Is Verizon Already Slowing Netflix Down? 298
hondo77 points out a blog post by Dave Raphael, who noticed some odd discrepancies between two different Verizon broadband connections he has access to. His personal residential plan and his company's business plan both went through the same Verizon routers, but his residential plan is getting unusably slow speeds to places like AWS. He suggests that Verizon is already waging a war on high-bandwidth services like Netflix after the recent court decision against net neutrality. His discussion with a Verizon service representative seems to confirm this, though it's uncertain whether such an employee would have access to that information.
Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops this (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people support Net Neutrality because they think things like this will not happen.
So then, under the net neutrality rules you need to explain why what Verizion is doing would not happen.
What will stop Verizon from doing this? My canceling my phone service and telling them I'm switching to T-Mobile because of cloud throttling.
Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi (Score:5, Funny)
I almost admire your optimism.
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For what it's worth, we just did this with our Family plan (ditch V for Tmo) - and, can verify, 2 weeks of normal 4G data usage on TMo totalled about 20 Meg, setup as a mobile hotspot and give the kids tablets with Netflix - ran through 480 Meg of data in like 5 minutes - I don't think there's any throttling going on there...
Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi (Score:5, Informative)
Our cable (and hence cable modem) went out for a day recently (we use Cox). My wife set up a mobile hotspot from her T-Mobile phone in a spot in which she had LTE service and went about her life as normal, meaning streaming Netflix in the background while she works. It turns out that at LTE speeds, Netflix feeds you rather high reception, and you can go through a 2.5 GB limit in less than two movies. So, she was throttled for the rest of the month to 2G speeds.
Supposedly they do not throttle on the unlimited plan. They are very clear on the 2.5 GB plan that they will throttle after the cap (but will not charge extra) and they did in fact throttle (and I was fine with that--that was all we paid for, and in the typical month is faaaar more than enough). On the unlimited plan, I question how much Netflix streaming they would really tolerate.
Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it would be illegal, and they would be subject to legal repercussions, unlike now. What part of this do you find confusing?
Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi (Score:5, Insightful)
They're confused by the part that conflicts with their ideology.
Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they are confused by an unclear description of "net neutrality".
I've seen some places (non-fox news) describe "net neutrality" as "Enforcing traffic to be at equal speeds"... which is not the case. People using that description would be against it because they believe it would mean all web traffic would be slower, to match the speed of the slowest server... That reeks of "All must be fair, so we must race to the bottom" and "Everybody gets a trophy" that many people disapprove of.
If you inform them that Net Neutrality is against throttling speeds, and having customers get what they paid for... then most of those against, turn sides.
I see it as we either need to enforce Net Neutrality, or enable a free market, where we have more than one or two choices for broadband (or any other utility).... If we had 10+ ISP's to choose from, this wouldn't be an issue, one would not throttle, and that would force the others to compete. But we don't have a free market... and too many of those in power (both in government, and the big TelComs) would lose money to allow a free market.
Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this not yet ranked +5 insightful.
I recently moved to a place where I can't get Comcast (thankfully). Even though I'm out in the country instead of in town -- everything is so much better. Youtube and Netflix don't buffer like they did with Comcast, they just play. My internet bill went from $75/mo to $50. So better and cheaper. Of course it could have been different as there is only one provider here too, but I got lucky this time and my provider isn't such an ass as Comcast. But that's just the luck of the draw.
You simply can't treat a monopoly like a free market -- these terms are antonyms and reality demands different treatment. Believe me, if there had been competition, I would dropped Comcast faster than a fetid turd, but there wasn't and so I bitterly paid my bill and sucked it up.
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When you get a good provider, you shouldn't hide who they are. If they are being decent, then you should give them credit where it's due. Who are you with now?
Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi (Score:4, Informative)
If you inform them that Net Neutrality is against throttling speeds,
Except that isn't what net neutrality is about. Net neutrality has nothing to do with residential and business accounts getting different data rates (which is the complaint in the original article.) It isn't about residential users seeing congestion because there are too many other users on their net segment. One hundred people on your net segment all browsing media-rich websites while you're trying to watch a movie on Netflix and your movie stalls isn't a violation of net neutrality. And it isn't even about the throttling of speeds when you overrun the limits on your data plan.
It IS about preferential treatment for certain data SOURCES. And this is going to be something that is hard for a user to prove since it will take more than "netflix sux but youtube still rocks", or "netflix at home sux but netflix at work rocks". And it will take a LOT more than some undocumented alleged rambling from a front-line tech support person.
And, I dare say, you will still have a lot of people who disapprove of net neutrality if you tell them that it would prohibit their ISP from giving their Netflix stream priority over someone else's web browsing. "So what if it takes five seconds for their web page to load instead of one, if them getting it in one means my Netflix hiccups?" (Perhaps this displays why using Netflix as the quintessential argument FOR net neutrality is a poor idea, since it is easy to dismiss it as just selfish people who want their movies to run without interruption even if it means everyone else's network experience suffers.)
or enable a free market, where we have more than one or two choices for broadband (or any other utility).... If we had 10+ ISP's to choose from, this wouldn't be an issue,
Well, unfortunately, we've already seen that a totally free market won't result in 10+ ISPs because there won't be enough money to keep all of them in business. Even back in the heyday of dialup ISPs our area only had three or four at best (not counting the AOLs of the world, which I wouldn't call a real ISP anyway), and they tanked because they couldn't keep customers when faster access came around. Heck, some parts of this state had NO ISPs until the state stepped in and provided it as a kind of "extension service". The one local ISP that survived the transition resells DSL for the local telco, so even that "competition" isn't really competition.
No, to get those 10+ ISPs there will have to be heavy subsidies, and that creates something very different than a free market.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Because it would be illegal, and they would be subject to legal repercussions, unlike now. What part of this do you find confusing?
The part where Verizon is demonstrably doing something to cause this. "slow speeds to netflix" can be explained a lot of ways that don't involve content based throttling. Short of a subpoena for exactly the right router configuration (good luck, they have about 20,000) you can't.
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Because it would be illegal, and they would be subject to legal repercussions, unlike now. What part of this do you find confusing?
The part where Verizon is demonstrably doing something to cause this. "slow speeds to netflix" can be explained a lot of ways that don't involve content based throttling. Short of a subpoena for exactly the right router configuration (good luck, they have about 20,000) you can't.
Yes, you can obtain this evidence.
You don't go searching through 20,000 routers to figure this out.
Instead, you ask and obtain the network speed results from 2,000,000 Verizon customers through a public crowdsourcing campaign.
Either the hard evidence will clearly show that speeds are being throttled, or the public backlash alone with a campaign like this will force Verizon to "fix" it, else they lose customers. A lot of customers.
Either way, we can get the evidence. You just have to think outside the box.
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Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi (Score:5, Funny)
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OK, what would explain it? The traffic went the same route until the last hop. They happily verified that there was not a general congestion problem on his local segment. Then, the CSR admitted they were throtrtling. RTFA!
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Verizon CSR is, essentially, the lowest tier job in the English speaking world.
Actual bandwidth details will tell the truth, but it's much, much more likely that a Verizon worker bee is simply an idiot, or just repeating nonsense he overheard and misunderstood while on his smoke break.
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Where's my ROFLcopter?
Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi (Score:5, Insightful)
How many banksters went to jail for tilting the entire fucking world economy over a cliff?
Oh yeah, zero.
You can even launder money for terrorists and drug cartels and be punished with nothing but a partial deferral of your annual bonus.
As Matt Taibi put it:
http://www.rollingstone.com/po... [rollingstone.com]
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Illegal HOW EXACTLY (Score:2)
Because it would be illegal
Why?
What was the rule or regulation or law from Net Neutrality that made what Verizon is doing illegal?
