Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid, Prioritized Traffic?

[jbates at brightok.net (Jack Bates)]

On 9/17/2010 11:27 AM, Chris Woodfield wrote:
> How would you feel if you paid for priority access to hulu.com
> <http://hulu.com> via this means, only to see your carrier de-prioritize
> that traffic because they're getting a check from Netflix?

The same as I'd feel if netflix paid them for pop transit which bypassed 
the congestion (even if it was via mpls-te or dedicated circuit instead 
of just priorities on a congested link). Netflix apparently felt that 
there was value in having a higher class of service and paid for it.

Of course, I'd be against congested links in my ISP to begin with. I'd 
move and get a new ISP if I could. If I was stuck, then I'd be stuck. My 
distaste for my ISP having congested links wouldn't equate to distaste 
that a content provider paid to have better class of service due to the 
ISP having poor overall service. If said class of service completely 
wiped out the bandwidth and caused all normal traffic to be unusable, 
then the ISP most likely is in violation of their agreement with me (ie, 
not providing access, as it is unusable). This would be no different 
than selling off bandwidth to commercial grade customers to the point 
that consumer grade didn't work at all.

Jack