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

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

#91

Post by Touche »

rnovak wrote: post #78
ceterumnet wrote: post #57

I've updated the blog post to also include traceroutes from the 2 sites. I'm not a networking expert, but since the traffic is ultimately going through the same network - peering should be a non issue. Feel free to let me know if this is significant or not.

There are really too many variables to have any idea. For example, in both instances I see that your traceroute identifies the hop to your router, and you're using the 192.168.1.0 private network. Since your business example shows actual reverse dns lookups (from the looks of it), I'm guessing it uses a commercial switch. Unfortunately, there's no way to determine the actual cause of the slow down. For instance, you…

> Unfortunately, there's no way to determine the actual cause of the slow down.

Is networking the most frustratingly complex field in technology? As someone who admittedly knows little about it it all seems like a pile of hacks stacked on top of one another. It's the only explanation I can come up for why it's near impossible to figure out why a network isn't behaving correctly.

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

#92

Post by twoodfin »

nathan_long wrote: post #65
jstalin wrote: 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…

An excellent test. If a VPN makes something faster, despite the fact that it adds overhead to the process , that seems like proof that it's being throttled.

Not necessarily. It might just be bypassing the congested route that everyone else on your ISP is using. Comcast and Verizon have had disagreements peering with Cogent, one of Netflix's ISPs:

http://gigaom.com/2013/06/20/verizon-that-peering-flap-about...

It's not throttling, but rather the peering points along the "best" route between Cogent and Comcast/Verizon are overloaded, resulting in lousy connections between them. Look at this traceroute hop from Comcast to Cogent I just recorded:

   7  he-0-10-0-1-pe03.111eighthave.ny.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.83.94)  21.377 ms  20.379 ms  19.387 ms
   8  be7922.ccr21.jfk10.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.13.161)  67.126 ms  67.747 ms  69.083 ms
40 ms to go one short hop in, I believe, the same data center.

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

#93

Post by kordless »

squigs25 wrote: post #37
RyanZAG wrote: 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.

I wouldn't read into this even if it wasn't an outsourced support person. But the proof is in the pudding, the speed tests speak for themselves, no?

As they say, a leading question's answer is usually no.

We need this to be verified by someone with intricate knowledge of whatever is going on inside Verizon's network. The number of people with the exact knowledge of what is going on will be necessarily limited.

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

#94

Post by jusben1369 »

I'm not sure I believe any of this for reasons others have pointed out. But let's say it's true. Is this an argument for or against Net Neutrality?

By most accounts I read NetFlix is responsible for 30% + of evening internet traffic. Kind of staggering. If an ISP actively throttled Netflix people would leave that ISP for another one that didn't throttle Netflix Netflix is clearly a hugely popular service with enough people that it could exercise that clout. Netflix can sign agreements and tout such providers (heck, bundle in sign up offers etc) So the market can solve this problem.

Secondly, why are they throttling this service? Because they can't charge effectively for it. We all love the simplicity of "all you can eat" pricing. Yet Netflix essentially exploited that model to their own benefit to the point now that model is under risk.

I find it fascinating that a service that has (legally and ethically and followed standard biz practices and sensibilities) grown to gobble 30% of all resources and effectively squeezes out other traffic is seen as a victim here. I'm not trolling so would love to hear what I'm missing.

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

#95

Post by waterlesscloud »

colinbartlett wrote: post #14

I would not take some offhanded remark from an outsourced, minimum wage, offshore worker as confirmation of anything.

You're right. It would take a top executive paid a minimum of 7 figures before we could trust what they tell us.

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

#96

Post by 650REDHAIR »

jstalin wrote: 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…

I had this exact same problem with Sonic.net in SF. It was miserable. Each time I called they would tell me everything was fine and that it wasn't on their end- ignoring all proof.

On the verizon topic, soon after they got rid of the unlimited data tier my speeds would drop significantly after I reached 200-250MB of data transfer, but when I cycled the power and updated the roaming the speed would go back to normal until it hit the 200-250MB again. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that this was done on purpose or that they're currently limiting streaming traffic.

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

#98

Post by dankoss »

jusben1369 wrote: post #94

I'm not sure I believe any of this for reasons others have pointed out. But let's say it's true. Is this an argument for or against Net Neutrality? By most accounts I read NetFlix is responsible for 30% + of evening internet traffic. Kind of staggering. If an ISP actively throttled Netflix people would leave that ISP for another one that didn't throttle Netflix Netflix is clearly a hugely popular service with enough…

Most people in the US don't have a choice in their ISP.

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

#99

Post by AnthonyMouse »

waps wrote: post #59
RyanZAG wrote: 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…

> The basic problem is that a linear increase in bandwidth for the customer results in an exponential increase in costs for the ISP

> N * (N - 1) =~ N^2 (assuming full duplex links, which would be generally correct for the internet)

1) N^2 is not exponential, it's polynomial.

2) Expanding capacity isn't even N^2, it's just linear.

If you double each residential customer's bandwidth, you "only" have to double the capacity of your uplinks to other networks. The number of endpoints or total nodes in the network is entirely irrelevant, because you have the same 50Mbps whether you're drawing it from one AWS server or a thousand BitTorrent peers. The only way you would get the result you're assuming is if every endpoint had a fully meshed connection to every other endpoint, i.e. each customer gets 50Mbps to each Amazon server, a separate 50Mbps to each Google server and a separate 50Mbps to every single other user on the internet, for a total of several hundred billion Mbps for every customer. That's not how it works.

And in practice it's even less expensive. It's sub-linear. Because just giving everybody a connection which is twice as fast doesn't mean everybody is going to immediately double their usage. A large fraction of users, given a faster connection, will do with it only what they currently do with the slower connection. Their pages will load faster but they won't load more pages, so the load they put on uplinks to other networks will remain the same.

There are no exponentially increasing costs. There are only the same costs as there ever were: Cisco et al come out with a new router that puts twice as many bits through the same piece of cable and if you want those bits you pay them a fixed cost and swap out your old model for the new one, and in another few years you do it again.

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

#100

Post by pikachu_is_cool »

jusben1369 wrote: post #94

I'm not sure I believe any of this for reasons others have pointed out. But let's say it's true. Is this an argument for or against Net Neutrality? By most accounts I read NetFlix is responsible for 30% + of evening internet traffic. Kind of staggering. If an ISP actively throttled Netflix people would leave that ISP for another one that didn't throttle Netflix Netflix is clearly a hugely popular service with enough…

> people would leave that ISP for another one that didn't throttle Netflix.

Haha.

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