Comcast claims that Netflix was sending traffic at such high volumes as to intentionally congest the links between different transit ISPs and Comcast, ess

Comcast claims that Netflix was sending traffic at such high volumes as to intentionally congest the links between different transit ISPs and Comcast, essentially taking a page from Norton’s “peering playbook” and forcing Comcast and its peers (i.e., the transit providers, Cogent, Level 3, Tata, and others) to upgrade capacity one-by-one, before sending traffic down a different path, congesting that, and forcing an upgrade. >Resolving the dispute: Paid peering (March 2014). Both sides of this argument are reasonable and plausible—this is a classic “peering dispute” Both sides of this argument are reasonable and plausible? Are you kidding me? If Netflix was intentionally shaping their traffic to disrupt Comcast, how is that not a denial of service attack? That sounds like a criminal accusation more than a bargaining position. If Netflix actually was doing that, shouldn't comcast be sueing rather than asking for money for a peering arrangement? also, and this is more to my own ignorance than it is to a counterpoint. I thought peering arrangements were things that happened between ISPs. Netflix is a customer of an ISP.