I want someone to be specific because my point is this Verizon action has NOTHING to do with Net Neutrality, and would not be stopped by any Net Neutrality rules that the FCC put forth before they were told to stop.
So I repeat; HOW WOULD VERSION NOT BE ABLE TO DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING?
Because it is. (Score:4, Informative)
Net Neutrality states that all data must be treated equally. That means if I purchase a 20Mb connection, I should be able to allocate that 20Mb connection to any service I want without the ISP throttling it down. If Netflix lets me stream at 20Mb, but for some reason I can only get 10Mb because it is throttled by Verizon, well then that breaks Net Neutrality. Obviously there is a lot of things to take in, like router, modem, and infrastructure, but if there is obvious evidence showing my connections to a particular service is treated differently, it would be illegal under Net Neutrality.
Re: Because it is. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why should your voice chat take priority over my torrents or FTP? Here's a better idea, ISPs deliver the speeds they promised even when everyone wants to watch netflix at the same time. Bandwidth is cheap, and ISPs are mostly overpriced monopolies. They can easily afford good service, and we should make them deliver.
Re: Because it is. (Score:2)
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Re:Because it is. (Score:5, Informative)
Net Neutrality states that all data must be treated equally.
No it doesn't. And nobody wants that. Do you really want your voip call to break up because the line is slammed with my linux ISO download?
Net Neutrality more accurately states that all destinations be treated equally.
The ISP cannot make a deal with google to throttle my traffic to microsoft and yahoo but give me fast access to google.
The ISP cannot throttle my connection to netflix because it made a deal with amazon. Nor can it host its own video streaming service and throttle my connection to 3rd party services.
In other words, proper net neutrality prevents ISPs from ACTIVELY using throttlling to advance the relative functionality of a service it would prefer you to use over an equivalent service from somewhere else.
ISPs can still throttle torrents to ensure voip traffic moves through. ISPs can also still have deals to have netflix servers onsite if they wish, which are lower latency and faster than accessing apple or amazon servers which are not onsite; however they make reasonable best effort for that offsite traffic. They can't deliberately cripple or throttle that connection.
Finally, net neutrality also effectively prevents ISPs from turning around BILLING amazon and other 3rd party content providers for the "privilege" of having unthrottled access to the ISPs customers -- this is something the ISPs would LOVE to do.
per-subscriber shaping is the only fair solution (Score:3)
ISPs can still throttle torrents to ensure voip traffic moves through.
No! If I dedicate all my bandwidth to torrents and you dedicate all yours to VoIP why should you get preferential treatment?
The only fair solution is for an ISP to do per-subscriber shaping within their network. Each subscriber gets throughput relative to the bandwidth that they paid for. Traffic type shouldn't matter when comparing traffic for two different subscribers.
If an individual subscriber wants to prioritize VoIP over torrents they can do that on their own equipment (or have the ISP do it for th
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I refuse to be calm while otherwise intelligent people keep pretending Net Neutrality helps anyone.
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Well, it could be worse: it could have continued long enough for regulatory capture [smbc-comics.com] to set in.
Re:Illegal HOW EXACTLY (Score:5, Informative)
Because it would be illegal
Why?
What was the rule or regulation or law from Net Neutrality that made what Verizon is doing illegal?
I want someone to be specific because my point is this Verizon action has NOTHING to do with Net Neutrality, and would not be stopped by any Net Neutrality rules that the FCC put forth before they were told to stop.
So I repeat; HOW WOULD VERSION NOT BE ABLE TO DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING?
There is no current authority by the FCC (which they recently admitted) that allows them to enforce net neutrality. Even before that admission, what they had in place would not have worked as net neutrality, and was certainly never legally challenged and upheld in any court to cement it. Until ISPs are classified as common carriers, the FCC will not have the authority to enforce any level of net neutrality - which a former FCC chairman has recently stated. I have not said, and do not believe, that we have ever had any level of net neutrality. I am advocating FOR true net neutrality. That doesn't mean that what Verizon is supposedly doing doesn't violate the spirit of what people want net neutrality protection against, however.
