
Why is Netflix Buffering? Dispelling the Congestion Myth - danielsamuels
http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/why-is-netflix-buffering-dispelling-the-congestion-myth
======
msandford
From the article: "Netflix sends out an unprecedented amount of traffic."

YES! Yes they do! But Netflix doesn't send that traffic for fun and giggles,
just to swamp your network and clog up the port. They do it because YOUR
CUSTOMERS HAVE ASKED THEM TO and you, Verizon, you duplicitous shitbag, have
SOLD THAT CAPABILITY to your customers. They have LITERALLY _PAID_ you to
successfully receive up to 75Mbps worth of traffic from ANYONE, INCLUDING
NETFLIX.

I can't fucking stand this "they send a lot of traffic our way, but we don't
send any back!" bullshit. Netflix doesn't PUSH traffic to your customers, your
customers PULL traffic FROM Netflix.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Maybe we're getting to the point where Internet connections are more like
public roads.

Maybe no private entity should control these roads.

Maybe it's time for a sweeping change.

~~~
ctdonath
The "sweeping change" is an old legal standard: "common carrier". They're
contracted to move bytes from source A to customer B at "up to" X Mbps; so
long as (albeit limited) bandwidth is available at any given moment, fill the
pipe and shove that data thru regardless of source. Traffic shaping may be
fair if the pipe is full, but not if unused bandwidth remains sparsely used
based solely on source or content.

~~~
click170
Raise your hand if you've contacted your elected representative regarding ISPs
becoming Common Carriers.

(Full disclosure, I'm not an American and thus have little to no say regrading
American ISPs, but I advocate for this in my home country.)

/me largely expects crickets in response.

Unfortunately I think we just aren't pissed off enough about this as a group
yet, evidenced by the lack of action from us and from legislators.

~~~
bicknergseng
Raise your hand if your elected representative has any idea what having ISPs
become Common Carriers means or entails. Keep your hand up if 10% of your
district also knows. Keep your hand up if you (and your district collectively)
can out lobby Comcast, TWC, ATT, Verizon, etc.

I don't know that it's that people aren't pissed off, its probably more that
the people who are pissed off are uninformed, will not become informed easily,
and will not organize as easily as already well organized and very well funded
corporations, lobbyists, and PACs.

------
cs702
Verizon is blaming Netflix for sending "an unprecedented amount of traffic"
and "not taking steps to ensure that there is adequate capacity for their
traffic to enter" Verizon's network.

The thing is, Netflix is NOT pushing any of that traffic to Verizon. It is
Verizon's customers who are pulling that traffic from NetFlix -- and _they are
paying Verizon to deliver it_!!!

More here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7701494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7701494)

~~~
diminoten
Well, Netflix _is_ pushing traffic to Verizon. Saying they're not is factually
incorrect.

They're just doing so in response to requests coming out of Verizon networks.

Still though, Verizon customers are running Netflix apps, which are making the
requests, so it's not like customers are doing the requesting "in the raw", or
as "informed" consumers. They're just clicking "play" on Netflix video
devices.

Also, Verizon customers aren't paying Verizon to deliver content, they're
paying Verizon to _try_ to deliver content. This goes all the way back to the
"unlimited" deception ISPs pull on consumers, and Verizon is double-guilty of
this deception, as they're a cell phone carrier as well.

Edit: I _really_ hate to be that guy (and I know I'm breaking rules by saying
this), but have we really devolved to the point where we downvote everything
that isn't 100% in agreement with the hive mind? I thought HN was better than
this. I'm just getting so sick of being downvoted because I'm offering a
different angle - I've been polite, deferent, and explanatory, and my words
get sent straight into the "grey" anyway. You're given downvote privileges
because it's been determined that you're capable of thought, please don't
disprove that.

~~~
groby_b
That's silly word twisting. Following that logic, my bartender is pushing
drinks on me, just by my request.

~~~
diminoten
Bartenders will get fined and lose their license if they serve drunk people.

Also, calling what I said "word twisting" isn't really addressing their
argument, it's more or less just name-calling, which companies are _really_
good at ignoring. To beat them, you've got to do better than that.

~~~
swasheck
> Bartenders will get fined and lose their license if they serve drunk people.

only because they don't have a large lobby organization to protect them from
the laws ;)

~~~
diminoten
Heh yeah, I mean the "let people get wasted in public" lobby isn't quite as
big as the ISP lobby.

