21 ms·

Netflix performance on Verizon and Comcast has been dropping for months

169 points by samsolomon 13y ago

TheMakeA 13y ago
What if we started netneutrality.js? Something that shows a banner on sites for people using Verizon/Comcast. Perhaps that will raise more awareness for the issue?
- aroman 13y ago
  It's not an awareness problem, it's a monopoly problem. For example, I live in an affluent suburb of Philadelphia. The only ISPs we have are Verizon and Comcast. The banner might as well read "Pick Your Poison".
- malandrew 13y ago
  It would be interesting if such a script used WebRTC to collect data from many users in a distributed manner and stored the information in a DHT that researchers could query for data to determine which providers are and are not being a good netizens.
  - fpgeek 13y ago
    It's worth nothing that the FCC has a speed test app which is trying to gather exactly that kind of data: http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-unveils-mobile-broadband-speed-test-app-empower-consumers http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-unveils-mobile-broadband-spe... (source available here: https://github.com/FCC/mobile-mba-androidapp https://github.com/FCC/mobile-mba-androidapp ). It's currently more focused on mobile networks, but it also gathers Wi-Fi performance data as well. And given recent developments, I wouldn't be surprised to see the FCC broaden that focus.
  - cjrp 13y ago
    This sort of exists in the form of a hardware box which you add to your network: http://www.measuringbroadbandamerica.com/fixed-broadband/how-it-works/ http://www.measuringbroadbandamerica.com/fixed-broadband/how...
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  Bro, do you even logic? These comments remind me of those fundamentalist pamphlets with Jesus riding a dinosaur. The whole premise of network neutrality is that ISPs should be forced to provide the same capacity connection to each peer network. The government should smite them down if the favor any company over another. That is exactly what Comcast is doing! They are staunchly providing equal treatment to everyone. Netflix is getting the same treatment as Google Play. And then a mob of idiots marches out to say "But my Netflix is slooooow! Treat Netflix the same harder!" They will pretend to be shocked when nothing happens. The simple fact is that quality of service costs money. If you want Netflix to be popular and fast, somebody will have to pay to light all those fiber channels and install all those core routers. Passing a law that says nobody can pay will make the Internet into a Soviet store: free nonexistent bread for everybody.
ajp 13y ago
Is there any way to (do these comparisons) differentiate between Comcast Residential & Business?
dangrossman 13y ago
I'm on Verizon FiOS in Pennsylvania, with the standard residential 15/5 service, it's 10:44PM, and Netflix is streaming at a steady 3-4Mb/s. I guess I'm lucky? http://i.imgur.com/akih9HA.png http://i.imgur.com/akih9HA.png
- samstave 13y ago
  You're on FIOS and you're getting 3-4MB/s and you're feeling lucky? How sad.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    It's higher than Google Fiber's average speed per the article. Netflix doesn't saturate connections, it doesn't take that much to stream an HD movie. They also don't stream "Super HD" to browsers which is the only way to get a higher bitrate than that.
  - xxpor 13y ago
    He only has 15 Mbit service. He's actually getting ~2x what he's paying for.
    - tzakrajs 13y ago
      3Mbps is 0.20x (of 15Mbps) what he is paying for.
      - willvarfar 13y ago
        Bits != Bytes. Mbps == Megabits/sec MBps == Megabytes/sec
        chomp 13y ago
        >I'm on Verizon FiOS in Pennsylvania, with the standard residential 15/5 service, it's 10:44PM, and Netflix is streaming at a steady 3-4Mb/s. I guess I'm lucky? He wrote bits, he's only using a 5th of his pipe.
degobah 13y ago
I cancelled Netflix as a Charter customer because performance was terrible, while Amazon Prime works fine.
- joemaller1 13y ago
  Don't Amazon and Netflix both stream from the AWS cloud?
CamperBob2 13y ago
Hint: never use Comcast for residential service. Sign up for business service, even if you're just one person in an apartment. You get better support, less BS, and (likely) improved immunity to copyright-trolling law firms. They will still route about 10% of your packets via the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, of course, but that's just the nature of the beast.
- stock_toaster 13y ago
  This also prevents you from using your own modem and requiring you to lease one of theirs (not to mention requiring a year contract), doesn't it?
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    Dunno. I've never tried any other modems besides the one they gave (leased?) me.
  - scottrb 13y ago
    When I signed up for their business class service about a year ago, it was not required that I use their modem, but they did suggest it (noting that any failure of equipment would be taken care of on their end). It was the bosses dime and my time if a failure happened, so I just went with their leasing options.
  - bithive123 13y ago
    You can use your own modem with Comcast business service (I do) but it took about two weeks of calling all the tech support numbers I could find until I finally got a tech who was able to do it. Not because it's hard to do, but because most of the people I talked to were lying or incompetent. The guy seemed a bit weirded out at how profusely I thanked him -- after all, all I'd done was tell him the model and MAC address of my generic Motorola modem. Don't waste your time explaining to them why you want to use a real modem (I have my own router/firewall, their modem had NAT I could not disable) or that it's the same modem that works on the residential service (which is the same physical network). It won't help, just say "I bought a <VENDOR> <MODEL> modem, can you set it up on my account?" and hang up and try again if they act like your request is bizarre.
