It sounds like Level3 wants to enter into bigger-money contracts with the ISPs but the ISPs don't want to, so Level3 is appealing to the masses to help them rake in extra cash (to justify the expenses they've incurred upgrading their equipment).
Why does Level3 get the benefit of being David here? IT just seems like they're trying to leverage the net neutrality debate to get themselves more favorable peering contracts with ISPs, which in a twist of irony, is exactly the kind of thing which goes against net neutrality in the first place (why are Level3's packets so special anyway?).
Do you think Level3 just throws data at Comcast nonstop, and Comcast is helpless to stop it? Customers of Comcast ask for data that Level3 is trying to provide; Comcast can't handle the bandwidth. But the only reason the data is flowing is because the customers of Comcast want it; it's not like Level3 is forcing Comcast to accept it.
Why is Level3 obligated to pay for upgrades to Comcast's infrastructure to satisfy demands placed on Comcast by Comcast's customers?
BUT WE'VE MADE ALL THIS BREAD WHY WON'T YOU BUY MORE?! JUST OPEN UP 100 NEW STORES I KNOW YOU HAVE THE MONEY TO DO IT!
Level3 invested money in their infrastructure, but Comcast, et. al. have not (yet). Level3 is losing money by having all this additional capacity, are they not? So clearly it's in their best interest to light a fire under the ISP's collective ass to try to get them to upgrade quickly.
Oh hey look, a political issue has appeared that does precisely that. Why wouldn't Level3 latch onto that movement and attempt to use it for financial gain in the form of more favorable peering agreements?
No. It isn't. It's like a bread making company calling out the grocery stores for not having enough shelf space to stock all the bread that customers of the grocery store are asking to buy, saying "People keep on asking us for bread and you can't stock enough of it".
edit to add: You keep on not understanding that the only reason the demand exists is because the customers of the ISPs want it. This isn't a scenario where L3 is just trying to push data at Comcast; it just isn't. You keep on acting like it is, and it isn't, and I can't think of another way to phrase it so that you'll understand. Level3 is not just pushing data at comcast that nobody wants, and whining that comcast can't handle it. Customers of Comcast are asking for the data, Level3 is trying to provide it, and Comcast is blocking that transaction.
edit again: It's also worth noting that in this scenario, people are paying a monthly subscription fee to the grocery store that says they can come in and get certain amounts of bread (or UP TO certain amounts of bread whatever) and yet because there is not enough shelf space customers are going hungry. And yet despite the fact that people are going hungry, the grocery stores are insisting that the bakery provide, in addition to the bread, the shelves on which to store the bread. And you're arguing that since the bakery has already spent money upgrading their ovens, their proofing rooms, and their mixers, they should also upgrade the grocery store's shelves.
Why must these ISPs play ball with L3, and not try to find competitors to do what L3 does? Isn't competition good?
Edit: People aren't going hungry (I know it's an analogy, but come on), people are watching Netflix at 480p instead of 720p/1080p. Let's try to keep things in perspective here.
The ISPs must play ball with L3 because their customers are asking for content that L3 is trying to provide. If the customers ask for different content from somebody else, then somebody else would be providing the data.
And excuse me? Don't blame me for the crappy analogy; you're the one who brought it up. I thought it was a stupid analogy too, but I thought that speaking in your own terms might help you understand the situation.
Without the service L3 provides, Comcast wouldn't be able to (as efficiently) provide the service to their customers. In a sense, Comcast should pay L3 for their access to the content.
Um, didn't someone upthread point out that Level3 doesn't actually carry any Netflix content?
You can try to package it any other way you like, but that's what you are suggesting: The only reason Comcast is in position to try this gambit is because there are alternatives (albeit very few) to backbone providers, and major content providers can be bullied directly, but most Comcast customers do not have alternatives to Comcast.
If anything, that Comcast even dares ask for this should be evidence that they are abusing a monopoly situation, and ought to be a trigger for massive reform - in a free market, they'd get told to take a hike.
L3 is not pushing, the customers are pulling. The ISPs serving the customers are not able to keep up.
You want pushing? That'd be L3 using (as an example) Comcast to reach customers of TWC. Then L3 would be pushing through Comcast. That's not the (apparent) situation here. The end user is on the other side of this peering divide, not multiple peers away. Customers are pulling data from Netflix which happens to be on L3. Blame the customers and up their rates if that's what's needed to cover the costs. But at $15+ billion a year in profit Comcast can probably afford to use the customers' money to provide them with the promised experience.
L3 is not necessary here, and everyone who's actually involved knows it, including L3.
Or are you arguing that an ISP should be allowed to restrict which services people are allowed to access depending on how much those services pay the ISP?
As the article points out, peering rarely involves money (and shouldn't ever; as the word peer implies, its a largely symmetric relationship).
The ISPs' customers are paying the ISPs for bandwidth and then requesting traffic. Level3 is providing said traffic and then the ISP drops it because they don't have enough bandwidth. How can a reasonable person possibly interpret this as being Level3's fault?
If an ISP isn't willing to supply its customers with the bandwidth that is being paid for, they need to either fix that or stop promising things they aren't willing to deliver on.
Very few ISPs offer residential Internet access with SLAs that guarantee performance or even availability. They mostly promise only a 'best effort' class of service.
ISPs have been successfully managing aggregate network bandwidth growth for over twenty years.
I work at a place that has transformed it's utilization of the internet via cloud services -- utilization going from 80-120MB/s to multi-gigabit. Adapting to that change was relatively easy and cheap. With the economies of scale that a large Telco has, it's a drop in the bucket.
Other CDNs aren't having this problem, because they're willing to work with the ISPs.
Do we know this?
Where in Level3's blog post does it say this? I'm not seeing it. Certainly at least one other transit provider, Cogent, doesn't seem to be making ISP deals; if it did, the Netflix-Comcast deal wouldn't have happened
(Also, in the post I was responding to in this subthread, you said CDN's, not transit providers. They're not the same.)
Netflix switching would, in the short term, give them more bandwidth. In the long term, encouraging ransoms will cause them to go up and Netflix will be forced to keep raising their prices. This is exactly what Netflix does not want to happen, and they are wisely refusing to play ball.