AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by postdb » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:50 PM UTC

neurostimulant wrote: post #75

avianlyric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Now that my ISP bundles Netflix subscription into their internet plans, access to netflix and fast.com now practically saturate the fiber link, while before it was outright blocked. Hooray for no net neutrality I guess. Another fun part: when netflix IPs was blocked by this ISP, it's pretty much impossible to use netflix because the only way to get around the block was to use VPN, but netflix itself blocks VPN access…

hmmm, IMHO, traffic for video and everything else ought to separated into 2 classes. Video obvious takes much much more bandwidth than other stuff. It would be good to allow none video, smaller assets that are needed to to make a website function to have priority over video files.

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

#262

Post by nashashmi » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:51 PM UTC

I think it is the latency. 130 ms will cause websites with lots of little files across multiple https servers to load slowly. If the resources was bundled into a single file, it would load faster.

(My corporate network used to have similarly exaggerated latency on a bad old wire.)

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

#263

Post by postdb » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 12:52 PM UTC

neurostimulant wrote: post #75

avianlyric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Now that my ISP bundles Netflix subscription into their internet plans, access to netflix and fast.com now practically saturate the fiber link, while before it was outright blocked. Hooray for no net neutrality I guess. Another fun part: when netflix IPs was blocked by this ISP, it's pretty much impossible to use netflix because the only way to get around the block was to use VPN, but netflix itself blocks VPN access…

BTW, AT&T has terrible records for dropping customer's traffic and also email without warning or notices to their customers. Why such terrible company is around amazing how corporation don't really survive by merit in our current world.

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

#264

Post by naasking » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

The net neutrality battle is ongoing.

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

#265

Post by thejsa » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #251

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…

On my ISP (Three UK), a DNS lookup to fast.com gives you faster internet for the next minute or so. Therefore, I have a background bash loop just looking up fast.com every 30 seconds all day long.

Out of interest, which Three plan (& APN) are you on?

I’m working on using a Smarty (Three UK-owned budget label MVNO, for those unaware) SIM card in a 5G modem as a backup line, and haven’t been super impressed with speeds — so curious about trying your tip.

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

#266

Post by LoganDark » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

faeriechangling wrote: post #225

LoganDark wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Placing a device in passthrough mode will remove firewall protection provided by the AT&T gateway Did... did they seriously turn the router into a DMZ*, without your consent? Where every port of your computer is just open to the internet? That's scary. *that's what it was called on my router, the "forward every single port to one device" mode. Not sure if that is the correct term for it.

That's why a firewall I own is in-between my ISP provided equipment and my computer.

Yeah, my computer has an application firewall[0] between it and anything that tries to connect to it (LAN or not), so if my router ever opened up my ports, I would know.

Same applies for my other two computers (my MacBook runs Little Snitch on 10.14, so it's a kernel extension that Apple can't bypass). Not the rest of my devices though. Though it's not like anyone could get through fail2ban on my server, or compromise my Android device, or hack any IoT devices since I own none, etc.

[0]: https://safing.io

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

#267

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by kloch » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

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…

> Since fast.com is a Netflix ip

Technically the website fast.com resolves to an Akamai IP, but the speed test it loads uses a Netflix owned IP.

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

#269

Post by Avamander » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

nashashmi wrote: post #262

I think it is the latency. 130 ms will cause websites with lots of little files across multiple https servers to load slowly. If the resources was bundled into a single file, it would load faster. (My corporate network used to have similarly exaggerated latency on a bad old wire.)

This shouldn't matter much with H2. "Long fat pipe" is a well-known issue with a bunch of solutions.

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

#270

Post by riceart » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

inportb wrote: post #227

riceart wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite sure I understand - what do hospitals need a ton of bandwidth for? Why would those bandwidth requirements rise significantly during the pandemic. Sure there were a bunch of people on vents in the MICU, but pretty much every elective procedural service plummeted.

Other than telehealth, we also use the bandwidth for remote desktops/apps and lossless high-resolution radiographic images. While one might expect this traffic to occur over local networks, many hospitals have multiple sites and partnerships that are connected over the internet. So, for example, one might operate the hospital's apps while sitting in the library at the affiliated university.

> So, for example, one might operate the hospital's apps while sitting in the library at the affiliated university.

Remote Desktop and even PACS are not huge bandwidth consumers in this day and age of 4K streaming. At my large academic institution usually only the radiologists use the PACS client directly on workstations - all the other clinicians are using a “zero footprint” viewer over Citrix like everything else.