> Is it really that difficult a concept? Comcast charging Netflix for access to Netflix's customers, when Netflix's customers are paying Comcast for Internet access, is bullshit.

I agree, that it's bullshit, but please consider:

A telephone company charges me to have a phone line and per minute to place and receive calls, and charges whoemever I'm conversing with to have a phone line, and to call me.

If Comcast wasn't large enough for Netflix to want peering, Netflix would probably use paid transit to get there (they might even use paid transit that Comcast would also have to pay for).

So, the reason it's bullshit can't be because Netflix has to pay for a service that Comcast is providing; because paying for network services is the norm. The reason also can't be because Comcast is charging both ends of the connection for the service it is providing to both, namely connecting the two parties; because both sides paying for connectivity is the norm in telecommunications.

There's some other reason it's bullshit. A big factor, of course, is that internet video services compete with the ISPs video services, and there's some implicit unfairness there. I would say it's because the residential customer is stuck with a very limited set of choices, and can't pick an ISP that distinguishes itself with open peering. It might be because the norm for internet peering is if there is a significant imbalance in traffic, the party sending the most pays; so the residential ISPs should be paying their residential customers; this one doesn't quite work, because it's not actually a peering relationship, and the norm is transit customers pay the transit provider for traffic in either direction.

> Sure, behind the scenes there are backbone providers and peering arrangements and BGP, but those are technical details. Network neutrality means as a consumer I pay an ISP and get connected to the Internet.

The problem here is there is no "the Internet" to connect to. An ISP needs to connect to substantially all of the other networks; and while a small ISP may simply use a single upstream ISP, where it would be easy for the small ISP to be neutral (bits in = bits out), a larger ISP is going to have a diversity of connections, and that's going to lead to defacto non-neutrality as some connections are bigger than others, and some connections are longer than others, and some connections are more expensive than others.

I fully understand the desire to restrain residential ISPs (and mobile ISPs) from anti-competitive behavior; I guess network neutrality might work for that.

But, when you apply it to other networks, it doesn't seem to make sense. In this case, you have a group of networks that would like to lower costs, both for themselves, and their customers, and they've agreed to settlement free peering, and to also not charge customers for bandwidth on the settlement free links. Network neutrality doesn't really speak towards the interconnection, but says that customers should be charged the same rate for all bandwidth, even when the underlying costs are different. I don't understand why that's a good thing in this case?