The analogy isn't great, I'll agree. I prefer the "water" analogy, myself.

------
rnovak
They can claim whatever they want, but when you tunnel Netflix traffic through
a VPN so all the ISP see's is encrypted traffic and bandwidth issues
disappear, it removes all mystery.

I've tried several VPN's to test out my theory, and with each one, as soon as
the ISP couldn't inspect traffic, all throttling seem to magically vanish.

considering what we're paying for broadband, we should be getting what we pay
for without resorting to obfuscating our data.

~~~
agwa
That's because your VPN providers are no doubt using a different transit
provider than Netflix (Level 3) so your traffic is bypassing the congested
peering points. The peering disputes are affecting not just Netflix traffic,
but traffic between Verizon and any site using Level 3 for transit.

(Not to take the blame away from Verizon. I'd love to see them try to use
their logic to explain why other, non-Netflix services work like crap from
Verizion.)

~~~
joeframbach
Isn't the Netflix-to-Verizon transit something that we already pay Verizon to
maintain?

~~~
maxsilver
Yes, but Verizon also wants Netflix to pay them for that same transit.

That's what the whole blog article is about. Verizon trying to invent valid
reasons for why they want Netflix to pay them.

~~~
jpgvm
They are not inventing reasons. Netflix is serving the content, Netflix pays
for it to move. Simple as that. The issue is Layer 3 is not buying enough
transit from Verizon to match the disparity in the traffic it wants to send
beyond what is covered by settlement free peering.

If you look at the diagram on the Verizon post you can see the link is
saturated in one direction and only at 30% utilization in the other direction.

This is the DEFINITION of transit. The fact Netflix is even blaming Verizon
for this is ridiculous.

~~~
bobcostas55
L3 should not have to buy anything from Verizon. The only reason they're
paying them at all is that the blackmail worked in the past.

That is not how peering agreements work.

~~~
jpgvm
No, it is how peering agreements work. None of you have ever negotiated a
peering agreement which is exactly why you don't understand that Verizon is in
the right here, L3 is just providing cheap (and inferior) transit and Netflix
is just bitching because it bought a Ford and expects a Ferrari.

------
idiot900
A well written PR piece, but no new insights here. Verizon feels it is not
Verizon's job as an Internet service provider to provide adequate service to
parts of the Internet that its customers are paying them to access.

This wouldn't be a problem if broadband access were actually a competitive
market - customers would simply switch to a provider that had taken the
initiative to give its customers what they want.

~~~
seanflyon
Thank you. While almost all the comments are saying the same thing, I think
you stated it best.

------
malchow
"Netflix sends out an unprecedented amount of traffic" is one of several
misleading locutions in this piece. Verizon customers request these packets.

The ISPs' problem is that they aren't willing to change their pitch to
customers. As long as their product is "internet service at ~x gbps," they are
on the wrong side of this issue. So they go ransoming the content folks.

The funny thing is that the dream world of the big modern ISPs would appear to
be something like AOL circa 1994, where you can have "the internet," but it's
a cheap lo-fi interconnect [1], and what they mainly want you to consume is a
bunch of low-quality in-house content channels. [2]

[1] [http://images.appleinsider.com/leopard-preview-
ichat-3.jpg](http://images.appleinsider.com/leopard-preview-ichat-3.jpg)

[2]
[http://www.jeffwright.com/portfolio/portfolio_aol_main.jpg](http://www.jeffwright.com/portfolio/portfolio_aol_main.jpg)

~~~
jrs235
We need ISPs and the general public to demand that first statement be
delivered as

"Our customers request an unprecedented amount of data and traffic from
Netflix."

This is Verizon's problem, not Netflix's.

ADD: Netflix doesn't just randomly send data and traffic onto Verizon's
network. That data is requested by Verizon ('s customers).

------
trothamel
It's always kind of strange to me that Verizon only wants to provide
settlement-free peering "where the relative traffic flows between an IP
network provider and us remain roughly equal".

If you were to take that at face value, it means that Verizon would happy to
provide free peering if only Netflix modified its client so it uploaded a
number of random bytes equal to the size of the stream it was downloading.

But that's nonsensical, right?

~~~
msandford
No, that's fucking GENIUS.

Please God, if there is a God, let someone from Netflix read this parent post
and implement such a thing to take the wind right out of Verizon's sails.