tzakrajs 13y ago
The problem here is that Comcast and Verizon don't want to pay for the upstream bandwidth to the Netflix Open Connect CDN which means that as Netflix increases quality and gains additional subscribers, the time-weighted bitrate (TWBR, the metric they use to compare ISP performance) will continue to plummet. This isn't to say that all Comcast and Verizon customers will feel this pain, some markets have better performance than others (e.g. SF Bay being an example of poor performance). Edit: Other CDNs such as Akamai, Level 3 and Limelight pay to peer with Comcast; whereas Netflix refuses to since Comcast will simply gouge them for the opportunity. Netflix is increasingly moving away from third-party CDNs and onto their Open Connect CDN which will escalate this to a fever pitch.
- infecto 13y ago
  Thanks for the great explanation. Moved to the Bay Area a year ago and have gotten to the point of debating canceling my Netflix account. The quality is terrible over comcast. No problem with Prime Videos. Next move I will hopefully go for someone else, maybe Monkey Brains.
- RKearney 13y ago
  It should be noted that having a Netflix OpenConnect Hardware Appliance is 100% free of charge for ISPs. The device itself is free, but I suppose you could factor in the cost to power the 4U server and the rack space used by it but those costs are negligible compared to the additional peering bandwidth used by not having one. From the FAQ[0] >What does the appliance cost my organization? > The appliances (and any necessary replacements) are provided > to participating ISPs free of charge when used within the > terms of the license agreement. [0](PDF) https://secure.netflix.com/us/layout/signup/deviceinfo/OpenConnectDeploymentGuide-v2.4a.pdf https://secure.netflix.com/us/layout/signup/deviceinfo/OpenC...
  - aroch 13y ago
    It's also worth noting that a 10ge flatrate port to Cogent isn't going to cost them that much either -- and then they don't have to deal with any additional hardware, just a crossconnect. But for some reason, paying an additional ~$6K a month so that millions of your subscribers have better service is too high a price to pay
beedogs 13y ago
Lesson: don't get your internet service from a company that also tries to sell you entertainment content. They're going to fuck you over both ways.
- sudomal 13y ago
  Yep. The disadvantage of consolidation in that industry is these big providers have a conflict of interest. In an ideal world, platform providers would be broken up and prevented from selling their own content. That goes for Google too.
- badman_ting 13y ago
  Too bad there are no other reasonable options. Not sure what the lesson is there - move, I suppose
jsz0 13y ago
Part of this is seasonal traffic trends. Here in the North East when the weather starts getting hostile around November we see a big uptick in bandwidth usage among our customers. Utilization tends to peak in January and starts breaking as soon as the weather warms up. You can see a less dramatic dip on this chart from the same period last year. With the long stretches of cold weather all over the US this year I suspect ISPs all over the country got hit hard. It's also the season for many millions of new devices to get unwrapped and turned on.
notlisted 13y ago
I have a theory... (based on personal experience). The issue for many is (was) with Apple TV, and not Verizon. I updated my Apple TV in november (shortly after Netflix introduced its SuperHD mode). For a long time after that, Netflix performance was abysmal (dropping down to sub 480p at times, especially during the night time). I complained to netflix and verizon. The latter suggested I try connecting to netflix on a PC connected to the modem. I did and experienced no problems. No problems on my Android device or chromecast either. Only my Apple TV box had issues. Ultimately I found a thread on the forums which suggested a hard boot (power down) of the Apple TV device. Once I did that, the problems went away. If you have Verizon and use Apple TV to watch netflix, give it a shot. I would love to see ars/netflix display a bandwidth graph by device.
- Bill_Dimm 13y ago
  Interesting, but what percentage of people have Apple TV? Is it enough to have that much of an impact? Note: Edited to remove part that was actually addressed in original post.
  - notlisted 13y ago
    Not sure (Apple TV and Verizon I assume). This article might implies quite a few might: http://www.tuaw.com/2013/07/16/report-half-of-streaming-boxes-sold-are-apple-tvs/ http://www.tuaw.com/2013/07/16/report-half-of-streaming-boxe...
- 67726e 13y ago
  For what it's worth, I've had the same type of issues with my Roku on Comcast. I have multiple Roku boxes in my house and all have the same issue. For the past two or three months I've had buffering issues out of the blue.
  - fixedd 13y ago
    Our Rokus all worked great, until one day around 1.5 years ago, something changed. They are only barely functional at this point. Charter cable here.
mml 13y ago
I have residential fiber from a local isp @100mbps up & down, and have definitely noticed netflix has been horrible for a few weeks (appletv). I took a look at my airport stats, and it seems the atv had connected at 1mbps to the AP, which would certainly cause problems. A reboot of the ap & the atv resolved the issue. If you have apple gear, you can see the data rate for your device by option-clicking the AP in airport assistant.
paul_f 13y ago
It really annoys me when people present data on charts and the lower range is not zero. This article shows a speed comparison for Verizon and Comcast. The Verizon chart ranges from 1.8Mbps to 2.3Mbps. The Comcast chart goes from 1.4Mbps to 2.2Mbps. This is lazy at best, disingenuous at worst. People, stop doing this! Start a chart like this at zero. Only if that is meaningless, do something different (it's not here). But is really that hard to at least be consistent?

