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I live in San Francisco and I have exactly the same issue, it started happening more recently. Speedtest is 35mbit down/10mbit up
I wonder if some form of traffic obfuscation would help in your endeavor? For instance, setup OpenVPN on a VPS or something, and tunnel to connect to Netflix. It would be a shame if you end up with better quality.
I wonder why Canada is never on this? Our ISPs deserve a little public humiliation.
Right! I even entered /canada manually but it seems like they just don't measure it. Though humiliation means nothing to the Big Three but it is still fun to watch how horrible our internet providers are.
I always hear about people saying "I can't play YouTube videos!" or like the comments above this "Netflix keeps buffering!". I've had absolutely zero issues like that.
But, I'm starting to think that people's issues with their home internet comes down to their network setup. I have the fast Asus RT-N66u with Tomato firmware, good QoS rules, Apple TV wired and not wireless, etc.
Maybe some of these folks have the crappy gateway from the ISP, or really bad wireless environments, or bad cabling.
Case in point, I was at a person's house the other day who wasn't even aware that their DSL connection from Bell was disconnecting every 5-10 mins for 30secs or so (probably due to bad phone lines in the old building).
But they went on watching Netflix and checking their email totally unaware. So Netflix drops it quality or buffers a little then continues on it's way and people go "Oh man, my ISP sucks! Netflix is always buffering!"
I bet there's a good business in going around to people's homes to fix network issues.
The only real downside is that when I recommend Cox to friends, I have to be very careful how I say it.
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Contrariwise, I have Sonic's "Fusion" bonded ADSL in SF. My modem and Speedtest.net report around 12/2 Mbits down/up, and both Netflix and Amazon Prime consistently stream flawless HD for me.
poking around, it seems Sonic is part of Open Connect. I would expect that to explain a lot.
hmm. comcast dropped from 2.17 to 1.63 mbps YOY. awesome. luckily, speedtest.net shows me a lot higher than that... 25mbps, to be precise. Edit: I see Netflix has tweaked their results to use 'Prime Time' readings only. I guess I should retest this evening as well.
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Right! I even entered /canada manually but it seems like they just don't measure it. Though humiliation means nothing to the Big Three but it is still fun to watch how horrible our internet providers are.
I actually have an amazing ISP (start.ca, uses Rogers' cable network, but with their own peering infrastructure behind it) I always hear about people saying "I can't play YouTube videos!" or like the comments above this "Netflix keeps buffering!". I've had absolutely zero issues like that. But, I'm starting to think that people's issues with their home internet comes down to their network setup. I have the fast Asus…
Why no latency measurements?
My guess is because latency is not relevant when it comes to streaming videos from Netflix. A consumer will not be able to notice their video took 40 milliseconds longer to start streaming. They will, however, notice when the video stops to buffer every 10-15 minutes because their ISP can't keep up with the throughput.
We have Cox in my state, and I have been incredibly impressed with how reliable they are for Internet. It's refreshing to just take my connectivity for granted and not even remember the last time I've had issues or slowdowns. The only real downside is that when I recommend Cox to friends, I have to be very careful how I say it.
I have Comcast home internet in the bay area (Speedtest is around 30mbit down/8 mbit up) and every time I try to watch anything on Netflix it buffers for a minute and the resolution usually stays unacceptably low (320p?!) while usually having to buffer again every 2-5 minutes, sometimes for the whole run time of the show. Meanwhile, Comcast's own XFINITY streaming service delivers instantly (no buffering) at full HD…
I could rant about network neutrality... Comcast may not be (and probably isn't) doing anything to degrade Netflix's ability to stream to you; but they're probably also not making as many upgrades to peering or transit capacity as they could for that traffic.