Re: Netflix should not pay
Sorry mate this is not how ISP peering agreements work. The article says that the SK Broadband's Netflix traffic peaked to 1.2Tbps, which is very large load (e.g. BT's typical evening peak is ~15Tbps for all of the UK traffic). Upgrading the ISP's core network is very, very expensive and SK Broadband want Netflix to contribute to that because the surge is caused by Netflix commercial traffic. Peering agreements are a very common thing between telecoms, hosting providers etc, what is unusual is being unable to agree and then get sued.
In fact, BT and EE have been asking Ofcom to do the same, change UK's current net neutrality rules to be able to "officially" charge Netflix, Amazon and Google for traffic since these 3 generate 60-70% of all traffic at peak times.
Historically, peering agreements more or less worked from the dawn of the Internet but large streaming providers changed that because they generate lots and lots of traffic and leverage their size and influence to use the ISPs transport network "for free", and the ISPs are unwilling to shift the upgrade costs to the customers and would rather charge for traffic at source.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
