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Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

bbc.co.uk

341–350 of 763 posts

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#341
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, right now is not a time to be thinking about your ability to get the luxury service and goods you're used to. It's about us all staying alive and keeping each other alive and making it through this. Maybe you have to do with a little bit less than you're used to, maybe you don't think it's fair because you've paid $5 extra for your extra stream quality. None of us think what's happening is fair, but we have…

But this is a completely unnecessary measure. Most ISPs in the EU don't have any problems keeping up with the increased demand. To make matters worse most Netflix content is served directly from the ISPs network. This is a retarded symbolic policy to make it seem like a certain EU politician is doing something, when in fact it makes no difference what so ever.

How about next Monday, when all of the EU are trying to remote-school and remote-work simultaneously. Will there still be bandwidth to spare? (genuine question, I don't know the answer)

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#343

I've been having major internet issues lately (Seattle area), have had 4 techs come try to figure it out. Yesterday's tech finally correctly diagnosed the problem as happening before the connection reaches our home but was unsure of the cause. He called his supervisor to investigate, and they found that the capacity for our neighborhood's node was nearly at 100%, while ideally it should always be under 80%. Fortunate…

I’ve worked at a major ISP, for a decade, and spotting something like this should be so easy to spot. There are tools on monitoring of load all the time, and areas are routibely getting split etc. to improve bandwith, so I think your ISP are basicly amateurs..

how can i as a subscriber find out whats the capacity?

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#344

There’s so much that seems wrong about this. 1: home network capacity used to be at peak around 7PM IIRC. There should be significant spare headroom on the network during the working day. 2: Netflix already downgrades when bandwidth is limited. The smart move would be to tell Netflix to downgrade more aggressively, on the theory that would allow more “important” traffic to get priority, while still allowing people to…

> There should be significant spare headroom on the network during the working day.

Remember that essentially every kid in Europe is home from school right now.

> Netflix already downgrades when bandwidth is limited.

It downgrades when bandwidth constraints and congestion start bothering _it_. By the time all the Netflixes which are competing with you do so, your Zoom conference will be long gone. Netflix is quite tolerant of an unreliable network. Many work-from-home things, VC in particular, less so.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except residential upload speeds are usually only 1/10th of the corresponding download speed.

Maybe 10 years ago? I don't know anyone with a connection that badly asymmetrical.

230 mb Down/ 5 mb up. Xfinity near Denver.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#346
post #9

Interesting counterpoint to the "broadband is so much better in Europe" trope. Unless of course we are under strain here in the US as well....

This move is just a solution in search of a problem. We still have better internet than you in ALL places, including mobile connectivity, literally everywhere. I can say fiber to the home 250/250 & coax 500/500 dominate the market. There is pumped up ADSL everywhere country-side. This move is coming unilateraly from a person who doesn't understand internet and woke up and had to be busy with something. Many IX report…

Fibre to the home definitely doesn't dominate the market in the UK!

Maybe we're far behind the rest of Europe but as we are part of Europe, then it isn't that great 'literally everywhere'.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#347
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it can, but why would it take several techs, to spot something like load, which is the first thing you would do, it should take no more than 10s to look it up in a tool.

A "last foot" tech might not even have access to those tools, much less know how to use them.

Rolling out that tech has got to be more expensive than checking the load first.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#348
post #46
post #9

Interesting counterpoint to the "broadband is so much better in Europe" trope. Unless of course we are under strain here in the US as well....

I pay $30 for 250/100 and i live 20 minutes outside a town if 120k in a small community of 25 houses, about 7 km from the nearest store of any kind. Is that competitive? I have no idea. I could however chose from around 10 ISPs that all have to compete in the network, which I understand is quite rare on the other side of the pond.

Where are you? There are many different deals across Europe; many aren't as good as what you have.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#349

Maybe if we had kept using bittorrent for TV distribution we wouldn't have so much global traffic downloading "The Avengers" for the millionth time, you would just download it from the nearest host (also the way the internet worked before HTTPS, there used to be way more local caching of content being downloaded over and over again)

As I understand it Netflix has hardware in ISP data centers to do exactly that. https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

That's quite something when a streaming service can go to the ISP with their hardware...

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#350
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. In the UK... "UK broadband companies say they can cope with increased demand as many more people stay at home during the coronavirus crisis." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51870732

That's what they say now. Give them a few weeks and they'll start squealing. Every ISP oversubscribes for consumer segments. In the UK I guess not enough people are quarantined.

Some ISPs like Andrew & Arnolds don't oversubscribe, but they dont have unlimited plans either
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