Exactly, Spirit != Reality (Score:3)
That doesn't mean that what Verizon is supposedly doing doesn't violate the spirit of what people want net neutrality protection against, however.
That's exactly my point. What people want is this.
But it's not what they are getting, it was never what the FCC proposed, it's not what they will ever do. And yet people are all up in arms because the FCC is not allowed to control ISP's even though it will do nothing in the SPIRIT of why people want Net Neutrality.
Net Neutrality is a hollow label simply used to
Re:Exactly, Spirit != Reality (Score:4, Insightful)
I very much disagree that simply because we don't now, and have never had true net neutrality, that means we can't ever have it. We can have it, but we have to fight for it.
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Until ISPs are classified as common carriers, the FCC will not have the authority to enforce any level of net neutrality - which a former FCC chairman has recently stated. I have not said, and do not believe, that we have ever had any level of net neutrality.
We had exactly that until 2005 when the FCC reclassified DSL and CATV ISPs [cnet.com] as "information services" (not common carrier) from their previous classification of "telecommunications service" (common carrier) which they had held since the inception of the internet.
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Until ISPs are classified as common carriers, the FCC will not have the authority to enforce any level of net neutrality - which a former FCC chairman has recently stated. I have not said, and do not believe, that we have ever had any level of net neutrality.
We had exactly that until 2005 when the FCC reclassified DSL and CATV ISPs [cnet.com] as "information services" (not common carrier) from their previous classification of "telecommunications service" (common carrier) which they had held since the inception of the internet.
Classification as common carrier, and true net neutrality rules (the level of net neutrality most people actually want) based on that are two different things. We've never had both of those at the same time. And unless and until they're reclassified as common carriers, net neutrality is a non-starter.
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Because they are throttling a specific destination even though there is no congestion on their network nor in their route to that destination.
Closest so far (Score:2)
Net Neutrality at its core says: "you may not treat traffic from one location/company/program differently than you treat data from all other locations/companies/programs."
Verizon (allegedly) is not; they are treating all Cloud Providers equally.
They are not throttling any one company. They are simply allowing a bottleneck in the network to exist to "cloud providers".
Which would happen to impact Netflix, yes, but also impacted the guy that wrote the article who is not Netflix - he's just being treated equal
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Then why does his office connection that goes through the same router not see any of that congestion? RTFA and get back to us.
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Equality of any kind between traffic on a home residential connection and traffic on a business connection has nothing at all to do with Net Neutrality. All Net Neutrality says is "you can't do company-specific throttling". Verizon wasn't, they were (apparently) throttling all cloud sources equally (obviously as a way to throttle Netflix without targeting Netflix), which was legal under the rules.
The rules weren't well thought out.
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Because it would be illegal, and they would be subject to legal repercussions, unlike now.
You are clearly suffering from the disjoint definition of "Net Neutrality" -- There is the version that you think would be right, and then there is the version that the FCC adopted. You've already been told that there is a difference, but you continue to choose to ignore reality due to some blind hope that the FCC is there to protect you. The FCC is there to generate campaign contributions by selling policy to companies like AT&T and Verizon. As a matter of fact, these companies were the people consult
Re: Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops th (Score:2)
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I agree...the blogger has two data points, connects them and thinks its a "trend".
If you look at the traceroutes at the bottom of the blog, which he seems to believe make an argument for his point, the top two IP addresses are different between business and residence. The "residential" route could simply be overloaded due to everybody firing up netflix when they get home.
The OP has a genuine beef that he should get better bandwidth to Netflix, but he would have made a much better argument if he would have
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Well if you have Vios and your Netflix is considered noticeable slow, or choppy. And say TWC plays netflix at faster speed. You just go, I am switching because my Netflix is too slow. It is faster with the competition.
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Oh wait, actually I meant 1 or 2, but sure. If there's true competitive pressure then things change.
