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Comment by Touche | Hacker News Reader

> I pay my ISP for my access, Netflix pays their ISP for their access, and we get to talk to each other. That's how this stuff works. Comcast charging Netflix is double-dipping, and is directly opposed to their supposed purpose of serving me, their customer.

Netflix doesn't pay an ISP. That's the whole point of the arrangement, it goes straight from Netflix to Comcast. There is no middleman. So their peering arrangement is the equivalent of "paying their ISP".

To say that Netflix should not have to pay for internet traffic is ludicrous. I want a piece of that. Comcast should hook up their network to my servers so that my personal website is fast for Comcast users. For free of course.

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Your assertion that Netflix "doesn't pay an ISP" is at odds with their description of having previously paid Cogent to carry traffic over long distances. Now, "Netflix is itself shouldering the costs and performing the transport function for which it used to pay transit providers."

In other words, you're describing a situation in which Comcast blackmailed Netflix for access to Comcast's customers as one in which Netflix claims they "should not have to pay for internet traffic". This is detached from reality.

How was Netflix "blackmailed"? Cogent failed to provide the service they needed so they are doing it themselves. Doing it themselves is saving them a lot of money.

Now they're attempting to shift costs onto everyone else. And they're using the public's distrust of ISPs to get the public to pay for Netflix's business expenses.

Netflix doesn't pay an ISP? How does their traffic get into the internet, then, by magic?

They pay transit providers to do it. Except with Comcast, who they pay directly. And save a lot of money by doing so.

Previously, they paid transit providers for everything, but Comcast wouldn't allow them access to their network at sufficient speeds, so they were forced into paying Comcast directly.

In other words, we're already in the double-dipping situation I'm decrying. The "we each pay our ISPs" scenario that I described and that you quoted is now, sadly, a hypothetical.

Comcast and Cogent disagreed on who should burden the costs. Because of this Netflix went around Cogent and are doing it themselves, and saving a lot of money by doing so.

Now they are using the biased tech media to create a campaign whereby they will lower their costs even further and shift them onto others (including you and me).

You keep saying that Netflix is saving money. Please provide a reference for this.

Netflix went around Cogent because Cogent couldn't get Comcast to bump up their peering capacity. Comcast wouldn't bump up their peering capacity because they're a monopoly in many places and have no incentive to improve.

In a reasonable free market, none of this discussion would matter. The agreements would all shake themselves out in the marketplace. But give a company a monopoly and suddenly they're not subject to the same forces. Between Netflix, Cogent, and Comcast, only one of them is a monopoly.

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