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AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

adriano.fyi

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Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#51

Post by fjni »

dublinben wrote: post #36
justsomehnguy wrote: post #11

> Why AT&T wants bandwidth to appear lower than reality is a mystery to me, but I digress For you a speed test is just once in a life time event. For a wireless provider this is a thing what clogs the shared media of a radio channel for quite a lot (modern speed tests try to push 100 or even more M Bytes ?) and cause a disruption for everyone else on the same channel. I don't know why ATT throttles (if at all, not a…

>For Netflix, part of the message is: If you’ve got a bandwidth problem, don’t blame us — blame your ISP.[0] This coverage from when Netflix launched Fast.com in 2016 alludes to the reason why the results on Fast.com may be slower than on something like Speedtest.net. ISPs like AT&T throttle connections to streaming video providers like Netflix, in order to force a lower quality stream. By offering a speed test from…

I never thought about this much, but what's interesting is that there's a missed opportunity for collaboration here.

I think most ISPs throttle known streaming sites (netflix, youtube, etc.) by default for mobile plans. Some even advertise it [1]. And really what the ISPs have noticed is that if you throttle the throughput, the streaming services will switch to a lower quality stream (e.g. 720 or even 480 instead of 1080p) to allow for non-lagging streams.

So in some weird way the streaming sites are the ones that provided the tool and the ISPs figured out how to exploit it.

The two could have just worked together on a solution. Here they are pointing the finger at each other. ISPs don't want to have default 1080p streams for 4" device screens (which makes sense,) and streaming services don't want their network traffic throttled (which also makes sense.)

[1] https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/binge-on-streaming-video

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#52

Post by Tarball10 »

AT&T uses different APNs for regular phone plans and data-only hotspot plans. It's very possible that the phone traffic is being routed completely differently than the hotspot traffic, with congestion at a peering point occurring on the hotspot. AT&T tends to be known for having poor/congested peering.

You could try changing the DNS server on your hotspot to a different public resolver like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8. If CloudFront is using DNS based geolocation to route you to the nearest data center, a different DNS server may get you routed around the issue to a different data center.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#53

Post by acaloiar »

explorer83 wrote: post #7

I like the testing and documentation. But I also want to see more test results in more areas over a longer period of time.

While I can't provide more results over a long period of time, yet -- I can provide a pcap file and some details about IPv4/6.

I've added an "updates" section at the bottom of the post.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#54

Post by esalman »

LoganDark wrote: post #50
esalman wrote: post #41

Fun story: I work remotely for an org located in the Bay area. Few months ago I get a call early morning from the IT security person. Apparently someone had been trying to RDP into my work laptop, over a thousand attempts per day for last couple of days. What changed before the last couple of days? My laptop was frequently dropping WiFi connection- a lot of times in the middle of zoom meetings. We use a router provid…

> Placing a device in passthrough mode will remove firewall protection provided by the AT&T gateway Did... did they seriously turn the router into a DMZ*, without your consent? Where every port of your computer is just open to the internet? That's scary. *that's what it was called on my router, the "forward every single port to one device" mode. Not sure if that is the correct term for it.

Yeah. We checked with censys.io, port 3389 and 8080 were open as publicly available service on the router.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#55

Post by fjni »

crazygringo wrote: post #34

But why would AT&T be throttling Cloudfront requests specifically? That's not traffic shaping, it's just dumb. Traffic shaping is slowing down types of traffic like torrents or video in order to prioritize regular sites. But this is degrading regular sites that are usually what benefit from traffic shaping if there's overall network congestion. I'm not questioning anything the author reports, it all seems extremely w…

I think the era of traffic shaping as you describe it is no longer. Most connections are encrypted these days, a good thing. But that also means, me as an ISP in the middle, I only see the layer 4 packet. So I know where a packet is coming from and where it's going (and ttl and some other not really helpful data for this purpose.) I don't even know the port.

So I'm left with doing (dumb) traffic shaping by destination and target.

