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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?

#121

Post by masmullin »

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…

There is an important distinction you are failing on.

"NetFlix is responsible for 30% + of evening internet traffic"

This is false. Netflix is not responsible for the traffic usage. PEOPLE WHO WATCH NETFLIX are responsible for this traffic.

I also think you are incorrect on the "all you can eat" pricing. Of course, I am not privy to the actual business deal that Netflix has with their internet provider... but I very much doubt that they have unlimited bandwidth. They, like their customers, are most likely paying for how much they use.

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

#122

Post by fredgrott »

I like to point out something...

The ISP providers that use fixed wireless to customers have the same upstream infrastructure and costs as Verizon..

Want to guess if they are throttling?

They are not.. for example CSINEt local to me does not

So we should be asking what part of verzion's structure is forcing them to do this..

It cannot be money alone as both entities are entitled to the same broadband federal grants

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

#123

Post by gph »

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…

I think you're right about a lot of things in this post, but the one thing I disagree with is that internet traffic is going to continually follow an exponential growth curve.

The main driver behind increased internet traffic is the migration from television to internet for video content. I think that trend is going to continue over the next decade or so until everyone uses the internet for video content. But after that I think you'll see internet traffic level off to an extent.

ISPs need to build out their systems to handle that. I can't see anything else causing a dramatic rise in traffic so once they build out their system to handle video content it should be good for awhile.

Unfortunately, most ISPs are also cable companies, so naturally they are resistant to spending money just to shoot themselves in the foot. But this trend is going to continue whether they like it or not. It's probably going to be a really painful process for the ISPs and their customers. Netflix is going to be trapped in the middle. The ISPs will want to choke netflix out and take over their business. With net neutrality gone they just might.It's going to take some good PR and strategy for netflix to come out of this fight alive. If I was a betting man I'd say they'll put up a good fight but eventually be bought out by one of the big ISPs.

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

#125

Post by bsdetector »

couradical wrote: post #86
ceterumnet wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I'm on Verizon FIOS and since some time after the ruling Netflix has been taking 10+ seconds to buffer initial SD quality where before it was always less than a second. There are times where it takes 15 or 30 minutes to switch to HD and sometimes it never even does.

Meanwhile I can download games from Steam at 3+ MB/s, torrent at the same rate, and so on.

Maybe Netflix suddenly got a ton of demand shortly after the net neutrality ruling or changed their software, but frankly Verizon doesn't get the benefit of the doubt. They've done so many sketchy things that at this point if they aren't doing this on purpose they need to prove it.

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

#126

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bradtgmurray wrote: post #76
jellicle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Which means the profit margin is shrinking. It's not all about whether you're in the red or in the black, it's about how much profit you're making.

> Which means the profit margin is shrinking.

Not if you judge by the telcos' profitability.

The cost of transferring each bit is exponentially decreasing as network equipment tracks Moore's law. Their costs are going down, not up.

What this is really about is damaging competitors to their cable TV operations. Wail about Netflix using a lot of bandwidth, never mind that the cost of providing that bandwidth is falling as fast as the demand for it is rising, and you can put on a good show for the regulators as to why you need to destroy Netflix and push everybody back onto U-verse and cable TV.

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

#128

Post by kbenson »

bradtgmurray wrote: post #76
jellicle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Which means the profit margin is shrinking. It's not all about whether you're in the red or in the black, it's about how much profit you're making.

That depends entirely on whether you see bandwidth costs as revenue or an expense. For many of these companies it's both, but generally they make most their money from consumers, and in that case it's an expense (to the degree it's got an ongoing price at all, given peering arrangements).

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

#129

Post by whitef0x »

colinbartlett wrote: post #14

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

Also I do not think that Verizon would be targeting Amazon's S3 platform, even if it was a small subsection of it. Too many webservices use it and Amazon is no small player either. There are easier ways to limit Netflix bandwidth through data stream throttling like they do for torrents.

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

#130

Post by jkrems »

twoodfin wrote: post #79
jellicle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 at best the average cost. You can also deliver a few terabytes for something like $3 in postage if you ship a tape, but that average cost would be deceptively low if you were trying to use that bandwidth to watch Netflix. The real cost is building the infrastructure to handle higher and higher peak bandwidth. Suppose you're Comcast with 20 million subscribers, half of whom are trying to watch 5Mbit Super-HD Ne…

If you offer unlimited bandwidth and it's not working out financially, the solution is one of the two:

1. Increase the price for the subscription

2. Remove unlimited bandwidth for the subscription and go back to volume based models

It's pretty simple, really. You offer a product where cost is higher than revenue? Change the product, change your process, or change the price.

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