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That's not how peering works, economically. When Netflix's ISP sends a movie to my ISP, is my ISP doing Netflix a favor? No, it's doing me a favor, or both of us a favor. So who should pay? Backbones who aren't either of our ISPs complicate it further.

ISP should be able to charge a fair price for providing connectivity across their networks, but it's not at all obvious what a fair price is, because it's not clear how expensive each packet delivery is and whose packet it is. That's why capitalists/right-wingers say "free market sort it out" and socialists/left-wingers say "government should decide rules about what's fair".




That's not how peering works, economically. When Netflix's ISP sends a movie to my ISP, is my ISP doing Netflix a favor? No, it's doing me a favor, or both of us a favor. So who should pay? Backbones who aren't either of our ISPs complicate it further.

The backbones charge the ISPs for traffic. That doesn't change what I said before. Instead of A and B having a peering agreement, they both have peering agreements with C. (A<->C<->B).

ISP should be able to charge a fair price for providing connectivity across their networks, but it's not at all obvious what a fair price is, because it's not clear how expensive each packet delivery is and whose packet it is. That's why capitalists/right-wingers say "free market sort it out" and socialists/left-wingers say "government should decide rules about what's fair".

Net Neutrality doesn't have anything to do with the government deciding how much ISPs and backbone providers charge each other. Net Neutrality is about charging for each packet at the same price and with some exceptions not prioritizing one packet over the other based on origin.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/08/tiered-pricing-c...




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