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.
I think that's generally the point that neutrality activists make, that in large par the internet works because users have equal access to any network, regardless of the asymmetry inherent to that access, and that users are willing to pay for the cost of that asymmetry.
If Comcast needs more money to properly connect it's users to Netflix, then that's fine, charge me more money. I'll gladly pay directly for real infrastructure upgrades. But forcing that revenue to go through Netflix first, you're fundamentally changing a key feature of the Internet.
The fact that these issues go away if there is no asymmetry (peering) doesn't seem so relevant.
Nothing in their contract with Comcast suggests that they've somehow bought "the right not to care about or understand peering".
So if they think they've bought that, then the problem really is one of "stupid customers".
Do you know that I absolutely loathe Comcast? I hate coming off like I'm defending them. I want the company abolished, its assets sold off at auction, its shareholders prohibited from ever investing in shares again, its executives sent to prison to rot for the rest of their lives.
There are many bad things about Comcast. We don't need to make up lies about them.
> If Comcast needs more money to properly connect it's users to Netflix, then that's fine, charge me more money.
Then they're hit with accusations of violating network neutrality (if they only charge Netflix users), or of price-gouging if they charge everyone.
This was already taken off the table by the same people who are rabble-rousing everyone.
> But forcing that revenue to go through Netflix first, you're fundamentally changing a key feature of the Internet.
By not forcing it, you're changing a key feature of the internet: settlement-free peering.
This is why my original, top comment explains how things have changed and peering may not work anymore. It's impossible to come to a resolution where all parties feel as if they've been treated fairly.
And that's a much bigger problem than anything anyone else is talking about. It's a problem that won't go away if we ignore it.
I'm not sure why you think this is a 'bad thing'.
Comcast sells users bandwidth (X download, Y upload). It doesn't sell "Access to static and dynamic web sites, but not video streaming services." If the customer is using less than X and less than Y, why does the type of traffic matter? If Comcast doesn't want users using the amount bandwidth they paid for, then they need to be more upfront about that in the plan pricing (lower the bandwidth, or increase the price).
That's what people are asking for. Just like I shouldn't expect my cell phone bill to increase because I called across state lines instead of local, I shouldn't expect my internet bill to increase just because I used the bandwidth for watching Netflix as opposed to something like seeding Linux distributions.
So no, this is not like some jackass (Netflix) walking up to Comcast's customers and demanding the right to sell crap. Netflix is already paying Level 3 for the right to internet access, and Comcast needs to provide access to Level 3's customers in order to actually provide what it promised to its own customers.
A more apt analogy would be considering ISPs as cities, connected by roads. The roads are the peering agreements. Comcastica is a city where everyone lives. Level3ton is a city with a lot of warehouses and other commercial infrastructure. The residents of Comcastica love ordering products from Netflix, who has warehouses in Level3ton. As such, the roads between Comcast and Level3ton are constantly crowded with big trucks hauling all the ordered goods from Level3ton to Comcastica.
Comcastica is now saying to Level3ton that they're sending far too many trucks for Comcastica's roads, and wants Level3ton to pay for Comcastica to expand their roads.
Level3ton is, of course, only sending the trucks because the residents of Comcastica are demanding them. If Comcastica's roads aren't large enough, it's because they underbuilt their road infrastructure given the number of residents they have.
The only reasonable course of action here is for Comcastica to take all the taxes they collect from their residents and use some of it to build better roads, in order to service all the vehicle traffic that Comcastica's residents are creating. It doesn't matter that the vehicles are coming from Level3ton, it only matters that the vehicles are servicing Comcastica's residents needs.
[1] Presumably Comcast could route traffic through a common peer to both, but they'd have to pay for that privilege, so I'm going to consider that irrelevant at the moment.
No, they're paying for the right to Level 3 access.
> Comcastica is now saying to Level3ton that they're sending far too many trucks for Comcastica's roads,
False.
Comcast has never done this. They say "send all the trucks you can fit on that road".
But all roads have limits.
Netflix says "you need to build another road, I have alot of trucks".
This is literally what happened. The link was 90% saturated. Level 3 themselves admitted this in that blog post the week before last.
I don't mind the metaphors and analogies, if it's to help you understand something that is foreign to you... but that's not a license to twist the issue.
So without the metaphor, Netflix is telling Comcast that their links do not have the capacity to serve the needs of their (Comcast's) customers. This isn't something that Netflix should even need to tell Comcast; Comcast already knows it. In fact, not being able to meet their obligations to their customers was an intentional decision on Comcast's part. They assumed that their customers wouldn't actually use all the bandwidth they are paying for. But with the rise of video streaming in general, and Netflix in particular, Comcast's customers are using more and more of their bought and paid for bandwidth.
That's the issue right there. Comcast intentionally oversold their capacity (or intentionally under-built their infrastructure, whichever way you want to look at it), and it's now coming to bite Comcast in the ass. But instead of admitting that they did this and working to build out their infrastructure, which would cut into their obscene profits, they're trying to blame Netflix instead and demand that Netflix pay. In short, they're trying to double-dip.
It's a simple fact that if Comcast's customers can't reach Netflix (but customers of other ISPs can), then Comcast has sold a false bill of goods to their customers. They haven't sold them "access to all websites that are willing to pay for the privilege of talking to Comcast". They've sold them access to the internet. An internet that includes Netflix.
But as the ISP, aren't you billing your customers for that usage? Does it matter where the bits are coming from?
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.