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Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

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Re: Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

#71

Post by jedberg »

jerkstate wrote: post #61
jedberg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and in Comcast's case, when Netflix finally paid Comcast's ransom, the problem was suddenly fixed a few minutes later, because Comcast literally just had to reconfigure the router and plug in a second cable.

In those days it was typical for the costs of peering to be borne by the sender, relative to the traffic ratio. This changed when Netflix and Youtube decided to use their PR and lobbying strength to bring the negotiation to the court of public opinion - and normal people started referring to typical peering cost-sharing agreements using emotionally loaded words like "ransom"

The ratio requirements are a red herring. If your ISP says you get a certain bandwidth, it is on them to provide the appropriate pipes to get to where their customers want to go. How can the ISP on the other side of Comcast be responsible for maintaining ratios if Comcast's customers are the ones that are requesting the data?

Re: Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

#72

Post by dec0dedab0de »

crazygringo wrote: post #57

For both wired and wireless, it's time for legislation to address exactly what it and isn't permitted with regard to advertised speeds, throttling, and total usage -- both with respect to users, and with respect to peering. It's not just an issue of policy, but one of transparency too. It's a fact of life that more people will want to consume data than a network can support. So where are we going to make the cut? Dim…

When I pay for a carrier, I want to know what I should be able to count on, and what I can't count on.

I can't up vote this enough. I think false advertising really needs to be clamped down on across the board, but when it's something I understand the nuances of it really gets to me.

Why do companies find it so difficult to just say what it is they are selling in clear concise language, without being purposely misleading, or hiding things in fine print?

Re: Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

#73

Post by jerkstate »

vorpalhex wrote: post #67
jerkstate wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those days it was typical for the costs of peering to be borne by the sender, relative to the traffic ratio. This changed when Netflix and Youtube decided to use their PR and lobbying strength to bring the negotiation to the court of public opinion - and normal people started referring to typical peering cost-sharing agreements using emotionally loaded words like "ransom"

And if Netflix and Youtube were being charged the actual charge for a tech to walk down and plug in another cable or pop together another interconnect, that would be fine. Instead companies like Comcast are seeking to make profit from this.

All of the companies involved are seeking to make a profit. For example, Netflix and Youtube are seeking to lower their cost of bandwidth, thus increasing their profits.

Re: Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

#74

Post by jerkstate »

jedberg wrote: post #71
jerkstate wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those days it was typical for the costs of peering to be borne by the sender, relative to the traffic ratio. This changed when Netflix and Youtube decided to use their PR and lobbying strength to bring the negotiation to the court of public opinion - and normal people started referring to typical peering cost-sharing agreements using emotionally loaded words like "ransom"

The ratio requirements are a red herring. If your ISP says you get a certain bandwidth, it is on them to provide the appropriate pipes to get to where their customers want to go. How can the ISP on the other side of Comcast be responsible for maintaining ratios if Comcast's customers are the ones that are requesting the data?

How can Netflix claim to sell streaming video without paying for adequate bandwidth to stream that video?

Re: Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

#75

Post by criddell »

jedberg wrote: post #71
jerkstate wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those days it was typical for the costs of peering to be borne by the sender, relative to the traffic ratio. This changed when Netflix and Youtube decided to use their PR and lobbying strength to bring the negotiation to the court of public opinion - and normal people started referring to typical peering cost-sharing agreements using emotionally loaded words like "ransom"

The ratio requirements are a red herring. If your ISP says you get a certain bandwidth, it is on them to provide the appropriate pipes to get to where their customers want to go. How can the ISP on the other side of Comcast be responsible for maintaining ratios if Comcast's customers are the ones that are requesting the data?

So if Netflix were sitting on the end of a lowly T1, Comcast should provide Netflix with a more appropriate connection that can fulfill the demands of Comcast customers?

Re: Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

#76

Post by criddell »

jedberg wrote: post #32
jcims wrote: post #20

If these streaming providers would actually provide consumers with effective tooling to determine if throttling is taking place, this would get a lot more traction. I fought with CenturyLink for 18 months collecting stats on overall network performance vs. throughput to YouTube because it was clear something was going on. It was a giant pain in the ass trying to come up with figures for YouTube.

Check out https://fast.com from Netflix. It's a speed test based off of Netflix's servers, so it will tell you your bandwidth to Netflix at any given time. Then complain to your ISP if that doesn't match your advertised speed.

Just ran it and I'm getting 44 Mbps. AFAIK, that's plenty of bandwidth from Netflix's perspective, so would complaining to my ISP make any sense? Should I be getting 300 Mbps with Netflix?

Re: Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

#77

Post by jedberg »

criddell wrote: post #75
jedberg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ratio requirements are a red herring. If your ISP says you get a certain bandwidth, it is on them to provide the appropriate pipes to get to where their customers want to go. How can the ISP on the other side of Comcast be responsible for maintaining ratios if Comcast's customers are the ones that are requesting the data?

So if Netflix were sitting on the end of a lowly T1, Comcast should provide Netflix with a more appropriate connection that can fulfill the demands of Comcast customers?

That's not a fair analogy. Netflix had the bandwidth available and wanted to connect it, Comcast just refused.

Re: Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

#78

Post by jedberg »

jerkstate wrote: post #74
jedberg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ratio requirements are a red herring. If your ISP says you get a certain bandwidth, it is on them to provide the appropriate pipes to get to where their customers want to go. How can the ISP on the other side of Comcast be responsible for maintaining ratios if Comcast's customers are the ones that are requesting the data?

How can Netflix claim to sell streaming video without paying for adequate bandwidth to stream that video?

They had sufficient bandwidth. Netflix paid their ISP for sufficient bandwidth. Comcast just refused to connect to it, to the detriment of Comcast's customers.

Re: Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

#79

Post by SpaethCo »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #60
dehrmann wrote: post #38

Congestion is a real thing for LTE networks, so you have to throttle. There's only so much bandwidth over a shared medium.

> so you have to throttle Not at all. TCP already does its own rate limiting without external throttling.

> Not at all. TCP already does its own rate limiting without external throttling.

Individually, cars brake on the freeway to avoid hitting the car in front of them.

Collectively on a busy freeway, that sets off a chain reaction that results in the familiar rush hour crawl.

Minnesota did a study in 2001 on the effect of ramp meters, and disabling the meters (ie, removing throttling) resulted in statistically significant increase in overall freeway travel times.[0]

Statistically multiplexed shared networks like mobile wireless face similar issues. For a single TCP session the only metrics that can be divined by the endpoints are round-trip time and loss. As the shared network reaches capacity, larger numbers of TCP connections all back off around the same time, but large flows are more aggressive at ramping up than smaller flow (email/instant messaging, etc) and can result in an effective breakdown of network usability. A network control that has visibility to multiple flows and awareness of capacity of the system can influence overall performance much more effectively.

Ideally mobile providers would be trying to shoot for maintaining uniform latency per flow, similar to what queuing strategies like CoDel[1] achieve, but that's likely beyond the CPU and buffering capabilities of their existing hardware. Lacking the perfect solution, it's human nature to move on to the next approach: managing the biggest problem. Video is usually easy to identify, and so it wins the "able to be managed" prize.

[0]http://www.dot.state.mn.us/rampmeter/study.html [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoDel

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