3 ms·

Doesn't adaptive stream quality or any form of responding to congestions require the link to be saturated first. At least I don't know how it should detect that

Doesn't adaptive stream quality or any form of responding to congestions require the link to be saturated first. At least I don't know how it should detect that the link is almost saturated but not quite yet. So every time it detects that the link has been saturated the damage is already done. Compared to say, just capping the quality a certain amount below the current maximum for a while. For example turning off the 4K stream for the next 2 weeks. I guess people can live with HD for a while.

swinglock 7y ago
Yes, but that's how TCP/IP (the Internet) has worked successfully for 40 years. Basic congestion control uses packet drops as a signal of congestion and slows down. You get packet drops if a queue was filled somewhere, which would be the bottleneck between two stations. That's business as usual. The best queue to fill is as close as possible to a station, i.e. in the user modem or first hop, if not the application itself. If we begin to get congestion between ISP networks it won't be as pretty but it won't "break the Internet" and it's literally their job to upgrade the connectivity between networks before that happens. Plenty of bandwidth means you don't need QoS. That being said, there are modern congestion control algorithms that try to be more clever. Your web browser may already be using one of them.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > Basic congestion control uses packet drops as a signal of congestion and slows down. You get packet drops if a queue was filled somewhere, which would be the bottleneck between two stations. Bufferbloat gets in the way of that. As does packet loss due to non-congestion reasons, e.g. noisy or unstable connections at the physical layer.
  - the8472 7y ago
    netflix&co are probably using BBR to shovel data to end users which takes latency into account too, not just packet drops.
  - swinglock 7y ago
    Large queues without AQM is indeed problematic but the industry is far more aware of this nowadays than it used to be. If the EU really wanted to save the Internet they should have done something about that, only it's 20 years too late.
jedberg 7y ago
> Doesn't adaptive stream quality or any form of responding to congestions require the link to be saturated first. It does not in the case of Netflix. Netflix monitors the performance of entire network segments, and if a segment is starting to get overloaded, it may kick down other streams on the same segment. Netflix uses the info from every one of its clients as a sort of continuous end user test so they get a really good read on every segment's network congestion in near real time.
- swinglock 7y ago
  Interesting and all the more reason why this shouldn't be a problem politicians need to get involved in.

swinglock 7y ago

Yes, but that's how TCP/IP (the Internet) has worked successfully for 40 years. Basic congestion control uses packet drops as a signal of congestion and slows down. You get packet drops if a queue was filled somewhere, which would be the bottleneck between two stations. That's business as usual. The best queue to fill is as close as possible to a station, i.e. in the user modem or first hop, if not the application itself. If we begin to get congestion between ISP networks it won't be as pretty but it won't "break the Internet" and it's literally their job to upgrade the connectivity between networks before that happens. Plenty of bandwidth means you don't need QoS. That being said, there are modern congestion control algorithms that try to be more clever. Your web browser may already be using one of them.

zozbot234 7y ago
> Basic congestion control uses packet drops as a signal of congestion and slows down. You get packet drops if a queue was filled somewhere, which would be the bottleneck between two stations. Bufferbloat gets in the way of that. As does packet loss due to non-congestion reasons, e.g. noisy or unstable connections at the physical layer.
- the8472 7y ago
  netflix&co are probably using BBR to shovel data to end users which takes latency into account too, not just packet drops.
- swinglock 7y ago
  Large queues without AQM is indeed problematic but the industry is far more aware of this nowadays than it used to be. If the EU really wanted to save the Internet they should have done something about that, only it's 20 years too late.

jedberg 7y ago

> Doesn't adaptive stream quality or any form of responding to congestions require the link to be saturated first. It does not in the case of Netflix. Netflix monitors the performance of entire network segments, and if a segment is starting to get overloaded, it may kick down other streams on the same segment. Netflix uses the info from every one of its clients as a sort of continuous end user test so they get a really good read on every segment's network congestion in near real time.

swinglock 7y ago
Interesting and all the more reason why this shouldn't be a problem politicians need to get involved in.