~~~
nathanyz
That is actually the basis of our startup is that we can solve the congestion
problem by swarming with other video viewers to require less downstream
bandwidth usage

~~~
click170
That's interesting tech, but I kind of feel like it's just postponing dealing
with the problem.

The problem is anticompetitive behaviour from ISPs, and while this would make
video streaming better, it would just allow them to be more abusive, while we
try to fill the resulting gap with more technology. IMO we should be
leveraging the Netflix situation to fix that behaviour.

Regardless, swarm-sourced streaming is something I've been fantasizing about
for awhile and I'd love to see your source if it's open. You should definitely
proceed with it regardless.

------
mutagen
Netflix has an open offer to move CDN servers deep into provider networks [1]
to avoid peering congestion. This would put most of the Netflix traffic at the
bottom right of Verizon's infographic. Why hasn't Verizon accepted this offer?

[1] [https://www.netflix.com/openconnect](https://www.netflix.com/openconnect)

~~~
ozymandius182
Not sure why this isn't ranked higher. The entire issue with Verizon is that
it refused to do this. They can't complain about intermediate systems when
they have been provided the chance to bypass many of them.

------
batbomb
That chart is worthless without numbers.

First off, the chart makes it sound like Netflix is preferring subpar transit
providers, and that by simply switching to different transit providers, they'd
be fine. But there's no numbers on total bandwidth. For example, if Verizon
has 100Gbps to Netflix's content providers, and only 40Gbps to their other
content providers, then the additional 20Gbps is going to be a drop in the
bucket.

It could be the reverse: Netflix is choosing the 40Gbps provider where they
could be choosing the 100Gbps, in which case they could easily triple the
available bandwidth they have to send to Verizon.

But, we all know that's not the real issue.

Finally, if peak utilization means that netflix is saturating the router with
reduced bitrate video, then increasing that could very well lead to saturation
in the internal Verizon network.

EDIT:

I ran some numbers. If Netflix's providers are saturating at 100%, and other
providers are only at 44% peak, and then peak incoming traffic is exiting the
Verizon router at 56% peak, that should roughly mean that Netflix has roughly
3.6x the amount of bandwidth from "other transit providers" than it does from
Netflix's transit providers, which, in turn, means that Verizon has roughly 2x
the total bandwidth that Netflix uses available on it's network. What isn't
mentioned is what percentage Netflix uses of it's current providers, how those
"other providers" are split up, the maximum theoretical utilization, etc...

What isn't mentioned is how that's split up. It's probable Netflix can't use
on most of those links even if they wanted to, and there's no word on how many
links there are. If it was one giant link, and Netflix could use on it, sure,
Netflix should probably try to do that.

Bottom line: I don't think there's anything technically limiting Verizon's
capacity to Netflix's transit providers, as according to their numbers,
Netflix's transit providers only constitute ~22% of the total bandwidth into
Verizon. Down the line, it's probable that, even if these link issues were
fixed at the border router, they would pop back up again in the Metro Area
router or aggregation router, and really gum up Verizon's network.

~~~
josho
Great analysis, thank you.

Adding to your point about gumming up the metro area routers inside Verizon
that may be quite possible. Remember this is Verizon's analysis for a _single
customer_. What are the odds that Verizon, to influence public policy, choose
a customer that would best represent Verizon's case. For example, a customer
in a region that was just provisioned a bunch of extra capacity. So, it's
possible that the percentages at the customer/aggregation/metro area are not
typical for Verizon, but rather Verizon's best case scenario.

------
random28345
The summary of the article by Verizon is:

> Our network is fine. Netflix is buffering because we won't allow the traffic
> Verizon customers request onto the Verizon network until Netflix pays us
> more money.

------
jrs235
Verizon's customers request an unprecedented amount of data and traffic from
Netflix.

This is Verizon's problem, not Netflix's.

Verizon should be working with Netflix on an amicable solution to perhaps
cache data inside Verizon's network... O What do you know! Netflix already has
a program for that:
[https://www.netflix.com/openconnect](https://www.netflix.com/openconnect)

~~~
diminoten
To be fair, this problem is non-existant today, because Netflix has entered
into payed peering agreements with Verison/Comcast/other ISPs.

They more or less acquiesced.

They're just not happy about it.

------
jpgvm
ITT: People that don't understand that settlement free peering needs to be
mutually beneficial.

