Just keep in mind that you have already paid Verizon to provide you with "up to X Mbps" of internet. And they theoretically should make a good faith effort to provide you with that amount.
What's happening here is that they are not making the good-faith effort. They want to get paid for the transit from Level3 onto their network and from their network to your front door.
The thing is according to basically all precedent of how the internet works when you pay for internet you're (theoretically) paying for all costs Verizon incurs while providing that service to you.
If they're trying to bill someone else for entry into their network while billing you for the exit then you should be getting a discount to the tune of however much that service provider is paying. But you're not. Which is why people are getting all up in arms.
EDIT:
> Level3 stops becoming a peer and starts becoming a subscriber
Yes, that point is when Level3 is DOWNLOADING more data FROM Verizon customers than UPLOADING to them.
Verizon charges their customers every month for plans where they download more than they upload.
As it stands Verizon customers are downloading 3x as much data FROM Level3 and Level3 is downloading from Verizon.
So by that logic, Verizon should be a Level3 customer and pay Level3 for any imbalances.
To your edit: No, my theory was that, when the businesses aren't servicing each other, as in a mutual transit scenario, then one getting a benefit at the expense of the other is unfair.
Honestly, it's a case of externalities, so we're not going to see much improvement until government either takes over peering or last mile.
I don't think that either is benefitting at the expense of the other. Netflix pays for huge amounts of bandwidth to all the residential ISPs where their customers are located. Verizon customers pay for huge amounts of aggregate bandwidth to Netflix and everywhere else on the internet. If there is more download traffic on Verizon's network than there is upload traffic it's only because that's all Verizon allows their customers to do. Contractually. They sell asymmetric plans. The results are not surprising.
I think Verizon has an internal struggle. They are both a transit provider and an end-user isp. I think their transit role, which made this deal with Level3 for settlement-free peering, and its ISP role, which made deals with end users for high bandwidth, are fighting each other. We'll see if that plays out.
What's happening here is that they are not making the good-faith effort. They want to get paid for the transit from Level3 onto their network and from their network to your front door.
The thing is according to basically all precedent of how the internet works when you pay for internet you're (theoretically) paying for all costs Verizon incurs while providing that service to you.
If they're trying to bill someone else for entry into their network while billing you for the exit then you should be getting a discount to the tune of however much that service provider is paying. But you're not. Which is why people are getting all up in arms.
EDIT:
> Level3 stops becoming a peer and starts becoming a subscriber
Yes, that point is when Level3 is DOWNLOADING more data FROM Verizon customers than UPLOADING to them.
Verizon charges their customers every month for plans where they download more than they upload.
As it stands Verizon customers are downloading 3x as much data FROM Level3 and Level3 is downloading from Verizon.
So by that logic, Verizon should be a Level3 customer and pay Level3 for any imbalances.