I found an even better description of the deal here:
I do think Cogent is the “villain” in this story. If you google “cogent dispute” you can find lots of times they have had trouble with ISPs.
I would never characterize Netflix as a freeloader. They don’t have their own network and I’m sure they pay a great deal for bandwidth from their providers. In fact, I would characterize them as a victim in this story.
The Comcast throttling story blew up a lot because of how successful Cogent was in spreading the story. If you look back though, there are plenty of situations where Cogent traffic was throttled before the FCC decision. Here’s a link from last summer, well before the recent FCC kerfuffle: http://bgr.com/2013/06/19/verizon-netflix-traffic-throttling-accusations/
I don’t know for a fact that Comcast won’t let Netflix put their servers in the NOC. Doing so would be the best solution for Netflix and because that wasn’t done, I have to assume it’s because Comcast said “no”.
What factors have I stated that are false on their face?
