Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#371

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

rococode wrote: post #246

I've been having major internet issues lately (Seattle area), have had 4 techs come try to figure it out. Yesterday's tech finally correctly diagnosed the problem as happening before the connection reaches our home but was unsure of the cause. He called his supervisor to investigate, and they found that the capacity for our neighborhood's node was nearly at 100%, while ideally it should always be under 80%. Fortunate…

How does it come about that the ISPs Network Operations team didn't know they were saturating a link?

Last ISP I worked at would have email and SMS notifications going to On Call staff.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#372

Post by toyg » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #143

jasoncartwright wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. In the UK... "UK broadband companies say they can cope with increased demand as many more people stay at home during the coronavirus crisis." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51870732

That's what they say now. Give them a few weeks and they'll start squealing. Every ISP oversubscribes for consumer segments. In the UK I guess not enough people are quarantined.

> In the UK I guess not enough people are quarantined.

A bit of that, and also probably a bit that their network needs and expectations, even when self-isolating, are lower than in the suburbs of tech-intensive Seattle.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#373

Post by Zopieux » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

DavidVoid wrote: post #152

BenJong-Il wrote: post #87

A few months ago there was blog post posted here from a guy making movie reviews. In the blog post he described how he managed to get 4k Netflix screenshots on his Chromecast. The effort he made was enormous and involved reverse engineering the Netflix data protocol (I probably worded this wrong). When doing that he found out that Netflix streaming in 4k isn't actually 4k. Again not exactly sure how this worked but t…

On a related note, if you watch Netflix in Chrome or Firefox then you're only getting a resolution of 720p. Google Chrome Up to 720p on Windows, Mac, and Linux Up to 1080p on Chrome OS Internet Explorer up to 1080p Microsoft Edge up to 4K* Mozilla Firefox up to 720p Opera up to 720p Safari up to 1080p on Mac OS X 10.10.3 or later *Streaming in 4K requires an HDCP 2.2 compliant connection to a 4K capable display, Inte…

These numbers seem to roughly map DRM "security levels" and allowed resolution levels. Basically, on platforms that support hardware Widevine (or some other DRM product) ie. "strongest security", 1080p+ is allowed, as there is a low risk of the warez Scene™ being able to tap the decrypted media – HDMI splitters that can strip HDCP 2.2 are hard to come by.

On platforms with only software DRM (tl;dr an obfuscated binary blob distributed along your browser that does some form of AES decryption), only low resolution streams are available because there is a good chance some folks somewhere have tooling to intercept the decrypted media.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#374

Post by kitteh » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

martin_bech wrote: post #258

rococode wrote: post #246

I've been having major internet issues lately (Seattle area), have had 4 techs come try to figure it out. Yesterday's tech finally correctly diagnosed the problem as happening before the connection reaches our home but was unsure of the cause. He called his supervisor to investigate, and they found that the capacity for our neighborhood's node was nearly at 100%, while ideally it should always be under 80%. Fortunate…

I’ve worked at a major ISP, for a decade, and spotting something like this should be so easy to spot. There are tools on monitoring of load all the time, and areas are routibely getting split etc. to improve bandwith, so I think your ISP are basicly amateurs..

The problem is that most companies aren't going to tell you that their peering circuits are running hot or that their internal network or access layers to the end user are running warm at peak. ISPs all do stat muxing and the line is "we make money when customers don't use the service".

They'll be happy to deal with the last mile segment, but anything beyond that is murky and most companies I know aren't going to share much. Helps to have friends on the inside leak some graphs, though.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#375

Post by isoskeles » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #312

There’s so much that seems wrong about this. 1: home network capacity used to be at peak around 7PM IIRC. There should be significant spare headroom on the network during the working day. 2: Netflix already downgrades when bandwidth is limited. The smart move would be to tell Netflix to downgrade more aggressively, on the theory that would allow more “important” traffic to get priority, while still allowing people to…

> I keep being amazed at how consumerism drives side benefits. Without Netflix and gamers, how much worse off would we all be right now?