Just like how Comcast offers faster internet speeds in some metropolitan areas. Not coincidentally those are the exact same areas that happen to have Verizon FiOS. Where their only competition is DSL? Not so much.
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My canceling my phone service and telling them I'm switching to T-Mobile because of cloud throttling.
Wake me when T-Mobile offers FTTP, until then keep pretending you have a clue what you're going on about.
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A fat fine from the FCC might help if we had solid net neutrality. A reminder that their past compliance will be considered when they wish to expand their spectrum usage wouldn't hurt.
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You are looking only at one side of the link. There's two sides.
What will stop Verizon from doing this?
Netflix pays Verizon for 100Gbps upstream links at various peering points in the country for whatever Verizon wants to charge. If Verizon doesn't provide 100Gbps from those links because of a bottleneck on Verizon's own network, Netflix sues them for breach of contract. It's Verizon's job to guarantee Netflix that 100Gbps throughout Verizon's network. Repeat for Netflix on AT&T, Google fiber, TimeWarner/Comcast/whatever cable network.
If
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and verizon isn't throttling anything, they are simply not upgrading their circuit after a huge spike in traffic
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According to the article, it has nothing to do with circuit capacity limitations. The user had two different classes of account (home and business) that were going through the same router. The only difference was the accounts, not the hardware.
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The business account is probably paying several hundred per month, and for that the account gets a different level of service, perhaps one that doesnt degrade so much during prime-time.
I'd be pretty pissed off if my $200/mo business plan was treated equal to your $65/mo residential plan, that your $65 gives you t
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What you should be pissed about is that you have to pay for a "business plan" in the first place. Back in the 90s when telcos started selling DSL and other high speed services to residential customers, there was not any difference. I had a 384k DSL feed at home that was just as fast as the 384k DSL feed at the office.
The limitations are completely arbitrary and 100% due to the fact that the telcos and ISPs are cheap bastards and will do everything in their power to avoid upgrading their infrastructure.
Verizon is not throttling a service (Score:3)
Proper net neutrality legislation would require (under penalty of fines) an ISP to not throttle one service for another.
Verizon is not throttling A service. They are throttling "cloud providers", which means no specific service is throttled, just anyone pushing data through Amazon - that's the whole point of the article, that his data rate is also impacted because he uses AWS.
There is no way you can write a law that will stop Verizon from doing what they are doing.
Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure you can stop them. You can revoke their Incorporation Charter.
One thing we seem to have forgotten is that Corporations are creations of the state, and thus subservient to the state (ostensibly).
The problem is, that when HARM is done, we have never simply revoked Corporate Charters. If we start doing that, then CxOs and boards will take their fiduciary responsibility a little more seriously.
UNDER WHAT LAW (Score:2)
Sure you can stop them. You can revoke their Incorporation Charter.
Come on, under what law can you do that? Again, what law lets you do anything to Verizon for what they are doing?
This is what you are not grasping, Net Neutrality is not designed to stop actions like this. The government does not care about this. They will not act against this.
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I didn't say there was a law. I said it was possible to have a law like this. The problem is, we have gutless Republicrats and Demicans in office, who get a large chunk of campaign funds from non-person entities.
I'm a libertarian, and the greatest threat to our democratic republic has been from campaign contributions by people/entities ineligible to vote for a candidate / Proposition. My solution for this would be to require ALL campaign contributions be from ONLY people eligible to vote for said candidate/
Re:UNDER WHAT LAW (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's directed towards Netflix, yes it was.
Only because the FCC is hindered by Congress and can't put ISPs in the common carrier category they belong in. So Verizon looks at traffic and says "oh, sorry about Netflix being slow, have you seen our TV deals?!"
But please, be more enraged on behalf of abusive corporations. I'm sure they appreciate it.
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Under the law that grants them the charter. There are all kinds of laws around a company being able to exist, that are already in place.
What there is not and has never been and never will be, is any law or regulation to stop what Verizon supposedly is doing.
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we have never simply revoked Corporate Charters.
