That's exactly what I was wondering! With my (relatively small) Cable ISP in an affected country it obvious to me that any Netflix content gets served from very close to the edge, with higher bandwidth and lower latency than almost any other content from the internet. The last mile does not appear to be close to oversubscribed either, as indicated by my firewall which tracks RTT to the first hop (which is interesting…
Doesn't really matter though, still means (Slightly oversimplified) that a peer can connect to 10 hosts and not have to download at all from the origin server. Also this simply isn't true in a lot of European countries where upload and download speeds are equal, but that's a different thing.
Can you explain what you mean by that last statement? It does not sound true to me. As far as I can tell (in my country) almost all consumer offers are asymmetric: ADSL, obviously, but also fiber. Symmetric offers are very much for professional access, and typically more expensive.
In Sweden, fiber (which is quite common) is pretty much always symmetric. 100/100 is common, many people have 1000/1000 and there is residential symmetric 10 Gb/s to be had. Asymmetric ADSL and Cable is definitely not uncommon though.
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…
I'm sure they already have the entire library at that bitrate as one of the standard bitrates.
In fact, you've probably gotten that bitrate in the past and just not noticed, because you have to be looking hard to see the quality difference.
On totally unrelated news, Popcorn Time 4.0 was recently released and using it is decriminalized in many European countries (but not in others, so stay safe):
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…
Wow, they should really make that clearer, especially since IIRC they charge for 4K streaming... This is probably how they get away with providing 4K without destroying their network: by making people think they are getting 4K when most are really are just watching 720p
Most people don't watch it on computer monitors, so most people actually are getting 4k. None of this applies to streaming boxes or smart TVs.
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…
This is a joke. They charge me for "Full HD" and don't deliver it? I just downgraded to the cheaper plan with lower definition. If that's what I'm getting, anyway... I mean how is this even legal?
Do you watch netflix on a computer in a web browser? If not, this isn't an issue.
Maybe if we had kept using bittorrent for TV distribution we wouldn't have so much global traffic downloading "The Avengers" for the millionth time, you would just download it from the nearest host (also the way the internet worked before HTTPS, there used to be way more local caching of content being downloaded over and over again)
> Maybe if we had kept using bittorrent for TV distribution we wouldn't have so much global traffic downloading
I don't think bittorrent can compare to the efficiency of traditional TV broadcast, neither cable nor over-the-air. Instead of a packet being for a single destination, it's send once, and everyone just listens in.
> 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 Ne…
While the widespread zoom problems are due to issues with zoom, highly latency sensitive applications like VC will be degraded before a Netflix client even realises anything is happening on a network reaching saturation. It's very hard for the client to be a good citizen in this situation. Network-level QoS would help, but is a massive moral hazard (and generally illegal in the EU, anyway).