it would be incredibly foolish on Level 3's part (they know that the traffic will always be shaped like this)
Not impossible though. I'd bet money that equal in/out contracts would be cheaper- maybe they just hoped no one would notice, or didn't anticipate the impact of Netflix on already-existing contracts?
> maybe they just hoped no one would notice, or didn't anticipate the impact of Netflix on already-existing contracts?
It's not just Netflix - the entire Internet works this way. End-users send a request, and servers send a response. There are very few cases in which the response is not larger than the request. It doesn't matter what content you're serving - the raw traffic delivered to consumers is going to be greater than the raw traffic from them[0].
Saying that they didn't know that the traffic would be shaped this way is saying that Level 3 doesn't understand the way the Internet functions on a technical level, which I would say is impossible.
[0] This is (sort of) why residential Internet speeds are usually quoted asymmetrically (e.g. 20 down/5 up). Consumers - well - consume more traffic than they produce, so networks are already optimized for delivering more traffic to consumers than they themselves generate. That said, all of the traffic is initiated by consumers; the traffic Netflix sense is only in response to the explicit request by a paying Verizon customer.
I guess the idea is that backbone providers will each have a similar number of ISPs (and content networks) to deliver traffic from and to. That's clearly not the case, especially with Verizon providing both a backbone and an ISP, and level 3 providing mostly content delivery. Maybe both should work on diversifying the clients that they serve.
You seem to have segmented ISPs in your head. As if there were "Hosting" ISPs and "Client" ISPs. Level 3 provides service to customers of both varieties. You can't jsut look at Level 3 and say, "Well they are a Hosting ISP so they send more than they receive".
> I'd bet money that equal in/out contracts would be cheaper- maybe they just hoped no one would notice, or didn't anticipate the impact of Netflix on already-existing contracts?
You'd actually bet money, on the idea that Level 3—a major internet company—didn't understand a fact about internet traffic that's blatantly obvious to everybody? What?
Not impossible though. I'd bet money that equal in/out contracts would be cheaper- maybe they just hoped no one would notice, or didn't anticipate the impact of Netflix on already-existing contracts?