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Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

davesblog.com

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Re: Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

#81

I have also noticed a similar effect on Verizon FIOS, where some video services work perfectly well during the day, but around 5pm or so start getting incredibly slow to buffer. Whether this is intentional throttling I'm not qualified to say, but it makes me quite hesitant to use Verizon in the future.

I've noticed this when streaming from the PBS Apple TV app, but not so much the Netflix app or website.

Occum's razor would suggest the problem is likely with the video services themselves, and/or congestion from other people who are now home from work watching videos, than something malicious from Verizon.

Re: Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

#82

I just spun up an EC2 instance (US-East) and threw a bunch of 100MB-1GB test files on it. I'm on Verizon FiOS here at home, residential service, and they all downloaded at ~20Mb/s, which is the line speed I'm paying for. Anecdotally, I watch Netflix every night and haven't noticed a buffering/quality issue. I'll have to try the download test again later.

Just FYI - I'm only seeing the slowdowns in the evening.

[deleted]

Re: Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

#83
Let's say Verizon was intentionally throttling all traffic to AWS at certain times of the day (which seems like an awfully blunt weapon, but whatever).

Where is the part of this where they are promoting their video services over Netflix's "inferior" experience?

Re: Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

#84
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The netflix data itself points to a gradual lowering of bandwidth to their service. Now here's 2 scenarios : 1) Verizon decided to enter some router configurations that affect the packet forwarding to Netflix (well, most likely FROM netflix, as the internet is not actually symmetrical). What we should see as a result of this is a sudden change in bandwidth. 2) The load on the interfaces in between is changing, either…

> So ISPs are desperate. Their costs are spiralling out of control Isn't the cost to deliver a gigabyte of traffic something less than five cents, and decreasing?

That's not how traffic costs work, but it's much less than one cent per GB just to move the data

Re: Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

#85
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Here in Florida, Verizon FIOS has an excellent reputation and the product is far superior to the other choices we have. It's also the first place I've lived where I have choice (Brighthouse being the other player). Time Warner and Comcast are definitely among the worst though, and I suspect that if the OP is correct, it won't be long until Verizon joins them.

Verizon FIOS is exactly the product the article was complaining about... > I realized that the one thing in common between me and our president was that we both had FiOS internet service from Verizon.

Yes, but the reputation isn't going to deteriorate overnight. There's a reason why they both had it. It's a good product (or it was).

Re: Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

#86

I just spun up an EC2 instance (US-East) and threw a bunch of 100MB-1GB test files on it. I'm on Verizon FiOS here at home, residential service, and they all downloaded at ~20Mb/s, which is the line speed I'm paying for. Anecdotally, I watch Netflix every night and haven't noticed a buffering/quality issue. I'll have to try the download test again later.

Just FYI - I'm only seeing the slowdowns in the evening.

Do you know how many homes in your neighborhood have FiOS? I am wondering if it's a congestion issue - have you checked RTT in the day vs afternoon? What about looking at wireshark to see how many duplicate Acks/Re-transmits you're seeing?

As only the first-hop device appears to be different in the tracert, I doubt it's something upstream - if they were throttling, they'd probably do it at the network core - before it left the Verizon network for transit, which would apply to both circuits.

Re: Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

#87
post #73
post #58

I have experienced exactly this on Comcast. Suddenly, about two months ago, Netflix and Hulu became terrible to watch. I thought maybe it was my cable modem, so I upgraded it and still no luck. So I signed up for a VPN service and tested watching Netflix and Hulu both on the VPN and off. Sure enough, when on the VPN, I get the highest quality picture. When I disconnected the VPN, Netflix dropped down to about 500kbps…

Interesting I have been watching Netflix more than ever but I havent had any problem. I'm also using Comcast in Atlanta I wonder if its based on region?

It's only tangentially related to region. Comcast bring all of Netflix's traffic onboard in NYC and their East Coast routing is handled in New Jersey. Their eastern seaboard routing is about the only area where they're not having massive internal issues. Both their Denver (Midwest) and Oregon (PNW) iBone routing centers are having serious capacity issues that are manifesting as packetloss, giant latency increases and generally shitty route-arounds in the hope that it'll relieve pressure.

Re: Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

#88

Switch to t-mobile. Screw verizon

AFAIK Netflix doesn't stream directly from AWS, but (while using it for their transcoding and so) uses a CDN. So blocking AWS wouldn't help in changing the quality of netflix, right? It certainly could be related though.

Re: Verizon Using Recent Net Neutrality Victory to Wage War Against Netflix?

#89
post #59
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By far the most correct observation. These guys are just following a script - they probably don't even know what half of the words mean. Please don't read anything into it or assume the outsourced support is somehow privy to anything at all that goes on inside Verizon other than what the FAQ system he's using tells him on screen.

The netflix data itself points to a gradual lowering of bandwidth to their service. Now here's 2 scenarios : 1) Verizon decided to enter some router configurations that affect the packet forwarding to Netflix (well, most likely FROM netflix, as the internet is not actually symmetrical). What we should see as a result of this is a sudden change in bandwidth. 2) The load on the interfaces in between is changing, either…

Scenarios don't allow you to make blaming statements. We don't actually know anything about the connection between Verizon and AWS, other than it's slow. Making statements like "they're demanding Netflix make it worth their while to upgrade the interconnects" is speaking for others based on a presumption you had.

Saying they are 'desperate' makes them sound fearful. Verizon made $70B in gross profit last year. I can't see how they would be afraid of upgrading their network - it's part of the business.

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