Generating traffic is easy.
Routing each bit to customer houses is the difficult part.
The offer to put Netflix's servers in a Comcast data center does not help.
Routing each bit to customer houses is the difficult part.
The offer to put Netflix's servers in a Comcast data center does not help.
The fact that Comcast is eschewing the Netflix offer of free Open Connect CDN appliances (https://www.netflix.com/openconnect) tells me that this isn't an issue relating to upstream congestion, but rather with Netflix competing with Comcast's own VOD service.
As I said, generating traffic is easy. If there is no drawbacks in raising streaming bandwidth on Netflix side, they will continue to do so, 4k streaming, multiple streams per account, YouKnowWhat... all the way until all ISP subscribers will use 100% of their available bandwidth at all time.
I may pay for a XXX Mbit/s access, but I know that no ISP can sustain that XXX limit for all customers at the same time. And I certainly don't want my ISP to shape my fiber access to 10kbit/s because that's the guarantied bandwidth they can offer me.
Note that I'm in Europe, I don't have an resentful/hateful relationship with my ISP, but I can understand the US case is different because cable companies (used to) have bad business practices.
I do agree though that nowhere in the commercials it is said that you are paying for a peak rate.
I think you mean "still have bad business practices." Comcast regularly gets rated as the worst company in the country by consumers (in some cases the worst entity, public or private, beating out the IRS for that coveted position).
nearly 1/3 of the US have only a single option for broadband internet, and that company is typically a relatively unregulated company with low business costs that charges high prices. That's just a recipe for bad behavior.
But the customer is paying for that to happen. The last mile is payed for by the customer. The deal between Comcast and Netflix is designed to handle the macro level bandwidth, which is only painful when you need to cover distances.
By putting themselves wherever Comcast asks, Netflix removed all but the last mile costs. Those costs are paid for by end users.
That's what CDNs are for. Which, as the article shows, is how Netflix delivers video to subscribers of every other major ISP. Why is it they can somehow route all that traffic to customer houses but Comcast can't?
Take "last mile" literally and divide the US in a big grid of 1x1 mile squares.
If Netflix was able to dispatch its traffic up to each of these squares, there wouldn't be any problem. but there wouldn't be any Netflix either :)
That's not how a CDN works.
Look at the diagram in the article, between the fourth and fifth paragraphs. Every other ISP uses transit networks to distribute Netflix traffic (like all other traffic) to its subscribers. Netflix puts its content on CDNs that are conveniently located to make the transit networks' job easier, by making "netflix.com" endpoints closer to large populations of subscribers. Somehow all the other ISPs manage to "route traffic to customer houses" using that arrangement. Why does Comcast have to be different?
In other words it is acting like a monopolist or a shrewd business.