot even charge them and offer a special "Netflix connectivity" service, because your herders have already taught you how to chant "network neutrality". If all of this bothers you very much, then I would hope that you take the time to think carefully and profoundly and realize (as I have) that perhaps peering no longer works. > In a free market, Comcast's inability to do that would result in customers leaving in droves. They can leave now. > It really shouldn't matter (within the bounds of legal reason) what's in the packets. It doesn't matter. It matters where they're from, and that they're in roughly equal amounts to what Comcast sends.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "You don't seem to understand peering at all. That's ok. Be quiet, listen to the rest of us that do." You don't seem to understand reality at all. If you can't say something nice, STFU. As to reality: Yes, peering often works the way you describe, but Netflix tweaking their player to ship back a bunch of garbage traffic to something on L3 (Netflix themselves, or otherwise) would balance those ratios and change "who should pay" in terms of your analysis, while being a total non-solution. The simplistic analysis here is inappropriate. This is about 1) the fact that Comcast has a virtual (or actual) monopoly in many markets, and 2) Netflix competes with Comcast's other business. Abuse of market power to restrict unrelated trade is awful and often appropriately illegal.

Spooky23 12y ago

I think you're missing the overall point. This isn't a nerd problem, its a MBA probelm. From a networking engineering point of view, these problems are very solvable the way they always have been -- more stuff.. You increase bandwidth to the peering points, or find other ways to deliver the traffic (ie. have Netflix use dark fiber to deliver traffic to different regions, etc) The cost of doing this is negligible, and on the business ISP side, the ISPs are doing an excellent job of solving these problems as enterprises start sending gigabits/sec of data to O365, etc. The reason they are doing this is that the increased traffic is attacking television distribution. When you are Comcast, a wholly owned subsidiary of NBC, you tend to care about that.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
> The reason they are doing this is that the increased traffic is attacking television distribution. I disagree. I admit that this is subtle, and I don't fault you for seeing it immediately. If it were only true that Comcast was afraid of Netflix as a media competitor, then Comcast could easily beat Netflix at that game, and likely reap a few cost savings. So it's not this. I suspect that at least some of the executives know that Comcast as a tv distributor is already a lost cause, and that this doesn't bother them too much. What does bother them is, having run the numbers, they realize that Netflix traffic will only continue growing, on a very steep curve. While some chump change upgrades could fix the immediate problem (probably cheap enough that they'd do it just for PR), it won't fix the bigger problem: what happens in 4 years when the HFC network itself is inadequate? They can't afford to go to an all-fiber network. That's billions of outlays that they'd have to recoup over decades. They're afraid of losing their internet business, not their tv business.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  These aren't local-loop issues, it's core network. Will they have issues with the local coax networks getting saturated in the coming years? Sure -- they do anyway, which is why they are investing in DOCCIS 3 in all markets, and experimenting with coax/fiber hybrids in a few places. None of their equipment works forever, they refresh the networks in 5-10 year cycles. The issue is that they are like an old-school bank or telephone company. They own infrastructure, and extract a fee for running it that doesn't fluctuate much. They want to be higher growth companies, but the only way to do that is to generate more revenue. If you surrender and let them say "Netflix's bandwidth needs are soooo complicated, we must be compensated!", then tomorrow they'll say "VoIP and Gaming latency needs are soooo complicated, we need more $$$ for that too!"