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Codebreaker

The Comcast/Level 3 dispute thickens

John Moe Dec 2, 2010

Here’s what Comcast has to say about Level 3 jumping into the business of delivering Netflix streaming traffic.

From Ars Technica:

“Level 3 has low-balled its way into a new business deal that will significantly increase the amount of Level 3’s traffic Comcast would carry,” says the cable giant, “and suddenly wants to seriously disrupt settled economics of Internet traffic to meet its new business plan. Its position is not based on any principles of fair play on the Internet, but instead is merely the result of its rash bid to carry Netflix traffic at radically low rates, based on the flawed assumption that it could use its Tier 1 Internet backbone status to cram its CDN [content delivery network] traffic onto others’ networks on a settlement-free basis.”

Comcast says Level 3 wanted to use about 30 new connection ports to handle this new traffic under their existing agreement – get 30 more ports at no cost. Comcast said you can have 6 ports, but any more than that, you have to buy. Plus, Comcast says this whole thing had nothing to do with the content, just the amount of traffic.

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