49 ms·
Verizon Throttles Netflix Subscribers in Test It Doesn't Inform Customers About
- knowaveragejoe 9y agoSilence from the opponents to NN.
- falcolas 9y agoNot to say this is good - but mobile traffic has always been exempted from the proposed NN rules from the FCC.
- knowaveragejoe 9y agoThat's a fair point. In a larger sense I don't see what difference it makes, but has less to do with NN than I thought.
- callalex 9y agoThe main difference is the lack of a natural monopoly for wireless isps. Switching providers is actually possible so if you disagree with your providers throttling you have other options, unlike in the cable industry.
- dingo_bat 9y agoI'll try. I asked people in a reddit thread about this same issue why they don't just switch to another cellphone network. The general reply was "Verizon's coverage and reliability is a lot better than competitors." It seems to guarantee a general level of service (reliability and speed) Verizon has to put certain limits on certain data. I mean look at others. They are not throttling, but then they are not providing a reliable enough connection. Seems like the market is working. Current tech allows certain performance at certain cost. Verizon is doing a good job managing all the factors to ensure that most people prefer it's service, despite the throttling of YouTube. Mandatory NN in this context would deteriorate the experience for most users, while also increasing government involvement and the inefficiencies that come with that. Is there a flaw in my argument?
- Dylan16807 9y agoYou don't need to throttle to maintain reliability. And you can get similar speed guarantees by balancing the available bandwidth across active users.
- dingo_bat 9y ago> You don't need to throttle to maintain reliability. Sure you do. If you don't throttle Netflix to 10M, it will happily chomp away 25M of bandwidth. Add a bunch of such people nearby and suddenly the network became a lot less responsive for the people in your cell. My facebook will take a few more seconds to open, some guy on the edge of reception might not even get a usable connection. > And you can get similar speed guarantees by balancing the available bandwidth across active users. If the stream bandwidth keeps varying from 5 to 25M isn't that a bad thing? It's better to have a stable 10M stream rather than a variable unpredictable one. Finally it all comes down to cost. Everything has a cost. Not throttling Netflix has a cost. It will maybe cause Verizon to deploy a few less cell towers in a year, maybe it makes them a bit slower to respond to areas needing more bandwidth or radios. Verizon has decided they want to cater to the users who value reliability over the capability to stream 4k on their cellphone. How can you fault them on that? When the tech catches up, you will be able to stream at 25M. Just like 10M on-demand video was unthinkable on a cellphone 5 years ago.
- Dylan16807 9y ago> Sure you do. If you don't throttle Netflix to 10M, it will happily chomp away 25M of bandwidth. Add a bunch of such people nearby and suddenly the network became a lot less responsive for the people in your cell. My facebook will take a few more seconds to open, some guy on the edge of reception might not even get a usable connection. Let's say there's 40M of bandwidth in this situation, and other users are taking up 15M in total. The way to ensure responsiveness is by dropping the throughput down to something like 37M so that buffers don't fill up as packets arrive randomly. This would let you continue to use 22M for netflix with nobody else harmed. And importantly, if three people tried to use netflix at once, just throttling to 10M each would still result in an overloaded network. But giving them each a third of 22M wouldn't. > If the stream bandwidth keeps varying from 5 to 25M isn't that a bad thing? It's better to have a stable 10M stream rather than a variable unpredictable one. If there's enough use to intermittently drop your bandwidth to 5, then it'll happen with or without throttling to 10. Throttling can lead to more stable bandwidth than a total packet free-for-all, but it's not more stable than just splitting the bandwidth evenly among all the users.
- menzoic 9y ago"Test"
- timmaah 9y agoI might be all for it if it frees up some bandwidth for the rest of us. I travel full-time and quite a few places lately the Verizon tower is obviously at capacity. (Strong signal.. slow speeds)
- MichaelGG 9y agoLimiting Netflix is a poor way to approach that; they should instead be limiting users on the tower, dividing up the bandwidth there, regardless of what you're accessing. If capping flows at 10M helps, then they should apply it to everyone.
- tedunangst 9y agoIt's a little more complicated than that. If I click a link to an article on medium, I want 100Mbps to download it, but then I'm going to spend some time reading it, freeing bandwidth for others. There are all sorts of token bucket algorithms one can use, but like I said, a little more complicated. Identifying popular streaming services and ratelimiting them might be easier than tracking traffic usage per user per minute. And sometimes it's ok to let users download at peak speeds for more than a web page or two at a time. Maybe I download a new ubuntu ISO, which is a couple gigs and takes a while. I don't do that everyday, so the impact is minimal. It's not just that streaming video is high bandwidth, it's also very popular, and frequent, and long duration. Ideally, we might offer users a baseline of 10Mbps all the time, and some quota of 100GB at 100Mbps regardless of source, and then people can choose what they want to download fast, but I think this would be a UX disaster.