If I had to guess, I'd say that they incorrectly thought that some specific IP address (range) serves predominantly one type of data. So they throttle by the only data point they have, destination ip, and the collateral damage is everything else hosted on that ip address.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#56

Post by paulddraper »

fjni wrote: post #35

> I already knew from previous experience that for some reason, AT&T traffic to fast.com is throttled. Why AT&T wants bandwidth to appear lower than reality is a mystery to me, but I digress This I think is because they throttle ip addresses for known video streaming sites. That is one of (the only reliable) ways an ISP can get the streaming provider to drop the stream to a lower quality one by default. Since fast.co…

Indeed that's the point of fast.com.... To measure the speed from Netflix servers

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#57

Post by quanticle »

survirtual wrote: post #22
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #14

While everyone knows that all wireless carriers are universally terrible, I've actually had a fairly noneventful (read: good) experience with T-Mobile over the last decade. I've never observed evidence of traffic shaping or any other shady business (like capturing NXDOMAIN DNS responses and directing you to a sponsored search page). I've also never observed significant performance degradation from congestion-based pr…

Yeah, except they leak customer data regularly and have offshored tons of customer service to India -- including onboarding. When I tried to sign up, they didn't know what an esim was and wanted my SSN, along with other data that could easily be used to steal my identity. I don't want to spend my days arguing with people, definitely not about the existence of esim; but I did that day. It went all the way up their cus…

    ATT has provided the best service of any carrier while traveling, so I will use them.
Really? My experience with AT&T while traveling has been pretty awful. In the US, in rural areas, Verizon is better. And outside the US, Google Fi gives you international data roaming as part of the base package. One of the reasons I switched to Google Fi is because it's so much better when traveling.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#58

Post by avianlyric »

fjni wrote: post #35

> I already knew from previous experience that for some reason, AT&T traffic to fast.com is throttled. Why AT&T wants bandwidth to appear lower than reality is a mystery to me, but I digress This I think is because they throttle ip addresses for known video streaming sites. That is one of (the only reliable) ways an ISP can get the streaming provider to drop the stream to a lower quality one by default. Since fast.co…

> Said the other way around: fast.com is great to see actual throughput from Netflix as opposed to some fake throughout from a dedicated speed test site for the exact same reason.

Yup. This is pretty much the reason Netflix created fast.com. They wanted a speed test service that couldn’t be gamed by ISPs. Many ISPs will prioritise traffic to know speed test services (like Ookla’s speedtest.net), making their services appear faster than they’re under more normal usage.

By placing fast.com on Netflix IPs, ISPs either have to prioritise all Netflix traffic (which they’re very unlikely to do), or accept that fast.com is going to provide a more realistic measurement of their performance.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#59

Post by toomuchtodo »

survirtual wrote: post #22
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #14

While everyone knows that all wireless carriers are universally terrible, I've actually had a fairly noneventful (read: good) experience with T-Mobile over the last decade. I've never observed evidence of traffic shaping or any other shady business (like capturing NXDOMAIN DNS responses and directing you to a sponsored search page). I've also never observed significant performance degradation from congestion-based pr…

Yeah, except they leak customer data regularly and have offshored tons of customer service to India -- including onboarding. When I tried to sign up, they didn't know what an esim was and wanted my SSN, along with other data that could easily be used to steal my identity. I don't want to spend my days arguing with people, definitely not about the existence of esim; but I did that day. It went all the way up their cus…

If I have to pick between T-Mobile and Google, I pick T-Mobile. Google is going to kill Fi and Voice one day, T-Mobile is not. T-Mobile has some customer service, including stores, Google has none. Was able to migrate a physical SIM to an eSIM in a store in ~30 min. You can even move your Google Voice number to a T-Mobile DIGITS number for similar functionality.

(T-Mobile customer for 2+ decades, least terrible option imho)

EDIT: > Google Voice app may be slow but it does work every time

Until it doesn't! Fair critique though. I can also recommend the "Unlisted" iOS app for this purpose.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#60

Post by pjc50 »

artogahr wrote: post #32
canes123456 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of their plans downscale video, or at least they used to

This is interesting, I don't see how this is possible from a technical sense

Identify (by IP or traffic shape) video traffic, then throttle the stream to the desired bitrate. The viewer's player will usually silently adapt.
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