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Google Video Quality Report

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21–30 of 175 posts

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#21
Quite often videos are buffering on my 80 Mbit connection at home - however when I switch to tethering with my phones connection, there is no problem. I always had the impression that providers try to cache or throttle Youtube video downloads. So I really appreciate that Google is doing something about it.

On a sidenote, the biggest german provider was trying to get money from services like Youtube for delivering their content. This rating turns it upside down :-)

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#22
post #14
post #2

Telcos will have to invest in capacity where Google wants in order to get a good rating. Since Google is a de-facto monopoly, I think we'll see an Antitrust case soon.

If you look at the actual requirements they're talking about, they aren't that crazy. Even for HD video, they're talking > 2.5Mbps. So for really good quality, it's probably 5-6Mbps. I have 85Mbps FiOS at home, and I still sometimes have issues streaming Youtube videos. If my ISP can't even guarantee 10% of what I'm paying for over a fiber optic line, then yes, they need to be called out and publicly shamed.

What about if youtube.com's CDNs are overloaded and slow? Will you blame your ISP?

This is the problem with such ratings systems -- they're inherently one-sided.

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#26
post #18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you go out and vote. The absence of true competition is because the average Joe isn't quite clued into the underlying problem of why things are slow. I suspect this is Google's way of raising awareness.

Interestingly, this also puts ISPs at a severe disadvantage for ratings if they decide to do net neutrality violating throttling on youtube or netflix. I hope every bandwidth-heavy service starts publishing reports like this

Or, even better, a neutral 3rd party that reports throttling for many services/domains.

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#27
I'm unfamiliar with ISP scale networks - where is the actual bottleneck for them? One of the large ISPs in the UK is Virgin, and they have their own fibre network. They also throttle Youtube.

Is there only so much data that can go down a fibre line? Is it the routers (I'm not sure if calling them routers is correct?) that lie between the main backbone and the network connecting a street/apartment? Is it the hardware in a handful of large data-centers?

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#29
post #10

Good step but in the absence of true competition between ISPs this does little for the end user. I can discover that my connection is bad, and then what?

Then you go out and vote. The absence of true competition is because the average Joe isn't quite clued into the underlying problem of why things are slow. I suspect this is Google's way of raising awareness.

It's not that simple. Comcast/Time Warner are monopolies in their area because we tax payers subsidized the laying of the lines. Verizon tried to expand FIOS to compete and took huge losses. My wife works for a fiber company, and seeing the numbers, it's basically impossible to make the investment worth it unsubsidized at at a price competitive with Comcast.

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#30

This part was particularly interesting "We often deploy servers within your ISP's network, vastly reducing the distance the video has to travel and minimizing the chance for congestion."

Google Cache Servers. It also saves the ISP money by keeping popular traffic within it's own network/reducing carrier interconnect bandwidth.
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