Netflix's Open Connect offers another option though. The company will gladly put a box with a copy of itself—which is to say, nearly the entire catalog of its offerings—inside your friendly neighborhood ISP data center. That way, when your whole neighborhood is sitting down to watch Netflix after work, it doesn't tax the internet at large, or the hand-off points between different parts of the 'net. Instead, the deluge of data is confined to the "last mile," that last chunk of network between the local data center and your cul de sac. It saves everyone a lot of headache.
When Comcast and Netflix argue—or Verizon and Netflix argue, or Netflix and anyone argue—about Open Connect, it's these boxes that are at the heart of it. Netflix wants to hand them out for free, but Comcast and Verizon want to be paid for undertaking care and maintenance. And both Comcast and Verizon got their way, which is kind of a bummer.