- ant6n 9y agoI don't get how 10mb/s is so much more complicated than 100mb/10s.
- tedunangst 9y agoIn the particular case of something like Netflix, starting an HD stream then stalling and re buffering an SD stream might be a shittier user experience. How much data does Netflix download to measure bandwidth and for how long?
- brainfire 9y agoNote this is Verizon Wireless, the cell service company - not Verizon Fios, the home ISP company. They are both under Verizon Communications, but as far as I can tell this "test" only affected wireless customers.
- empath75 9y agoYeah, I have gigabit fios and I was getting like 250mbps on that test (I have a 300mpbs wifi connection to the router)
- thebiglebrewski 9y agoI have gigabit Fios and my Netflix connection is always throttled down to 150 Mbps. I wish there was something I could do about it because I actually do watch 4K content. But really...it's still pretty good so I don't care enough? This is probably why they do it.
- bb611 9y agoNetflix's recommended connection speed for 4k is 25 Mb/s. So what exactly does "do something about it" mean in this circumstance? Is your download rate actually saturating your throttled connection?
- thebiglebrewski 9y agoYeah you're probably right that it doesn't affect me, I guess I'm just pointing it out.
- vel0city 9y agoEven if you're being throttled down to 150Mbit for Netflix streams, their 4K content is usually 15-20Mbit with their recommended throughput being 25Mbit. You can comfortably stream 6 Netflix 4K streams even at 150Mbit.
- Androider 9y agoI'd swear Verizon FIOS is throttling YouTube recently for me, the quality is getting worse and worse. Constant buffering even at 720p. Forget 4K these days, which used to be perfectly fine a year ago. With the current FCC I'm afraid it's just going to get worse.
- knowaveragejoe 9y agoI've had a similar experience recently as well. I pay for 150/150, yet youtube seems routinely slow.
- NathanKP 9y agoIn NYC Verizon has an issue where they haven't purchased enough bandwidth into NYC from the Youtube servers. I just turn on my VPN (VyperVPN) which has great bandwidth to the YouTube servers and I get crystal clear 4K streaming. It's kind of pathetic. I don't think they are deliberately throttling, its just that Verizon is being cheap and there is plenty of local bandwidth between VyperVPN's servers and my home, but not enough bandwidth between YouTube's servers and FIOS network in NYC.
- tw04 9y agoYou've got that backwards. Verizon is trying to extort Google by getting them to pay for interconnects and Google wants nothing to do with it. It's the exact same thing that was going on with Comcast and Netflix. It's complete and utter garbage that they continually double dip, and is the EXACT reason ISPs shouldn't be allowed to own ANY content. It's a direct conflict of interest.
- mrkrabo 9y agoWhy shouldn't Verizon and Google split the bill?
- jmuguy 9y agoMy understanding is that its not an issue of the cost to "upgrade" the interconnection infrastructure. That cost is likely negligible. What's happening is that VZ is refusing to do it, and allowing service to degrade, unless Google pays X. So yeah, basically extortion. Google has already paid for bandwidth, and this is traffic that VZ's paying customers are requesting.
- mrkrabo 9y agoPeople streaming HD video from cell towers is simply crazy. I'm sure that even supporters of net neutrality understand that a solution must be found. Caps can't help with that in highly populated areas. The radio spectrum is simply finite. It's physics.
- kobeya 9y agoMore cell towers and more spectrum allocations? Japan seems to be doing just fine with high density, high bandwidth mobile usage.
- user5994461 9y agoThere isn't more spectrum to be allocated. In layman terms, the air around you is limited and there can't be more of it.
- CogitoCogito 9y agoSpectrum can be re-allocated. Regardless, the first of his two points still applies: > More cell towers
- user5994461 9y agoThe spectrum is highly limited, irrelevant of (re)allocation. In layman terms, better allocating the air around you will not create more air.
- ss248 9y agoCan you stop with this "in layman terms"? Let's just take a look at radio spectrum in US [1]. Right now you are trying to say, that everything there is completely saturated 100% of the time? That is simply false. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2011_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/United_S...
- pxeboot 9y agoWhat were they testing? If users would notice the throttling?