Same reason "we" rarely take away drivers' licenses. Sure they're liable to slaughter innocent people if we let them back on the road, but if we take their license away they won't be able to earn money (and pay taxes.)
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the fix for this is if a Corporation gets its charter revoked then ALL assets of the company get sold to the highest bidder then
1 the funds are to be used to provide income to any employees that lost jobs until they have been reemployed
2 the state keeps the balance
3 the CxOs are barred from employment in that field or any similar field for the next 7 years.
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You don't even have to go that far. Just revoke their government-granted municipal monopoly. Either open up the field to competitors, or rule that they're a common carrier and require them to allow other ISPs to lease their lines at a fair rate.
Back when cable modems first came out, the city I was living in announced they were going to allow a second cable company to provide service. The very next day my cable company cut my TV/intern
Nope, not a service to consumers (Score:2)
They are throttling "cloud providers" ...which are a service...
Wrong, "Cloud Providers" are multiple sets of IP's to Verizon, nothing more or less. To a company AWS is a service, but not to the consumer of the data.
Given any ACTUAL service - say Netflix - why Netflix is free to send stuff directly to consumers instead of storing it on a cloud provider.
Thus no SERVICE is impacted by Verizon simply letting the natural bottleneck that happens around cloud providers because they have a lot of data people acces
It's even worse this way! (Score:3)
Re: Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops th (Score:2)
Competition eliminate Competition (Score:2)
So, your whole premise is that competition eliminates competition, but you support government intervention to eliminate competition because competition eliminates competition.
Wow. 420 much?
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"This word you keep using...I do not think it means what you think it means" -Inigo Montoya
Competition does not lead to monopolies. Competition and monopoly are literally antonyms; they are the opposite of one another. So let me ask you this...if not competition, what would you propose to prevent a monopoly?
Verizon is denying it: (Score:5, Informative)
http://bgr.com/2014/02/05/veri... [bgr.com]
“We treat all traffic equally, and that has not changed,” a Verizon spokesperson told BGR in an emailed statement. “Many factors can affect the speed a customer’s experiences for a specific site, including, that site’s servers, the way the traffic is routed over the Internet, and other considerations. We are looking into this specific matter, but the company representative was mistaken. We’re going to redouble our representative education efforts on this topic.”
It is still unclear exactly what was causing the issues that Raphael described, but it’s apparently not any form of bandwidth prioritization. Instead, the issue may relate to congestion specific to the Amazon servers or connections that Raphael was testing, but nothing has been confirmed by Amazon.
Re:Verizon is denying it: (Score:5, Insightful)
And from TFA:
That is when the home usage increases.
And he's using wireless.
He really needs to contact someone who knows more about networking in order to collect more useful data. Right now it is impossible to say what is really happening.
Basically never believe what CSRs say (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone believe what a low-level CSR tells them in a chat session? This is like when an eBay CSR [cnet.com] claimed that eBay did not allow the sale of Bitcoin mining rigs a few weeks ago. The person didn't know what they were talking about.
Not to mention this is Verizon, who can't tell $0.002 from 0.002 cents. Engaging them on a topic of any complexity is sure to lead to hilarity and/or frustration.
My ISP still lable them as 'Tech Support', LOL!.. (Score:2)
Well, I have no experience with Verizon, a few calls to my ISP tech support(Suddenlink.net) I have made convinced me that they would be no help.
One in particular some years back:
*Stillwater, Oklahoma: Internet service was down again...a frequent occurrence at that time, but usually only for short periods.(they were "upgrading the infrastructure", so I generally cut them some slack) This time it had been about 16 hours.
The weather was admittedly pretty bad, heavy wind, heavy rain, lightning, cold, etc...*
I c
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We are looking into this specific matter, but the company representative was mistaken. We’re going to redouble our representative education efforts on this topic.
Meaning, representatives will be beaten until they learn they may only reiterate the official company message (which may or may not be the actual truth). [Rule #1 about network throttling: You do not talk about network throttling. (I'm sure the other Fight Club inspired rules will be just as interesting...)]
