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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?

#191

Post by ajb »

mweinbergPK wrote: post #163
padseeker wrote: post #55

How do we, IT savvy people capable of monitoring, testing and verifying this stuff, use our collective skills to monitor each ISP and communicate who is doing the best/worst job? As long as there is at least one ISP provider who is not throttling traffic, we should reward that ISP that does not discriminate on web traffic, and punish the ones that do. You might have to show some differences across different regions a…

As someone who is in DC doing net neutrality advocacy on a daily basis, I love this question. One of our major challenges is that ISPs have data on their networks and we don't. That leaves us in a position to speculate about what is "really" happening and hoping that someone out there happens to have the technical skills to potentially uncover a problem. The HN community's ability to evaluate claims made by ISPs as l…

Interestingly though, there is an argument that even ISPs don't have the right data, and that this is a reason - or at least an excuse - for throttling. See http://www.bobbriscoe.net/presents/1005ftw/1005ftw-briscoe.p... There is an ietf working group (ConEx) on exposing the kind of information necessary, with the idea that this would provide the right kind of incentives for ISPs not to throttle. I'm not sure that ISPs wouldn't anyway have the incentive to be a gatekeeper, but it would be a good idea to remove any possible excuse.

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

#192

Post by pikachu_is_cool »

jusben1369 wrote: post #113
edent wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are two problems with that scenario. 1) There may not be other services in the area - or all services throttle. Your only solution is to move house. 2) The user may not realise it is their ISP which is the problem. "NetFlix sucks - it's so slow. But TimeWarnerCastPlayer is awesome - it's so fast!" NetFlix isn't "squeezing" anyone. Customers are requesting data through their ISP, NetFlix are sending it as…

Netflix has an ISP tracker on their site that shows performance by ISP. Trust me, if they know your ISP is a "throttler" they have the ways to get this in front of you and highlight "Hey you're having a crappy experience because you're using X and they throttle us. Y wants your business and will give you a $150 coupon to change. Click here now"

I had no idea someone could be this naive. WE'RE AT THE MERCY OF AN OLIGOPOLY. THEY HAVE MEETINGS BEHIND CLOSED DOORS TO COLLECTIVELY RAISE THEIR PRICES AND PROVIDE MINIMUM SERVICE. THEY CAN FUCK US AS MUCH AS THEY WANT, AND WE CAN'T DO SHIT BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ANY COMPETITION. THERE ISN'T ANY COMPETITION BECAUSE THE BARRIER TO ENTRY FOR A NEW ISP IS SO HIGH THAT IT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE; EXCEPT FOR COMPANIES WITH THE RESOURCES COMPARABLE TO GOOGLE. ONLY FUCKING GOOGLE.

Jesus Christ. I can't believe you are savvy enough to pay for your own internet service and you don't realize this.

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

#193

Post by skj »

jstalin wrote: post #67
nathan_long wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, and the even more galling part... when watching Hulu on regular Comcast (without the VPN), the shows average around 500-900kbps. When it flips over to displaying the commercials, it jumps to 8Mbps or more!

This is actually not malicious at all. An individual ad gets served to many more people than any given show, and as a result they'll get cached closer to the destination. Still pretty obnoxious though :)

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

#194

Post by acdha »

twoodfin wrote: post #136
jkrems wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand: If under total load, with every customer pulling the maximum possible bandwidth simultaneously, Comcast could give you 250Kbps, you want them to sell a product that only gives you 250Kbps all the time just so their advertising will be accurate? Like everything else, there's fine print: 20Mbps or whatever is described as a maximum speed, and many people actually see burst speeds that high. But as i…

There are two key differences: the first is, as other people noted, that they should advertise that range rather than always marketing the highest number. “256KB guaranteed, up to 20Mbs” isn't any harder to sell than telling people they won't always be able drive 65MPH.

