>> in an attempt to force them to host their servers for free > > These are the OpenConnect caching boxes, I assume? If that's the case, it's > incorrect to say that Netflix "refuses to allow [...] caching", simply that > they prefer to provide caching their way. As it stands, I don't see the > problem with running Netflix cacheboxes instead of your own -- if you *were* > running the cache, you would presumably need to pay for hosting anyway (and > also machines), so I'm not sure how OpenConnect is worse. If there are > reasons why OpenConnect boxes *are* inferior to some other solution (such as > if they take up 20 times the power and space of an equivalent caching > solution), then those are what need to be talked about.
One could make a somewhat valid argument that the “OpenConnect” caches are limited to caching Netflix and thus not very “open” whereas a cache that I was hosting for myself could cache a variety of content sources and not just Netflix. Would it really be plausible for a small ISP to host caching clusters for every streaming content supplier out there? Don’t get me wrong, I think that the access networks are the ones that are failing their customers in this scenario over all, but I can see this one valid aspect to the argument above. Owen