On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 2:19 AM, Ngigi Waithaka <ngigi@at.co.ke> wrote:

I am not very familiar with the infrastructure side of things, but from his blog post countering Netflix's argument is does make quite some sense.

I guess what the ISPs are saying, we can only afford this much bandwidth

Yes, that is what they are saying...but it is an untruth.

, which to a lot of users is fine, unless, you are watching Netflix movies, in which case you would need your bandwidth at double or triple the existing connection speeds.

What the ISPs should do is make those consumers asking for Bandwidth guarantees to pay extra for those services, and then pass on those costs.

the bandwidth in question is NOT the end users bandwidth, in other words, it's not in the last mile, it is in the "middle mile" at the point where the ISPs (who Netflix pay already to deliver their content) meet the consumers ISP. This connection happens at peering points like KIXP. Comcast throttled netflix at these peering points by NOT adding more ports to allow for the greater bandwidth that is caused the the demand FROM comcast subscribers. Netflix is NOT consuming bandwidth, the customers of Comcast are using this bandwidth, which, of course, they have already paid for !!

To make an analogy, it would be like a matatu or bus company charging you for transport, then also trying to charge your employer for getting you to your job.

They have always done that, only this time, they are charging the originator of the content to charge his customers on their behalf.

The "originator of the content", which I assume you mean Netflix, already pays their ISP to deliver this content. In the "best effort" Internet model we have had for the last 3 decades, the customer only pays one time to send and receive content. This breaks that model.

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Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how we get there." Jon Postel