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AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

adriano.fyi

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Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#141

Post by alar44 »

LoganDark wrote: post #65
rzzzt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passthrough mode turns ~90% of the (DSL modem / ONT) + router + DHCP + NAT + WiFi AP + whatever functionality off, allowing you to add another home router after it which is completely under your control and let the ISP-provided one only do the most necessary, eg. (DSL modem / ONT) parts.

> add another home router after it which is completely under your control and let the ISP-provided one only do the most necessary, eg. (DSL modem / ONT) parts. Oh absolutely, I used that trick once in order to use a router that I could configure over web interface instead of Over The Cloud With A Spyware Mobile App (aka Internet Of Shit). Unfortunately my ISP smartened up to this and started cutting the line whenever…

[dead]

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#142

Post by acaloiar »

Tarball10 wrote: post #125
acaloiar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good tip. I just tried with both and wasn't routed to a faster point of presence with either. I'll add a traceroute from the phone and one from a device connected to the LTE router to the updates section next. [update] Traceroutes added

It's definitely odd that you're getting routed across the country to an east coast pop. Ideally in your location you'd be routed to a west or central pop. Perhaps a bad combination of Cloudfront getting geolocation wrong for your IP range, and poor performance of at&t's network for that specific source-destination combination.

I found that odd as well, and my iPhone hotspot does get routed through a different list of hosts as you can see in the traceroute.

I suppose it should be noted. The iphone antenna and router antennas are no more than a meter from each other. They're unlikely to be hitting different towers.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#143

Post by [deleted] »

judge2020 wrote: post #130
radicaldreamer wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not true, Google Fi has the same priority as postpaid T-Mobile. This is something MVNOs negotiate in their contracts with carriers, not something thats true across the board. Discount MVNOs increase their margins by buying wholesale deprioritized data while Google Fi has negotiated the no deprioritization.

Is this talked about somewhere? All I see is this reddit post[0] by u/Peterfield53, which looks like a very active user on r/GoogleFi but doesn't seem to be a Googler or otherwise a Google Fi support agent. 0: https://old.reddit.com/r/GoogleFi/comments/ulc1t5/perks_of_f...

[deleted]

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#144

Post by Animats »

cbsks wrote: post #134
Animats wrote: post #96

Remember how 5G was supposed to support "the metaverse"?[1] I've been working on a high performance metaverse client. All Rust, all multi-threaded. Designed to max out a gamer PC. Supports Second Life and Open Simulator. Second Life had a reputation for being sluggish. Fixing that. I'm pulling content from the servers at 200Mb/s, sustained. 400Mb/s in tests, but don't need to go that fast. The servers (AWS front-ende…

Are you insinuating, sir, that a telecommunications company has lied to the public? A lie that increases their own profits?? How dare you!

While lobbying for Government funding for 5G, too.[1][2]

[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/accelerating-5g-united-states

[2] https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/...

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#145

Post by eurleif »

fjni wrote: post #35

> I already knew from previous experience that for some reason, AT&T traffic to fast.com is throttled. Why AT&T wants bandwidth to appear lower than reality is a mystery to me, but I digress This I think is because they throttle ip addresses for known video streaming sites. That is one of (the only reliable) ways an ISP can get the streaming provider to drop the stream to a lower quality one by default. Since fast.co…

I recently discovered that T-Mobile does this too, but they actually let you disable it on their site. Ostensibly, it's a feature for your benefit (somehow), and they're doing you a favor by enabling it by default. In reality, of course, it's for their own benefit, and they're banking on people not realizing it can be disabled. I suppose giving you the option lets them advertise things like "no throttling" and "4K streaming supported" while still reaping the benefits of throttling/lower-bitrate streaming.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#146

Post by bscphil »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #138
bscphil wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since fast.com is a Netflix ip, and the isp can’t distinguish whether it’s video that is being transferred or a file to measure throughout, It is really trivial to do basic traffic snooping and see what people are looking at. I'm surprised it isn't more common. I figured it would be harder, or perform worse, but I easily wrote a little piece of software that filters the TLS ClientHello for arbitrary domains. Maybe…

This isn't applicable to fast.com as it simply makes requests to Netflix's CDN from the frontend. Indistinguishable from regular Netflix traffic.

Good point, although you could still do logic like only activating the throttle after the customer visits netflix.com. You can't distinguish the CDN traffic, but you can still tell what website is being viewed.

Incidentally, my speeds on fast.com are always terrible (about 1/8 of what I get elsewhere), despite the fact that I'm fairly confident it is not being throttled. That's because the speed I see is >100 Mbps, which is like 4 Netflix UHD streams. Wouldn't be much point in throttling to that speed, you'd want 10 Mbps max, and less on wireless.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#147

Post by therein »

cesarb wrote: post #112
kijiki wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't ISPs just sniff the SNI hostname to differentiate fast.com vs actual Netflix video streaming?

You can think of the requests to fast.com as just loading the speed test control scripts and user interface. The actual speed test loads files from the same servers (with the same SNI hostname) used by actual Netflix video streaming. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the fast.com speed test loads real streaming video segments from these servers, the only difference being that it doesn't have the decryption key for th…

That's surely how I would have done it.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#148

Post by bobbean »

xeromal wrote: post #135
dboreham wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlimited is a term of art that means "limited".

Yup. Buffets have been that way forever. No one is actually allowed to eat unlimited.

But I'll eat until they kick me out. That's how I know I got my moneys worth

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#149

Post by sharkski »

avianlyric wrote: post #58
fjni wrote: post #35

> I already knew from previous experience that for some reason, AT&T traffic to fast.com is throttled. Why AT&T wants bandwidth to appear lower than reality is a mystery to me, but I digress This I think is because they throttle ip addresses for known video streaming sites. That is one of (the only reliable) ways an ISP can get the streaming provider to drop the stream to a lower quality one by default. Since fast.co…

> Said the other way around: fast.com is great to see actual throughput from Netflix as opposed to some fake throughout from a dedicated speed test site for the exact same reason. Yup. This is pretty much the reason Netflix created fast.com. They wanted a speed test service that couldn’t be gamed by ISPs. Many ISPs will prioritise traffic to know speed test services (like Ookla’s speedtest.net), making their services…

In the case of Ookla's speedtest, many ISPs host speed test servers to eliminate any variability of the wider internet. That's why it may seem they are prioritizing it. It's not a useless tool either as lets you narrow issues down to either your network or ISP.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#150

Post by tyingq »

eurleif wrote: post #145
fjni wrote: post #35

> I already knew from previous experience that for some reason, AT&T traffic to fast.com is throttled. Why AT&T wants bandwidth to appear lower than reality is a mystery to me, but I digress This I think is because they throttle ip addresses for known video streaming sites. That is one of (the only reliable) ways an ISP can get the streaming provider to drop the stream to a lower quality one by default. Since fast.co…

I recently discovered that T-Mobile does this too, but they actually let you disable it on their site. Ostensibly, it's a feature for your benefit (somehow), and they're doing you a favor by enabling it by default. In reality, of course, it's for their own benefit, and they're banking on people not realizing it can be disabled. I suppose giving you the option lets them advertise things like "no throttling" and "4K st…

>it's a feature for your benefit (somehow)

They don't count the "shaped/throttled" sites against your data plan limits, so I can see some people liking it.

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