> they paid Comcast some large fee to upgrade links to one or more transit providers Do you have a link for that? I was unaware of any of that happening. It wa

> they paid Comcast some large fee to upgrade links to one or more transit providers Do you have a link for that? I was unaware of any of that happening. It was my understanding that Netflix is engaging in paid peering directly with Comcast now (http://bgp.he.net/AS2906#_peers http://bgp.he.net/AS2906#_peers). You're right that Netflix isn't technically buying transit from Comcast, but they replaced their transit purchased from Cogent with paid peering purchased from Comcast; the net effect is the same. > It's hard to think of an explanation for these peering disputes between CDNs/transit providers and consumer ISPs that doesn't imply ISP hostage-taking. I think that's exactly what's happening here, but it's done as a bargaining chip in the never-ending peering wars, rather than Comcast specifically engaging in rent-seeking from Netflix. The history of settlement-free peering is long and sordid, and last-mile providers have been at odds with the T1s for decades. Netflix massively amplified that dispute simply by virtue of the amount of bandwidth they consume.