In a way, they used to. Peering agreements between large networks allow unbilled traffic from either party with the understanding that both would be serving and consuming similar amounts of traffic. With the emergence of the network neutrality debate ISPs have claimed that peering agreements are not appropriate because content providers "send" more traffic than they receive. This of course ignores the fact that their customers are requesting the traffic and their whole business model is designed on asymetric traffic.
Peering disputes have always been when the party wanting to peer had an unbalanced traffic ratio, and the other party didn't want to peer (possibly for other reasons), and they started much earlier than the network neutrality debates.
The recent changes are more around who is involved in the peering disputes. It used to be smaller ISPs trying to get peering with larger ISPs, such as Cogent trying to get peering with [name your favorite, or PSINet vs Cable and Wireless; and most often the ISP refusing to peer didn't have residential customers themselves. Now it's more often the content providers themselves trying to peer with the residential isps directly. A major factor here is the huge consolidation of residential ISPs, but also the consolidation of content providers.
Consolidation of residential ISPs means each ISP is big enough to run their own backbone, and as a result they can credibly have strict peering requirements. Smaller, regional ISPs will tend to want to peer, because otherwise the traffic will come through on paid transit connections. Large ISPs may not care; because of their size, they may not be paying anyone for transit, and because of the common asymmetric nature of residential connections, there's not likely to be many networks where the large ISP is on the wrong side of the ratio.
If I were one of these content providers, I would spend a lot more time messing with the large ISPs. Figure out how to make the traffic cost them money, so they'll want to peer. Provide transit to data backup services to try to make the ratios less unbalanced. Run campaigns suggesting that residential ISPs should be paying their customers, given that the traffic is unbalanced. Etc.
> Peering disputes have always been when the party wanting to peer had an unbalanced traffic ratio, and the other party didn't want to peer (possibly for other reasons), and they started much earlier than the network neutrality debates.
The recent changes are more around who is involved in the peering disputes. It used to be smaller ISPs trying to get peering with larger ISPs, such as Cogent trying to get peering with [name your favorite, or PSINet vs Cable and Wireless; and most often the ISP refusing to peer didn't have residential customers themselves. Now it's more often the content providers themselves trying to peer with the residential isps directly. A major factor here is the huge consolidation of residential ISPs, but also the consolidation of content providers.
> Consolidation of residential ISPs means each ISP is big enough to run their own backbone, and as a result they can credibly have strict peering requirements. Smaller, regional ISPs will tend to want to peer, because otherwise the traffic will come through on paid transit connections. Large ISPs may not care; because of their size, they may not be paying anyone for transit, and because of the common asymmetric nature of residential connections, there's not likely to be many networks where the large ISP is on the wrong side of the ratio.
> If I were one of these content providers, I would spend a lot more time messing with the large ISPs. Figure out how to make the traffic cost them money, so they'll want to peer. Provide transit to data backup services to try to make the ratios less unbalanced. Run campaigns suggesting that residential ISPs should be paying their customers, given that the traffic is unbalanced. Etc.
I can upload all my files to Google Drive and all my photos and videos to Google Photos if you think it helps the ratio...
I've long thought the Netflix app should simply upload random noise, to "balance out" the tremendous download/upload difference with which some poor ISPs struggle so.
> This of course ignores the fact that their customers are requesting the traffic and their whole business model is designed on asymetric traffic.
Exactly. If the Internet worked on this model—where the recipient of the net imbalance was paid money for it—I'd get a check from Verizon each month instead of a bill!
