We are broadly in agreement. Vice is performing an extremely valuable service, and I am truly excited for their discoveries and instructions. However ... You still need the agreement with Comcast, even if you are peering for Tier 1 capabilities. That means your data flows through their pipes and their routers, on the way to the backbone. At any point along that line, Comcast can throttle Netflix, and you are still stuck with taking the data at the pace they decide to deliver it. If you don't like that? Buy your Tier 1 peering net connection from one of the other 5 providers... who are all in cahoots with Comcast, have been lobbying for the opportunity to charge for exactly these services, and go to lunch with Comcast execs every day. (And, BTW, NTT do not own wires going to your data center, Comcast does. So now you need to run new fiber to your data center from NTT, or whoever, because Comcast owns the ones in your area.) --- Related Divergence: So we have too few Tier 1 providers, right? Well, we need to have as few as possible, because a single bad actor at Tier 1 or 2, and we get something like we had last week, where a badapple routed legitimate traffic through a Russian hacker site. Tier 1/2 is a trust-based network, and a weak point in the internet design that can be exploited in really really bad ways. So we trust these guys to be good actors, and act in the general benevolent belief in a neutral internet. THAT is the core of why the loss of NN is so painful. We trusted these fuckers with a monumental responsibility, for the benefit of - literally - all mankind, and they broke that trust. "...If you're peering with Comcast as a Tier 1/Tier 2 business agreement, you're negotiating whether or not you're letting them shape your traffic and there's no advantage to Comcast to shape your traffic at that point..."