When you pay Verizon you pay for access to their network. Not access to
Netflix's network. Verizon will has transit agreements with some people to use
it's network and settlement free peering with other ISPs of similar size.

When I go to by transit from Verizon to host my website do I expect to get
settlement free peering? Well, probably not because I am probably serving much
more content than I am consuming, as such my link is unbalanced.

If instead I was another ISP and I was sending roughly as much data to Verizon
as I am consuming it suddenly becomes mutually beneficial for us to agree to
send traffic for free as then we don't each have to pay transit costs for this
traffic.

Not understanding this is why HN and other tech news outlets are in outrage.
This is just how peering arrangements work. Unless your traffic is balanced
you need to pay the cost of transit, simple as that.

Now, the reason Netflix is bitching is they -are- paying for transit.. they
just aren't paying enough to the right people. Their problem is that their
transit providers don't have sufficiently large links to Verizons network.

Because of the massive asymetical nature of having Netflix on your network
Verizon is not agreeing to settlement free peering to Layer 3 et al. Which is
completely fair and how things work, unless it's mutually beneficial you have
to pay up.

Now, why does a witch hunt against those ISPs make no sense? Well simply put
they are not running their network at 1:1 contention and probably charge
prices that reflect that. If you went and bought carrier grade transit from
more respectable providers chances are you would be getting 1:1 contention and
these issues would never occur, but you probably pay more than 10x what
Netflix is charging per mbit.

TLDR: Netflix doesn't understand how telecom works and needs to pay for better
transit.

~~~
groby_b
You're missing a point. Netflix _pays_ for their bandwidth. Namely, their
network provider. (Or more likely, their peering points).

It's not like somebody showed up at their office and said "Here's a giant
pipe, push all you want".

And "they're not paying to the right people" is an incorrect argument. You pay
_your_ connection point for money, and the recipient pays theirs. Intermediate
connections need to be handled by the respective networks, not the endpoints.

So if Verizon wants money, they need to extract it from their peers, not
Netflix. (Or the user). Which they don't do, because, well, turns out they
make enough money of it that losing a peering agreement is actually
detrimental to their business.

It's completely within VZWs rights to expect money from Layer3 for peering.
It's not within their rights to extract it from somebody three hops down. That
is the _reason_ we have peering agreements, billing individual customers
doesn't make sense.

~~~
jmccree
As far as I know, there has been no claim that Level3 pays Verizon for their
peering. The Verizon-Level3 peering is settlement free as both are large Tier
1 networks. What verizon is refusing to do is upgrade the size of the
interconnections until Level3 either pays them for paid peering or gets their
traffic ratios back to an equal ratio.

Level3 as a Tier 1 who pays no one for peering or transit, and is of course
not going to do that. That leaves their transit client Netflix with the choice
to either use other providers, who will likely run into the same traffic ratio
issue, or pay for peering directly with Verizon.

When Netflix is pushing out 1/3rds of the internets whole traffic, and it's
all going in one direction, there's practically no tier 1 network out there
that can provide transit for that without breaking their peering agreements,
except perhaps the same content providers (Verizon, ATT) offering paid peering
to netflix. It's not unreasonable with their traffic levels to expect netflix
to peer directly with the largest consumer networks.

------
btoptical
If you'd like a different perspective regarding the quality of your broadband
connection and the reasons for congestion this is a good read that basically
says ATT at least does not provide enough connectivity from the Level 3's
optical backbone to their regional networks. I suspect Verizon is probably the
same.

[http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-
play...](http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/chicken-game-played-child-
isps-internet/)

Here's a letter Level3 wrote to ATT on the subject [pdf].
[http://www.level3.com/~/media/Assets/legal/cicconi.pdf](http://www.level3.com/~/media/Assets/legal/cicconi.pdf)

------
sergiotapia
It's so strange, I live in Bolivia and Netflix never buffers for me at all. I
have a laughable 200kbps real download speed (1768kbps plan) and I only wait
for Netflix to load for about 2 seconds on my PS4 and off I go watching on
480SD quality.

I would expect the US to be much much better.

~~~
skelsey
No one in the US wants to watch 480 video.

~~~
lostcolony
I do. Comcast. Data cap.

