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Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

arstechnica.com

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Re: Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

#31

Post by chimeracoder »

GFischer wrote: post #28
gdne wrote: post #13

What this says to me is that people really love content with no ads and are willing to pay for it.

Netflix really hits a sweet spot pricing-wise too. I dread the time when they become cable-ified and start adding different tiers (but it would make good economic sense). I've been told Cable TV didn't have ads at the beginning.

> I dread the time when they become cable-ified and start adding different tiers (but it would make good economic sense).

Netflix themselves have said many times that this is antithetical to their business model - they want to have a single price for streaming.

They may end up being forced to do this by the cable companies, but this is certainly not their goal if they have their way.

Re: Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

#32

Post by achille »

Could this be a plan for Netflix to even out the upstream & downstream traffic? Upstream traffic is significantly more expensive for ISPs to absorb (esp at the last mile). ISPs are demanding payment because they claim they're absorbing more traffic than they're sending back [1]. Netflix could just update their client to saturate upstream traffic while maintaining downstream traffic.

From the article: "But for some reason, its share of uploads went up substantially in the latest measurement while downloads remained level."

[1] - http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/07/how-co... Tier 1 networks have generally exchanged traffic with each other without payment if they send and receive roughly equal amounts of data. Schaeffer has claimed it's impossible for Comcast to be "in balance" with any other network because its own Internet service is designed for consumers to download far more than they upload

Re: Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

#33

Post by wmf »

achille wrote: post #32

Could this be a plan for Netflix to even out the upstream & downstream traffic? Upstream traffic is significantly more expensive for ISPs to absorb (esp at the last mile). ISPs are demanding payment because they claim they're absorbing more traffic than they're sending back [1]. Netflix could just update their client to saturate upstream traffic while maintaining downstream traffic. From the article: "But for some re…

Could this be a plan for Netflix to even out the upstream traffic & downstream traffic?

No, because that would not help them.

A lot of ISPs are demanding payment because they claim they're absorbing more traffic than they're sending back.

This is just a misdirection tactic from ISPs who have no intention of offering free peering to Netflix under any circumstances. Backbone peering agreements are irrelevant since neither Netflix nor broadband ISPs are backbones.

Re: Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

#35

Post by wmf »

sriram_sun wrote: post #34

Can't Netflix acquire Level 3 and solve their issues with ISPs?

I don't see how that would solve anything. Comcast was willing to hurt all Level 3, Cogent, and Tata customers just to extort Netflix. There is no "hack" to solve this problem.

Re: Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

#36

Post by gnopgnip »

nightpool wrote: post #29
josu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you are aware of this, but the average here seems missleading. The median household has never Torrented anything, therefore I think that the median would be more representative of the average user's habits.

yeah but by averaging the upload and averaging the download and just finding the ratio of the two he's not really substantially affecting his argument vs. using the median, right?

The median would be much lower than the average.

Re: Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

#37

Post by doctorshady »

GFischer wrote: post #28
gdne wrote: post #13

What this says to me is that people really love content with no ads and are willing to pay for it.

Netflix really hits a sweet spot pricing-wise too. I dread the time when they become cable-ified and start adding different tiers (but it would make good economic sense). I've been told Cable TV didn't have ads at the beginning.

Neither did Youtube.

Re: Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

#39

Post by nols »

doctorshady wrote: post #37
GFischer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix really hits a sweet spot pricing-wise too. I dread the time when they become cable-ified and start adding different tiers (but it would make good economic sense). I've been told Cable TV didn't have ads at the beginning.

Neither did Youtube.

I think everyone knew that Youtube would have to add ads eventually to monetize. Cable was originally an ad-free subscription.

Re: Netflix takes up 9.5% of upstream traffic on the North American Internet

#40

Post by chetanahuja »

jkarneges wrote: post #18
ams6110 wrote: post #9

Why does Netflix use TCP for streaming instead of UDP? A few missing packets isn't going to meaningfully impact a video stream.

TCP is more efficient than UDP if you don't need low-latency delivery, because you can compress more data at once and waiting for retransmitted packets isn't a problem. This also ensures you get a high quality stream through the viewing experience unless there are major congestion problems. A video chat will always prefer UDP transmission for the lowest latency possible, but quality may vary and bandwidth usage can t…

"TCP is more efficient than UDP if you don't need low-latency delivery, because you can compress more data at once and waiting for retransmitted packets isn't a problem."

Would you care to elaborate what you mean by any of those things? I happen to have some background in protocols but I honestly can't make sense of any part of that sentence.

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