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This would be more accurately stated as "YouTube's marginal bandwidth cost may be close to 0". They're peering with enough providers that they don't pay for ba
by mrkurt 17y ago
This would be more accurately stated as "YouTube's marginal bandwidth cost may be close to 0". They're peering with enough providers that they don't pay for bandwidth like, say, Wired does. While Wired pays for the amount of data they send out (or expect to send out), Google mostly pays for the infrastructure, not the data.
Peering like this isn't all that new. Roughly 80% of our transit goes directly to our host's peers, which means they're probably not paying anything for that traffic (though they're charging us for it). We're happy with this because if it's going through a peer, it's much snappier for those particular users.
- mpk 17y agoWhat you're missing here is that Google has built its own network with large global reach using dark fiber. Almost everybody will peer with a party like Google if they pop up at the local exchange. By doing this Google can skip most of the usual transit bandwidth tax, which is where most of the money traditionally goes to if you're sending massive amounts of data to end-users.
- cperciva 17y agotransit bandwidth tax What tax? Sure, Google doesn't have to pay for transit while us mere mortals do -- but that's just because Google provides its own transit.