Of course, what I would -prefer- is to ditch Comcast, and yes, watch at a
higher resolution, and I will at the first available opportunity. But can't.
Because monopoly.

~~~
swasheck
nonsense. there is no monopoly in capitalism.

/sarcasm

~~~
adventured
If there was Capitalism you'd actually be able to compete.

~~~
swasheck
There is Capitalism ... but it's been corrupted. Economic systems are morally
neutral. How people employ them determines the morality. The U.S. is, in
general, pushing Capitalism to its logical end, in which the system consumes
itself in the name of its constituents' "best interests."

------
diminoten
The argument I see most commonly from ISPs (and seemingly re-stated here) is
basically, "Why should _all_ of our customers pay for the upgrades we'd have
to implement if only the Netflix subscribers would benefit from such
upgrades?"

The idea being that, no matter what they do, the cost of it will just be
passed along to the consumer. So their solution is to charge Netflix for the
upgrades. That way, when Netflix passes those costs on to the consumers, only
the ones who actually have Netflix will be paying for the upgrades, as opposed
to _all_ Verizon customers.

It makes sense, once you assume Verizon/ISPs and Netflix will just raise their
rates to pay off these upgrades/charges.

But again, you have to take the assumption that, regardless, the costs will be
passed onto the consumers, for granted. If you think the ISPs will try and eat
the costs, then this argument doesn't fly. But they're saying they won't,
so... they probably won't.

I'm not trying to pass moral judgement on this (I gave up trying to convince
you guys back when every comment I wrote about this was downvoted to hell and
back), just saying what the argument the ISPs are giving actually is. It's
just not as "left field" as you might think.

~~~
eyeface
If Verizon feels that Netflix should pass the costs on to the consumers, how
would they go about that? Much like Verizon can't know if a user will be using
Netflix, Netflix can't know what networks a specific user will come in from,
so they'd have to spread the costs over all subscribers, just like Verizon.

~~~
diminoten
That's a fair point, but Verizon is at least claiming apparently that it's
Netflix's problem to solve, not theirs.

Maybe varied subscription prices based on ISP. Say, a "base" $5/month you pay
to Netflix, and then you can subscribe to "performance" plans that cost an
extra $1/$2 per month and get you access to the peering agreements for those
ISPs.

Though I'm pretty sure that'd start riots. But at least your ISPs wouldn't be
offering "fast" lanes! Your products would do that!

------
esoterae
How apropos that the link is showing unavailable after timeout & errors after
only 17 minutes of being posted.

<Verizon> It's definitely not us. Yep. Not it.

------
dcc1
LOL taking 30 seconds+ to even load their page

~~~
jrs235
They must be using Netflix's network.

------
LandoCalrissian
Long story short, Level 3 won't pay us for peering agreements so it's their
fault.

~~~
techwizrd
The most incredible part is that the facts and anecdotes presented so far
don't agree with Verizon's tale, so instead of Verizon decided to respond with
a fluffy PR piece instead of fixing the problem or countering with facts.
Verizon seems completely unwilling to take any blame in this and does not seem
to have their customer's best interest at heart.

There are no new facts in this article other than a useless infographic and
repeated claims that Netflix is saturating their link with content Verizon
customers are asking for.

~~~
yaur
The only new fact I see here is that link between L3 and Verizon is not
symmetric. That's not surprising really, but it means that there is already
traffic asymmetry baked into whatever peering agreement they have today.

------
swasheck
> We’re Not Satisfied Until Our Customers Are

he misspelled "Shareholders"

------
xyclos
can we all reply to his tweet[1] about this letting him know we can all see
through his bullshit