- caspianrunner 9y agoI have worked at a mobile ISP before. I don't know what VZW is doing here, but there are a few reasons you might run an experiment. Most often for me it was to troubleshoot a technical issue. To try to get an idea of user behavior we would run "experiments" on previously collected data, i.e. rely on natural experiments - not change things and then see what happened. In every case the experiments I was part of were to see if we could improve user throughput, not degrade it.
- rhino369 9y agoProbably testing something like Tmobile's bingeon. Mobile bandwidth is tightly rationed but video providers to a terrible job being efficient. It's one of the few legitimate uses of throttling IMO.
- festizio 9y agoI am more sad reading that T-Mobile and Sprint are potentially merging.
- jrs95 9y agoWhy? I'd understand not wanting AT&T or Verizon to buy either of them, but I don't see how a T-Mobile & Sprint merger would make things much worse. Seems like that would make them a more viable 3rd alternative to the big two, which is something I'd really appreciate. I just went back to Verizon because the service I was getting from T-Mobile just wasn't good enough.
- JadeNB 9y ago> > I am more sad reading that T-Mobile and Sprint are potentially merging. > Why? I am not festizio, but the news makes me sad because I find T-Mobile's customer service and stick-it-to-the-big-carriers attitude both delightful, and my memories of dealing with Sprint (only ever landline, so I have no idea of the mobile quality) are terrible. On the other hand, your point: > Seems like that would make them a more viable 3rd alternative to the big two, which is something I'd really appreciate. seems like a good argument for why it could at least be a mixed blessing.
- Chardok 9y agoI can't think of a time where customer experience, user experience or overall quality of a company improves after a large merger like this. Less choices for the consumer typically translate to more power for the companies.
- throwaway91111 9y agoThey're already viable as they will be. As far as i can tell the only reason verizon is doing better is because they use CDMA rather than GSM. At&t sucks, though. It's not good that the best two providers (in terms of how they treat their customers) are merging
- festizio 9y agoI have had all of the major carriers. T-Mobile has given me the best customer service and features for a cheaper price than the others.
- supercanuck 9y agoAnd Netflix is blocking VPN's. The original reason was it didn't have licenses for certain regions, but then what of original content? I'm tired of being used as a pawn in this bullshit game.
- jrs95 9y agoMakes me wonder if continued escalation might push more people back towards Blu-Rays. Personally, I prefer just purchasing content anyways. Then if Netflix or whoever has to pull it, I still have it.
- veridies 9y agoI actually just subscribe to Netflix' DVD service. I get films in much higher quality delivered every other day, and I use MakeMKV to copy them onto my computer for when I want to watch them. Films I can't get there, I just pirate. I'm not interested in installing DRM platforms on my computer to be able to watch very heavily compressed videos if they haven't been yanked offline yet.
- supercanuck 9y agoThat sounds like a lot of work just to plop my kid in front of Dora on the tablet so I can have an hour of sanity before dinner.
- gm-conspiracy 9y agoI've often heard that parenting requires a great deal of responsibility.
- scottLobster 9y agoA lot of initial work maybe. I rip all of my movies with MakeMKV to a Plex Media Server running on an old 2009 desktop. The setup can take a while, mostly picking through extras on the disk and naming them properly. But the interface is just as slick as Netflix and they have an app for practically every device. And if you don't care about the extras ripping the movies is essentially just pushing a button on MakeMKV. If you're looking for a weekend project and have a movie/TV collection I'd highly recommend it. The base software is free and it runs on linux (and Windows/OSX).
- coverband 9y agoIf the test is "At what point will customers notice and start complaining?", it makes sense... :)
- holtalanm 9y agoand so it begins.
- egwynn 9y agoBegins? Wasn’t Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent connections ten years ago more like the “beginning”?
- holtalanm 9y agoWell, yeah. But that ended with Net Neutrality. Now we will see a while new wave of companies either secretly or openly defying Net Neutrality while the FCC's power is gutted by our government. Oh, but our elected representatives totally have our best interest at heart /s
- dsmithatx 9y agoThey throttled users to 10Mbps to Netflix. The article states this shouldn't be an issue streaming a show at x resolution. I have 5 people and four TV's in my family. It is common to have 4 different shows going on Netflix. We all have different schedules and can't always watch the new OITNB on the same day. If I'm paying Netflix and paying Verizon for 40+ Mbps wouldn't this impact us? Shouldn't I be able to watch four shows at once if I pay my bill on time?
