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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

#111

Post by lotsofpulp »

alyandon wrote: post #100
lotsofpulp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even that spectrum connection is garbage because the upload will only be 2 or 3 mbps, barely enough for one FaceTime call. Anything short of symmetric fiber is a sham in this day and age.

At least in my area Spectrum/TWC service has 400 mbps down and 20 mbps up. Still not great but far better than the old days.

It's probably 20mbps shared between the whole neighborhood with high latency.

At this point, we should have symmetric fiber with at sub 50ms latency and 100mbps down and up everywhere like we work to have water, sewage, electricity, and gas. Right now, all of our money goes towards maintaining an antiquated system for providing commercial laden garbage media.

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

#112

Post by clairity »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #72
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 mislea…

> "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?"

because it's more profitable?

it's a pretty direct line between the pressure to produce profits and lying to people to get it, particularly as it gets harder to produce profits through honest means.

remember that capitalism entices participants with profits to spur innovation, not to indulge the profit-taking itself, so any temporarily profitable enterprise should attract interest and drive down profits as competition enters the industry. so professional managers (e.g., executives) sometimes (often?) choose to lie & cheat to lengthen the period of profit-taking.

it's inexplicable that we accept that as normal, as if holding people & companies accountable for their words would stifle commerce and descend us into a totalitarian dystopia. instead, such accountability would only mean that getting filthy rich would be harder, while attaining comfortable wealth would be unchanged, if not more attainable.

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

#113

Post by hinkley »

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"

One of my biggest factors for choosing an ISP and contract is how much bandwidth streaming a high-res movie is going to take.

I had to chose Comcast when I moved because the alternative could only handle HD streaming but not 4K. And then I'm paying half again as much to be able to watch a pretty movie while others are using the internet, or for several of us to watch shows on our own.

Comcast is getting paid for bandwidth, plenty.

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

#114

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

kortilla wrote: post #52
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If everyone got a constant equal share of capacity on LTE, it would be so slow nobody could watch video at all. Are you sure that’s what you want?

I'm not sure what your question really is?! Is it whether I would want to buy an internet connection that's too slow for watching most video? Or whether I would want an internet connection that is too slow for watching most video to be offered on the market for people to buy? Or ... what?

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

#115

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

toast0 wrote: post #35
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In part, because most video sites will adapt the stream to the achievable bandwidth. In part, because if the throttle all bulk data transfers over some minimum size, all the time, most people are only going to notice on video streaming, since videos are the most frequent bulk transfers.

> In part, because most video sites will adapt the stream to the achievable bandwidth.

Why is that a reason to force them to use less than their fair share of available bandwidth?

> In part, because if the throttle all bulk data transfers over some minimum size, all the time, most people are only going to notice on video streaming, since videos are the most frequent bulk transfers.

How is that a reason for anything, and what is it actually supposed to be a reason for?

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

#116

Post by mschuster91 »

tcxgy wrote: post #88
scrungus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're arguing against the laws of physics here and you're arguing that stupid users should be able to screw everybody else. No thanks. i think there is a misunderstanding here. he's not arguing that ISPs shouldn' be able to bandwidth-discriminate based on customer. He's arguing that they shouldn't be able to discriminate on the type of data. what would it matter to the other users if they were slowing down the netw…

Cool, so you're arguing for QoS. Thanks for supporting my argument.

If the customer specifies QoS, why not? There are 6 reserved bits after HLEN in a TCP packet header, which could be used to annotate the priority of the stream - one for low-latency but also low bandwidth (=Whatsapp, messengers, gaming, VoIP), and one for bulk transfers (=high latency acceptable, high data volume).

Default would be the first so that networks may only have special treatment for apps that explicitly opt in to say "i'm ok to wait a bit" like Netflix, Youtube and friends.

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

#117

Post by tlb »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #115
toast0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In part, because most video sites will adapt the stream to the achievable bandwidth. In part, because if the throttle all bulk data transfers over some minimum size, all the time, most people are only going to notice on video streaming, since videos are the most frequent bulk transfers.

> In part, because most video sites will adapt the stream to the achievable bandwidth. Why is that a reason to force them to use less than their fair share of available bandwidth? > In part, because if the throttle all bulk data transfers over some minimum size, all the time, most people are only going to notice on video streaming, since videos are the most frequent bulk transfers. How is that a reason for anything,…

In a world (like ours) with limited bandwidth, you sometimes want to limit flows in a way to produce the least harm. Throttling different streams has different effects on user happiness.

For instance, if you are 100 Mbits over capacity, you could either:

(a) Throttle 100 users Netflix streams, which drop from 1080p to 720p

(b) Throttle email, it backs up causing hour-long email delays.

One is obviously less harmful.

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

#118

Post by criddell »

sixothree wrote: post #97
criddell wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Are you paying for 300 Mbps?

Yes, and we get very close to that with some connections.

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

#119

Post by milankragujevic »

dmitrygr wrote: post #105
mikepurvis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It surprises me that most people in the US wouldn't have at least one cable and one DSL option. After all, cable TV is available most places, and everyone has a phone line (or is at least wired for one). Or is the issue rural locations which were never wired for cable because they all just got satellite dishes?

DSL is a joke. What are you going to do with 5 Mbps down in the modern world or 30MB+ websites?

DSL (VDSL2) can and does go over 100 Mbps.

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

#120

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

scrungus wrote: post #86
tcxgy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in case of congestion (let's say everybody gets allotted 50 KB/s) you can't even watch video. Dozens of users trying to watch video at 50 KB/s aren't even watching video; they're just launching a DDoS attack. I'd be very happy to throttle them to 1 KB/s so I don't have to wait 10 seconds to receive a picture through Whatsapp. You're arguing against the laws of physics here, and you're arguing that stupid user…

>You're arguing against the laws of physics here and you're arguing that stupid users should be able to screw everybody else. No thanks. i think there is a misunderstanding here. he's not arguing that ISPs shouldn' be able to bandwidth-discriminate based on customer. He's arguing that they shouldn't be able to discriminate on the type of data. what would it matter to the other users if they were slowing down the netw…

> this would allow low-bandwidth applications to be prioritized.

That is a completely different kind of "prioritization" than what we are talking about here, though.

In particular, this "prioritization of low-bandwidth applications" does not in any way need to be aware of applications. All you need to do is to do fair link scheduling over all customers on a given link with some sort of token bucket per customer that allows short bursting. That way, if there is a customer that's been idle for a few minutes, say, they'll be able to transfer at, say, ten times the fair average rate for a few seconds, while other customers are slowed down proportionally, thus providing them with low latency. But that does not imply a higher average rate, nor a distinction of video vs. non-video, or anything like that. On average, every customer on a congested link would still be getting the exact same bandwidth, just as a constant low-bandwidth stream for some and as a series of short, fast bursts for others.

What tcxgy is arguing for is that if you are streaming video (or whatever other application that he doesn't like), then you should only be getting 2% of the average bandwidth compared to someone who is using an application he approves of. So, if you are constantly posting high-resolution pictures (something that he seems to approve of) at an average of 50 kB/s, that should get 50 kB/s, but if you are watching a 25 kB/s video stream of some sort, that should be throttled to 1 kB/s, because otherwise it's supposedly violating some laws of physics, and it's abusive to use half the bandwidth for video, and whatever other nonsense arguments he has come up with so far.

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