Fox guarding the hen house (Score:3)
"Confirmation" from a Verizon spokesperson that Verizon isn't throttling access is more than a little like the fox guarding the hen house and asking the fox to "confirm" that the hens are all present and accounted for. That's not to say that Mr. Raphael's assertion is necessarily correct either, but he does provide additional evidence to support his claim, whereas Verizon is merely providing "assurances", as far as I can tell since the BGR article provides no details beyond the brief spokesperson statement
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This is kind of old news. There are a series of articles from last year that suggest that the issue is a peering arrangement.
The articles that I've read seem to suggest that: Cogent is one of Netflix's primary ISP's. The ports used for peering between Verizon and Cogent have become saturated due to Netflix traffic to Netflix/Verizon residential customers. Since the flow of traffic is overwhelmingly to Verizon customers, Cogent feels that the peering arrangement is significantly asymmetrical that the onu
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I recently had an issue with my fiber por
Something doesn't add up (Score:2, Interesting)
Then, ISPs say they want to have your residential AP also broadcast a public wifi hotspot.
To me, those two things are in contradiction. If there isn't enough bandwidth then why are they adding public hotspots to residential plans?
Re:Something doesn't add up (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, ISPs have long worked on a model of oversubscription in order to rake in huge amounts of money, while not giving a damn if you get anything resembling the claimed performance.
They just want more and more subscribers paying a monthly bill, but they've mostly all failed to invest in any new capacity in a long time.
In the real world, this would be analagous to going to a hotel and discovering they've got more people than rooms and have therefore installed rows of bunk beds like a military barracks.
Services like Netflix are just highlighting that they're selling more than they have, and leaving the customers short-changed.
They were the ones telling us about all the multimedia experiences we could get on the interwebs, and then the first to start bitching about how much bandwidth the stuff they used in their advertising actually costs.
And, since many ISPs are also cable companies these days, they also want to ensure you use their premium services to watch anything -- this way they can get more money out of you, starve out a competitor, and if they're really lucky charge both you and Netflix for the bandwidth.
Telecoms are largely a pyramid scheme these days in terms of actual capacity, and they know it.
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Telecoms are largely a pyramid scheme these days in terms of actual capacity, and they know it.
Only if you divert excess revenues into upper management's pocket. If they actually invested in infrastructure there wouldn't be a problem.
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But since they do, and they haven't ... we're left with ISPs who have been increasing profits and failing to invest in capacity, and they are now whining they can't afford more capacity.
The way they have been advertising it and expanding the subscriber base, you'd think someone would have clued in to the fact that they also needed to be investing in infrastructure.
But it mostly seems like they've been forgetting about that part.
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netflix has never been transmitted across the internet, they have always used a content delivery network to stage content close to the users. like every other big internet company for the last 20-30 years.
a few years ago netflix got a sweet deal from a CDN provider looking to get into the business who tried to pass off netflix CDN traffic as peered traffic
now that the contracts have expired netflix is trying to lower its costs since CDN's can be expensive and netflix is all about being CHEAP. and pushing it
Not just traffic - those reverse DNS on traceroute (Score:2)
rumor is netflix is pushing its own CDN (Score:2, Informative)
if you search on the internet, netflix is pushing it's own CDN with the condition that they don't pay the regular CDN fees. most of the big ISP's haven't signed on which is why netflix is slow on their networks. the pipes to the CDN provider are probably maxed out like the issue with Cogent a few years ago
business scuffle with two companies trying to lower their costs of business. not like netflix is the angel here either.
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You mean this? https://signup.netflix.com/ope... [netflix.com] This is already live and any ISP that wants to reduce their Internet drain costs is participating.