The bigger issue, however, is whether those limits are based on the underlying limits of the network or artificial caps: this is currently completely opaque. It'd be much better if they were forced to publish any traffic shaping performed so the consumer can actually make an informed decision. This might lead to other questions such as whether they should be refusing to deploy Netflix OpenConnect nodes which would be healthy – and no doubt a key factor in why they won't talk about it unless forced.

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

#195

Post by ChrisLTD »

cobookman wrote: post #178

The industry as a whole will eventually just charge a per GB cost. During peak hours its more expensive...etc, just like electricity. The interesting part will be if they still have speed tiers. Its really in both parties best interest.

I'm guessing there will be speed tiers at first. The telecom industry doesn't leave money on the table without pressure from the government or fierce competition.

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

#196

Post by scurvy »

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.

We'd need more samples to make any serious conclusions, but it does look like you're taking the same route from VZ's gear to AWS. That would rule out any kind of peering spat or congested port theories. If the paths are indeed the same, it means that VZ is CoS'ing down residential traffic over business. You'll need to get more traceroutes during different times of day, too.

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

#197

Post by mcguire »

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…

alphadogg had an interesting, albeit dead question:

"So, how does this analysis account for the fact that, in many reported cases like this, other services work just fine at high-speed? Your point 2 is that more consumers and producers are flooding the net as a whole, but that would cause widespread issues, not just premier services issues, right?"

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

#198

Post by chwahoo »

talmand wrote: post #157
vzwthrow wrote: post #152

Throwaway here, so take it for what it's worth but I swear my experiences are true. I deal with Verizon Wireless (as far as I can tell, the article is about the other Verizon entity) reps often, I've heard this mentioned many times in an almost off-handed, positive, revenue-generating manner. That they're positioning themselves to charge providers like Netflix for "priority" on their network. Except the way they desc…

I see it more as an opportunity for more VPN services. I can imagine the ads proclaiming something along the lines of getting the bandwidth you're already paying for.

Those VPN services better pony up to Verizon then. ;)

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

#199

Post by kriswill »

ajb wrote: post #191
mweinbergPK wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is in DC doing net neutrality advocacy on a daily basis, I love this question. One of our major challenges is that ISPs have data on their networks and we don't. That leaves us in a position to speculate about what is "really" happening and hoping that someone out there happens to have the technical skills to potentially uncover a problem. The HN community's ability to evaluate claims made by ISPs as l…

Interestingly though, there is an argument that even ISPs don't have the right data, and that this is a reason - or at least an excuse - for throttling. See http://www.bobbriscoe.net/presents/1005ftw/1005ftw-briscoe.p... There is an ietf working group (ConEx) on exposing the kind of information necessary, with the idea that this would provide the right kind of incentives for ISPs not to throttle. I'm not sure that IS…

Or, you could refer to the product you're interested in buying, as they can provide information about how well different internet providers can service their product:

http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/results/usa/graph

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

#200

Post by lucb1e »

bestdayever wrote: post #182
lucb1e wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Fiber is the worst idea ever. You know this company makes the vast majority of its income through advertising and collecting data about you, right? I understand that it's a great service for a great price, but the question is how long that remains sustainable. Right now they're sitting on such a pile of money that it doesn't matter whether they provide internet access in a few cities at a super cheap price. Th…

>Google Fiber is the worst idea ever. You know this company makes the vast majority of its income through advertising and collecting data about you, right? You never actually made a point here, do you have one? Obviously google makes money through advertising so getting you fast internet allows you to see more ads, is that a bad trade off?

Well my response to Google Fiber is somewhat triggered by a book called Ready Player One, in which a big company (with some similarities to Google) controls lots of things online, including many consumer's connections to the internet. They then of course abuse this, and it would be incredibly easy for Google to do the same and invade our privacy further.

So my point is, if it wasn't clear already, privacy invasion. As I mentioned, they are like any other for-profit company and not interested in doing what's best for consumers. Their goal of making other ISPs provide better service sounds so noble, but I doubt it.

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