Netflix and AT&T strike deal to boost streaming speeds
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Is Netflix even a "network" or is it lots of endpoints? Previously Netflix was hosted on Amazon. If they are exclusively on Amazon still, Netflix might have a single, internal network that is connecting at many WAN points. But my guess is that their framework is more disparate as there probably is not a great need for a single, unified, backend network. Could be wrong, I don't have any special insight into Netflix's behind the scenes architecture. But normal peers are single networks, big backbones. Netflix, as far as I know, does not operate any unified network of that nature but just uses existing Internet connections for their own internal structure (as most customers on cloud providers do.)
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What is concerning about the Netflix situation is that it sounds a warning bell that the Internet model is failing. True peers (net neutral, free) were the backbone of what built the Internet. Connect once, to everywhere, is what made the whole thing work. If Netflix can't be serviced by that model I think that a lot of companies are worried that it is going to be a network mesh future where anyone of any size (including non-service customers, those not providing any service at all) will be forced to have individual network connections to all the carriers that they want to talk to.
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the problem is peering costs a lot to maintain and doesn't always provide much benefit See this I'm not going to describe too much about this but just know this is a major network covering lots of areas and with peering connections to multiple CDNs.
Granted this is just over the past Day
This is one of the peering connections over the past year (keep in mind that the in/out are actually reversed from what you'd normally think due to the location of the router interface, if that makes sense). In other words the Bigger spikes that are technically outbound are Outbound from the peering CDN into the the network.
Basically this means that certain sites, (that may or may not provide streaming content of some sort), are visited more during the college semesters for the most part. There are many many colleges and college apartments in southwest Virginia -
@scottalanmiller said:
Peering is swapping or doing favours (that sounds naughty.)
Netflix is a customer. A big customer. The biggest. Netflix is a special case, sort of, due to their size. But they shouldn't be treated unfairly and in this case I doubt that they are. But if we agree that they are not really peering and are, according to the Wikipedia article, just a "customer" then.... what's the discussion about? I'm a customer in the same way. I have a network that pays for a link to a peer-level carrier. Aren't we back to Netflix being a subscriber / customer like me?
this was my whole point. Why is Netflix being singled out? It's true that Netflix is pumping out tons more data than it brings in, but that really shouldn't be Netflix's problem, that should be Cogent's problem since Cogent is providing the ISP access (the real Peering points) to the rest of the internet. Cogent is the one in violation of peering agreement with the other providers.
Scott's right, the internet's model is now broken. Perhaps Cogent should have simply said.. sorry Netflix, you're using an unbalanced amount of internet traffic, so you have to stop, or we have to find a new model to bill you upon.
Netflix has started doing this on their own already by placing banks of servers directly on several of the major players networks so that customers of those networks aren't traveling over the Peering links to get the content.
My next question is, why did some carriers accept this and others not? It is because Verizon didn't want to allow Netflix to compete with it's own content? and this was/is a way to hold them hostage?