- ben174 9y agoThis is Verizon Wireless.
- beambot 9y agoChanging "Verizon" with "Verizon Wireless" doesn't change the argument: > If I'm paying Netflix and paying Verizon Wireless for 40+ Mbps wouldn't this impact us? Shouldn't I be able to watch four shows at once if I pay my bill on time?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ec109685 9y agoNope: > We are implementing optimization and transcoding technologies in our network to transmit data files in a more efficient manner to allow available network capacity to benefit the greatest number of users. These techniques include caching less data, using less capacity, and sizing the video more appropriately for the device. The optimization process is agnostic to the content itself and to the website that provides it. While we invest much effort to avoid changing text, image, and video files in the compression process and while any change to the file is likely to be indiscernible, the optimization process may minimally impact the appearance of the file as displayed on your device. For a further, more detailed explanation of these techniques, please visit www.verizonwireless.com/vzwoptimization.
- 9y ago
- kyle-rb 9y agoIt was really a great move on Netflix's part to make their own speedtest site, allowing their customers to audit their providers specifically on their Netflix connection.
- okreallywtf 9y agohttps://fast.com/ https://fast.com/
- Buttons840 9y agoWhy don't we have smart routers doing this? I wish my router could tell me "the fastest connection I have observed this month is 10mbps". Basically doing a non stop speed test. Im sure I could set it up myself, but I'd like an easy to use package.
- wmf 9y agoGoogle Wifi does this.
- f4rker 9y agoVz can do whatever they want with their network. It's theirs.
- cprayingmantis 9y agoThey're going to keep doing this too until customers start treating internet as a right and utility until then it's just seen as a commodity. If your local grocery monopoly started rationing out milk to 250ml sold per day there would be protests, investigations, and 10 minute time blocks for it on the nightly news because the people would demand it. The internet just hasn't had this moment yet and it sucks because the momentum for this moment is building but it hasn't reached critical mass. I don't think this moment will happen for another decade at least.
- akira2501 9y ago> If your local grocery monopoly started rationing out milk to 250ml sold per day there would be protests Not quite.. if they rationed milk to 250mL, but then let you buy an extra 25mL for what the first 250mL costs. They're not only creating scarcity, but then creating a market to profit from this artificial situation.
- QAPereo 9y agoThey'd literally be lynched.
- hammock 9y agoDon't airlines do this too? You can buy the first ten tickets on a given plane for the same price that you would pay for the very last available ticket. Don't see anyone getting lynched in that industry.
- redial 9y agoThis is the important part, > They're not only creating scarcity, but then creating a market to profit from this artificial situation. Seats on a plane are a limited resource.
- hueving 9y agoSo is bandwidth though. I'm not sure where the idea comes from that ISPs have unlimited bandwidth.
- nwatson 9y agoI'm working from Copenhagen right now. A valid-for-one-month 30GB data + 600 unlimited minutes on Lebara SIM card is $15 (and that includes free international calling to, e.g., USA or Brazil or wherever), and I can re-up at any time. I've been using SIM Card + mobile hot-spot to access the internet, web, VPN, AWS, etc. from a number of places. Speed is very good. I wish it were like this in the US. Coverage in my home area of North Carolina (the Triad != Triangle) is quite good, Verizon is kind of expensive. It's a lot better than coverage I had living in the SF Bay Area -- whenever I go there I still find so many dead zones.
- grecy 9y agoDo you know if you can roam with that SIM to other countries? Outside the EU?
- kalleboo 9y agoLooks like roaming is available but you need to apply with a domestic debit/credit card and the rates don't seem very good http://www.lebara.dk/roaming http://www.lebara.dk/roaming
- nwatson 9y agoJust found out today ... came to Amsterdam from Copenhagen, and no, the data plan and phone both do not transfer without the additional setup I think is described in a sibling comment here. Still, I used a lot of data, was well worth it. I'm not sure what Amsterdam Lebara / Lyca prices will be or what kinds of data packages they'll have, didn't seem as promising when I look briefly online. So perhaps Copanhagen was a one-off great deal, I'll see tomorrow a.m. when the SIM card stores open again.
- wallstquant 9y agoI get upset when they call it unlimited data and then cap the rate you can download. if you can only download 1 unit an hour, you are effectively capped at 744 Units per month.
- peteretep 9y ago> while Wall Street cries about this > rise in competition hurting earnings > at least once a week They link that to a particularly shitty article which really doesn't make the case at all. This has thrown my confidence in the rest of the article.