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yeah, but for the last 20 years or so CDN's have paid the ISP's money for the traffic they send. Netflix is saying they don't want to pay anything if you sign up for Open Connect
Re:rumor is netflix is pushing its own CDN (Score:4, Informative)
I know there's a precedent, but it's a silly one. An ISP participating in Open Connect improves the product of both companies. The ISP reduces the traffic on their network and Netflix performance is better for that ISPs customers. Charging for caching the content would be like trying to charge for peering, the revenue it might be worth is nothing compared to the savings from reducing the load on the network.
Re:rumor is netflix is pushing its own CDN (Score:5, Informative)
if you search on the internet, netflix is pushing it's own CDN with the condition that they don't pay the regular CDN fees. most of the big ISP's haven't signed on which is why netflix is slow on their networks. the pipes to the CDN provider are probably maxed out like the issue with Cogent a few years ago
business scuffle with two companies trying to lower their costs of business. not like netflix is the angel here either.
This is the second time you've posted about this here as if you have some sort of inside information.
It's not a rumor, and it's not newsworthy. Netflix announced this shit a year ago when they started touting "Super HD". https://signup.netflix.com/ope... [netflix.com]
Netflix gave ISPs 3 options:
A: Peer with us at favorable rates and we'll allow your users to access our higher quality streams and help make sure shit is routing efficiently.
B: Drop our content boxes directly on your network and we'll allow your users to access our higher quality streams and pay you fair rates.
C: Don't peer with us at lower rates or let us store content on your network, and we'll name and shame you as not fully supporting Netflix.
Once all the major ISPs agreed with A or B, Netflix opened up "Super HD" to (almost) everyone. They now have a lot of those distributed content boxes and favorable agreements, and are effectively a CDN.
How long before I have to buy Internet "channels"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The Premium package gives you access to all your streaming favorites like YouTube, Hulu Plus, Netflix along with dozens of foreign movie sites you've never heard of.
The Friends & Family package gives you access to the people you want to keep in touch with, when you want to keep in touch with them, over your favorite NSA-sponsored proprietary social networking site: FacePalmSpace.
Our Adults-Only package allows you to stream all your favorite German Scheiße porn tube sites!"
Don't think so? Bookmark me, wait a couple years, then come back and mod me "Insightful".
Poor english (Score:2)
Astound cable in CA/MN (Score:2)
My cable company has been metering us for several weeks now following a slight overage in our data limit. They charged us 15 bucks for exceeding 100 GB in a calendar month, thanks to a Tera-Online download and a busy month with Netflix. The corporate media companies are going to finally succeed in their dream of channelizing the net and making it just another TV medium dominated by commercial adds and controlled by the media oligarchy. Welcome to the future...it is a place of dim hopes, shattered dreams and
Apple, meet Orange (Score:3)
Comparing a residential account and a business account? I don't see a story here.
Verizon screws up Skype too (Score:4, Interesting)
Verizon screws with Skype too. I was trying to run Skype at a friend's place. The latency was terrible, making the program unusable. So I fired up a connection to my VPN service, which in theory should increase the latency, because it is an extra hop. Running through the VPN fixed the problem, and I could use Skype.
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The first 2 hops in his traces don't match up...
This AC is correct. IF you read the fine article behind the article referenced in this story it is CLEAR that the guy's home connection has at least one more hop. I would assume that after 4PM, many home users would be showing up and cranking up Netflix (or other online activities) and putting stress on the first router which is NOT involved in the business connection.
So, this is apples and oranges... Or at least just congestion on the home connection that doesn't exist in the business one.
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Yes. Verizon throttles lots of stuff.
The question, though, is: is Verizon slowing down *some* services more than others?
Yes, we know that Verizon's overall incompetence slows down the internet.... but that slows down all sites equally (which has always been legal). Here the contention is that they are slowing down Netflix *more* than other sites.
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I moved from DSL to cable because Netflix was spending too long buffering. Supposed to be about 10x faster on the downstream but still that little spinning circle is a way-too-frequent experience. Keeping the cable though as it help with the "fallback" viewing method.
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Evidence?
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You have it backwards, it's the large ISPs that are subsidizing the politicians.