Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

Post by jedberg » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

checktheorder wrote: post #12

ben7799 wrote: post #4

I keep thinking I see this on my wired (Comcast) connection too. Stuff just behaves too strangely for it to be anything else. One video provider will get slow. Switch to the mobile connection and it's fine. Switch to another site on the wired connection, that's fine too. They've made it perfectly clear they're unhappy I won't pay them an extra $100+/month for 900 channels of crap over and over.

Same phenomenon for me in southern Ontario. My ISP (Start.ca) is using Rogers' infrastructure. Evenings equal poor streaming video performance on all sites despite an otherwise-perfect connection. If I connect to a VPN, video performance mysteriously improves instantly . If I were of a suspicious mind, I'd wonder if Rogers is pulling some backend shenanigans to discourage cord-cutting.

Post by woah » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #7

I’m reminded of a comment I read a few days ago from someone that has their own small isp that said bandwidth was basically an inconsequential cost for them. Throttling like this is penny pinching of the highest order. How do we get the benefits of competition if every company is doing it?

Post by toast0 » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 3:25 PM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #23

tcxqy wrote: post #17

Wireless is a medium that is severely limited because of the laws of physics. I 100% support QoS. And by QoS I don't mean limiting video even if there's available bandwidth, I mean limiting it if other people are trying to use their connections reasonably.

Now, please explain why, in the case of contention, the user using video should get less than their fair share of the available capacity?

Post by BubRoss » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #7

I’m reminded of a comment I read a few days ago from someone that has their own small isp that said bandwidth was basically an inconsequential cost for them. Throttling like this is penny pinching of the highest order. How do we get the benefits of competition if every company is doing it?

Post by jedberg » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

briffle wrote: post #34

jedberg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is your ISP being sneaky, but probably not in the way you think. This is what Netflix has been complaining about for years. Your ISP is purposely providing a too-small link to your video provider. So when a lot of people are using that provider, it gets slow. When you switch to another provider, or a VPN, you get to use a fast connection to that other VPN that isn't overloaded, and then a fast connection back to…

Not to mention, they can now go and ask that provider to pay them for the right to 'upgrade' their connection, to enable their customers to get what they are paying the ISP for.