Re:Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
by AnIrishDuck on Sunday February 23, 2014 @03:16PM
(#7287378)
Consumer ISPs always have received more traffic than they send, it's the nature of the service they provide. I'm not sure that the settlement free peering model used by upstream providers makes sense when applied to ISPs.
I'll admit my knowledge of peering is minimal, but consumer ISPs have always been something of an anomaly if memory serves. The traffic flow is highly one sided, but peering with consumer ISPs is obviously necessary if you want to actually reach consumers.
Re:Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam
by jauer on Sunday February 23, 2014 @05:09PM
(#7287821)
Yep, that's loosely accurate for consumer providers but Comcast does more traditional business traffic that one would think.
For example, they are the 30th largest provider globally going by the CADIA rankings (http://as-rank.caida.org/?mode0=as-info&mode1=as-table&as=79...) and have large traffic sources as customers. From the CADIA list this includes Peer1, Dreamhost, SoftLayer, Hivelocity, and Liquid Web.
As a eyeball ISP I occasionally get offered cheap transit from hosters looking to balance their traffic ratios. From the CADIA list it seems like Comcast may be doing the opposite.
Generally speaking settlement free peering requires that the arrangement be mutually beneficial. If the traffic exchange becomes inequitable then the side that disproportionately benefits would need to pay to cover it.
In this case Cogent was sending vastly more traffic towards Comcast than they were receiving (because of Netflix) so they were the misbehaving party.