[1]
[https://twitter.com/daedyo/status/487292992504360960](https://twitter.com/daedyo/status/487292992504360960)

~~~
swasheck
Nobody's getting responses from either him or Libby Jacobson. They just farted
in the room and left.

------
sandstrom
I'm genuinely curious if the author `@daedyo` [twitter] actually believes what
he has written?

This blog post by level3 was fairly enlightening, and in stark contrast to his
view/version of this.

[http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-
inte...](http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-internet-
middleman/)

As an side, living in a country where ISPs (mostly) doesn't have monopoly,
it's funny that these congestion issues never occur here.

Seems like another example where lobbying and money is the underlying issue.
[https://mayday.us/](https://mayday.us/)

------
Athens
The real problem is the ownership of the physical lines that interconnect
everything. The high cost and the limited right of way access prevents
duplication of physical networks leaving one company in ownership thus control
and this is a monopoly. This is why most North American cities (Canada and the
United States) have one cable company and one phone company in each region.
Services from competitors and small companies just access, use and resell from
the single company in the region. In BC for Example you have Shaw and Telus.
Bell, Videotron, Rogers rents access over the Telus Network in most cases.

What is really needed is to separate the physical network form the service
provider. We need a Provincially and State owned network or county or city
owned networks with one mandate only. Provide a physical network and charge a
price to maintain and grow it. owners of homes and businesses and other
buildings would pay for the last mile connection to the network and own that
last mile connection. Companies like Bell, Rogers, and dozens upon dozens of
small companies offering service be it phone or internet or TV can plug
hardware into the network and provide such services. Both the consumer and the
ISP pay a network access fee that pays for the network. But this puts every
one on equal footing because its the same fee. the physical network can't
throttle or control or manipulate any of the content. Would be easy for small
companies to expand by adding hardware into data center locations all over the
network. Would allow consumers to buy and plug in equipment to allow for point
to point VPN connections between family members at a fair price.

It is the only way to solve this issue. I would suggest the same be done with
the Cell Phone networks. The Cities and Provinces and States own the towers
using all the frequencies and they charge a access fee to the subscriber and
phone provider to manage and expand the network. Any company could start up a
cell service and compete head to head. As long as the core infrastructure is
owned by one entity that has its own motives on how to use it, it will always
be a monopoly situation and thats bad for business and consumers and
innovation. Take the expensive part out of the puzzle and make it a public
owned resource let the ISP and companies fight for customers on equal footing.

------
pedrocr
This proves the opposite of what they argue. Supposedly the argument is
"Netflix users use too much bandwidth so Netflix should pay for our network
upgrades". And yet what their chart and argumentation shows is that the
Verizon network has all the capacity it needs to handle this user's traffic
and yet at the border of the Verizon network, Verizon is not accepting more
traffic from Netflix.

------
deeviant
If the non-trivial-much-highler-than-netflix monthly cost of verizon's
_internet_ service does not cover the cost of verizon _connecting their
customers the internet_ , what the hell does it cover?

I also don't understand why they are talking about "Review Shows No Congestion
on Verizon Network", people are paying them for _internet_ service, not
verizon network service.

------
wavefunction
I know who I believe, and it's not Verizon!!!

------
pizza
Can anyone recommend networking resources analogous to _Learn C the Hard Way_
or _Dive into Python_?

~~~
thrush
High Performance Browser Networking by Ilya Grigorik is pretty solid, and free
online.
[http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000545](http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000545)

------
josefresco
Seems the issue (according to Verizon) is that Netflix is using "connections
specifically to be used only for balanced traffic flows.". Can someone comment
on this and the difference between the two (if any)?

------
_nullandnull_
You can always spot a one sided blog post because the ability to leave
comments is always turned off. I bet they spent more time building the
inforgraphic than they did addressing the customers issue.

~~~
mwfunk
Oh, I don't know about that (although I agree with everyone that Verizon is in
the wrong here). They could be announcing free puppies for everyone and the
first three comments would be Some Dude Complaining About Obama, a paranoid
schizophrenic going on about I don't know what, and somebody claiming that
their aunt made $85/hour working from home.

------
mullingitover
Perhaps Netflix would be wise to figure out caching, and let subscribers fully
download movies at the highest possible quality with zero buffering. That, or
start serving movies with bittorrent.

------
JimmaDaRustla
Why is the "transit providers" split into two segments - inbound and outbound?
Wouldn't it be the same logical segment and be impacted based on data in both
directions?

~~~
random28345
> Why is the "transit providers" split into two segments - inbound and
> outbound?

Because they are trying to illustrate how unbalanced the traffic flow is in
each direction, to bolster their argument that Verizon shouldn't have to
deliver the streams that Verizon customers requested until Netflix gives them
more money.

------
coldcode
They seem to forget that the internet is a request based system. It's not a
series of tubes going downhill.

------
madcow2011
The page isn't even loading at all. Just the "his webpage is not available"
message. WTG, Verizon.

------
freeasinfree
Why isn't a large ISP like Verizon directly peered with Netflix? Why waste
money and bandwidth on transit?

------
h1fra
Can't even load the site, the irony !

------
josephschmoe
Ironically, I can't load the website.

------
angersock
Somewhat ironically, the page is taking forever to load.

~~~
cdnsteve
500 Internal Server Error for me right now

------
jflowers45
Let the verbal battle begin!

