You and I agree entirely on your first 3 paragraphs. You’ve stated the facts as I understand them.
As you guessed, I am indeed saying the timing was coincidental. Comcast’s problems with Cogent apparently go way back. The entire thing blew up when Cogent started a campaign against Comcast trying to spin this from a peering dispute into a net neutrality issue. It was Cogent who engineered the timing.
If the situation is as you describe it and Comcast was throttling Netflix strategically, then why did they only throttle Netflix streams from Cogent? Why did they let the Level 3 streams pass unmolested?
There are a lot of ways this could have been resolved. I believe Netflix was holding out because they wanted to put a machine in Comcast’s NOC like they do with Google. This is a solution because it eliminates peering. Comcast (perhaps understandably) doesn’t want externally controlled servers in their NOC. Negotiating a peering agreement directly with Netflix is the second best outcome. It saves Netflix money, it makes Comcast money, and customers get the performance they expect.
Your idea of Comcast issuing a press release saying Netflix didn’t cover their bill doesn’t work because Netflix wasn’t buying bandwidth from Comcast. Comcast’s press release would have to say Cogent didn’t cover their bill and traffic entering Comcast’s network form Cogent is being disrupted. Because Netflix is most of that traffic, it ends up looking like it’s a Comcast - Netflix issue. The reality is all Cogent traffic (including non-Netflix traffic) was being throttled.