Oh, I'm over here wondering how much these consumer activities contribute to climate change.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#376

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #356

rwbhn wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rolling out that tech has got to be more expensive than checking the load first.

Dunno how it is in the States, but here in UK rolling out the tech is basically the first thing they do after the unavoidable "have you tried turning it on and off again" phone call. They just don't trust the customer to have any clue and maybe don't want to waste time doing troubleshooting at their end when it's "probably" a downstream issue.

Network Operations should be raising known problem issues to front line call centre staff.

Network congestion issues shouldn't be handed off to field techs to check local loop (last mile) and CPE (Customer Premises Equipment.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#377

Post by Slartie » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 11:02 PM UTC

Izmaki wrote: post #124

Are they gonna cut my bill also? I would hate to pay for a service i a, not getting (4k streaming)

You will still get 4k resolution. Just at 25% less bitrate. But since the thing that's necessary to fulfill your contract is the number of pixels, which have not changed, you are out of luck, unless you find some clause in your contract with Netflix that guarantees a certain bitrate.

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#378

Post by robocat » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #344

robocat wrote: post #312

There’s so much that seems wrong about this. 1: home network capacity used to be at peak around 7PM IIRC. There should be significant spare headroom on the network during the working day. 2: Netflix already downgrades when bandwidth is limited. The smart move would be to tell Netflix to downgrade more aggressively, on the theory that would allow more “important” traffic to get priority, while still allowing people to…

> There should be significant spare headroom on the network during the working day. Remember that essentially every kid in Europe is home from school right now. > Netflix already downgrades when bandwidth is limited. It downgrades when bandwidth constraints and congestion start bothering _it_. By the time all the Netflixes which are competing with you do so, your Zoom conference will be long gone. Netflix is quite to…

Re 1st point: and kids are often heavy bandwidth users in evening. Network bandwidth is mostly about supporting peak usage, a pipe with capacity per second and not a fixed volume per day. Plans often regulate by volume cap, but high capacity networks regulate by bits per second peak usage.

Re second point: you are misquoting, and making a point that is obvious. The next sentence is "The smart move would be to tell Netflix to downgrade more aggressively" to help your canonical zoom conference (which is a super poor example - apparently Zoom failure is due to Zoom and not network capacity).

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#379

Post by kitteh » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #371

rococode wrote: post #246

I've been having major internet issues lately (Seattle area), have had 4 techs come try to figure it out. Yesterday's tech finally correctly diagnosed the problem as happening before the connection reaches our home but was unsure of the cause. He called his supervisor to investigate, and they found that the capacity for our neighborhood's node was nearly at 100%, while ideally it should always be under 80%. Fortunate…

How does it come about that the ISPs Network Operations team didn't know they were saturating a link? Last ISP I worked at would have email and SMS notifications going to On Call staff.

Because the NOCs may not be all that competent. I remember talking to the Cablevision IP NOC back in the mid 2000s about their internal backbone circuits they were running hot that went to a POP we peered with them. I had Cablevision at home and the congestion was breaking my VPN to work. The NOC said "an OC45 was down" (no such thing, it's an OC48) and that congestion is okay because TCP will work with it okay and there won't be a problem. I shutdown the peering session with them force traffic around a diff city (sent it to Chicago). I remember talking to the eng team at Cablevision about their NOC and they had a good chuckle and admitted they're only good for the simplest of operations (link down, go fix).

In some parts of the world running links at 95 percent is okay because look 5 percent left (totally ignorant of buffers or microbursts etc.).

Re: Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

#380

Post by Slartie » Thu, Mar 19, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

I am really wondering whether this means they have to re-encode all the streams at 25% less bitrate, or whether they already have them available at that exact bitrate and can thus just change a default.

Because what I usually observe when Netflix compromises the streaming quality because of bandwidth problems with my connection is a far larger drop in quality than would be expected at just 25% less bits - it normally feels more like 75% less bitrate, if it doesn't switch down from HD to SD entirely.