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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

If this is a problem, then build physical infrastructure so your business isn't dependent on someone else's pipes. If states and municipalities put up roadblocks to it, then let's focus on tearing down those roadblocks.

I think it's ridiculous and self-serving for internet companies to complain about this. Getting bits to customers is a critical part of any online business. You can either do it yourself, or pay someone to do it. Does Amazon complain that UPS charges them to deliver packages to customers?

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Both consumers and companies like Netflix already pay the infrastructure to transport those bits. The consumers pay their ISP to send and receive bits and the companies pay their ISP to send and receive bits.

The more apt analogy would be if UPS decided to make Amazon packages ship super slow unless Amazon payed extra fees to "upgrade" the shipping speed back to average.

That's not an apt analogy at all. Netflix connected to Cogent, which is one of the cheapest providers that still works (HE is cheaper but extremely congested). Netflix now determined that Cogent's connectivity to Comcast was insufficient, so they're connecting directly.

You could make the case that Comcast should have upgraded their peering with Cogent. That's the case in almost all of these disputes. But Netflix blinked first.

If you want to make useless shipping analogies, it's like Amazon ships using ABC to a rough wilderness. ABC uses simple cars that don't handle the terrain so they contract the local government to deliver packages in that area. You could say it's the local government's responsibility to fix the roads, or ABC's responsibility or anyone but Amazon's. Good luck.

Will amazons' customers be okay if UPS charged an additional fee to amazon's customers to receive their packages?

This situation is more akin to Amazon building it's warehouse on UPS's land to get shipments out (for a fee of course). The prior situation would be if amazon shipped via US post to UPS, then UPS ships to destination. Ideally the fee to use UPS (Comcast) land would be less than the fee to ship the product via US post (cogent) to UPS. The reduction in transit time also factors in to the decision Netflix made.

So if I need to drive to a customers site I should build my own interstate?

If you drive to your customers house over a private road, you can't complain if they charge toll.

Except your customers paid to have that road built to their house, why is there now a toll being set up (of which the customers get none of the money) to charge use of that road for something they want.

Internet companies already pay for their access: they pay their own ISP and hosting bills, just like Amazon pays UPS to ship packages.

They don't pay their ISPs to get their packets all the way to the customer. They're reliant on somebody else's property to get them there.

That is how the Internet works. You used multiple networks' property just to reply to my HN post. I doubt you paid all those networks, and I doubt that you could realistically use the Internet if you had to pay every network that stood between you and the websites you like to visit. Why should Internet companies have to pay your ISP when you do not have to pay theirs? Nowhere in the design of the Internet is your connection differentiated from an Internet company's connection.

Really, the point of the Internet is that you can communicate with other Internet users without having to worry about what ISP or network they are connected to or what arrangements govern that connection.

Internet companies that are also cable providers have an inherent conflict of interest; they want to keep as many people as possible tied to the dinosaur technology of cable as long as they can--so it's in their interest not to provide sufficiently good service to let people cut the cable, or to strong-arm networks into not providing their programming via the net.

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