169 points by samsolomon 13y ago

What if we started netneutrality.js? Something that shows a banner on sites for people using Verizon/Comcast. Perhaps that will raise more awareness for the issue?

aroman 13y ago
It's not an awareness problem, it's a monopoly problem. For example, I live in an affluent suburb of Philadelphia. The only ISPs we have are Verizon and Comcast. The banner might as well read "Pick Your Poison".
malandrew 13y ago
It would be interesting if such a script used WebRTC to collect data from many users in a distributed manner and stored the information in a DHT that researchers could query for data to determine which providers are and are not being a good netizens.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  It's worth nothing that the FCC has a speed test app which is trying to gather exactly that kind of data: http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-unveils-mobile-broadband-speed-test-app-empower-consumers http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-unveils-mobile-broadband-spe... (source available here: https://github.com/FCC/mobile-mba-androidapp https://github.com/FCC/mobile-mba-androidapp ). It's currently more focused on mobile networks, but it also gathers Wi-Fi performance data as well. And given recent developments, I wouldn't be surprised to see the FCC broaden that focus.
- cjrp 13y ago
  This sort of exists in the form of a hardware box which you add to your network: http://www.measuringbroadbandamerica.com/fixed-broadband/how-it-works/ http://www.measuringbroadbandamerica.com/fixed-broadband/how...
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
Bro, do you even logic? These comments remind me of those fundamentalist pamphlets with Jesus riding a dinosaur. The whole premise of network neutrality is that ISPs should be forced to provide the same capacity connection to each peer network. The government should smite them down if the favor any company over another. That is exactly what Comcast is doing! They are staunchly providing equal treatment to everyone. Netflix is getting the same treatment as Google Play. And then a mob of idiots marches out to say "But my Netflix is slooooow! Treat Netflix the same harder!" They will pretend to be shocked when nothing happens. The simple fact is that quality of service costs money. If you want Netflix to be popular and fast, somebody will have to pay to light all those fiber channels and install all those core routers. Passing a law that says nobody can pay will make the Internet into a Soviet store: free nonexistent bread for everybody.

ajp 13y ago

Is there any way to (do these comparisons) differentiate between Comcast Residential & Business?

dangrossman 13y ago

I'm on Verizon FiOS in Pennsylvania, with the standard residential 15/5 service, it's 10:44PM, and Netflix is streaming at a steady 3-4Mb/s. I guess I'm lucky? http://i.imgur.com/akih9HA.png http://i.imgur.com/akih9HA.png

samstave 13y ago
You're on FIOS and you're getting 3-4MB/s and you're feeling lucky? How sad.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  It's higher than Google Fiber's average speed per the article. Netflix doesn't saturate connections, it doesn't take that much to stream an HD movie. They also don't stream "Super HD" to browsers which is the only way to get a higher bitrate than that.
- xxpor 13y ago
  He only has 15 Mbit service. He's actually getting ~2x what he's paying for.
  - tzakrajs 13y ago
    3Mbps is 0.20x (of 15Mbps) what he is paying for.
    - willvarfar 13y ago
      Bits != Bytes. Mbps == Megabits/sec MBps == Megabytes/sec
      - chomp 13y ago
        >I'm on Verizon FiOS in Pennsylvania, with the standard residential 15/5 service, it's 10:44PM, and Netflix is streaming at a steady 3-4Mb/s. I guess I'm lucky? He wrote bits, he's only using a 5th of his pipe.

degobah 13y ago

I cancelled Netflix as a Charter customer because performance was terrible, while Amazon Prime works fine.

joemaller1 13y ago
Don't Amazon and Netflix both stream from the AWS cloud?

CamperBob2 13y ago

Hint: never use Comcast for residential service. Sign up for business service, even if you're just one person in an apartment. You get better support, less BS, and (likely) improved immunity to copyright-trolling law firms. They will still route about 10% of your packets via the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, of course, but that's just the nature of the beast.

stock_toaster 13y ago
This also prevents you from using your own modem and requiring you to lease one of theirs (not to mention requiring a year contract), doesn't it?
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Dunno. I've never tried any other modems besides the one they gave (leased?) me.
- scottrb 13y ago
  When I signed up for their business class service about a year ago, it was not required that I use their modem, but they did suggest it (noting that any failure of equipment would be taken care of on their end). It was the bosses dime and my time if a failure happened, so I just went with their leasing options.
- bithive123 13y ago
  You can use your own modem with Comcast business service (I do) but it took about two weeks of calling all the tech support numbers I could find until I finally got a tech who was able to do it. Not because it's hard to do, but because most of the people I talked to were lying or incompetent. The guy seemed a bit weirded out at how profusely I thanked him -- after all, all I'd done was tell him the model and MAC address of my generic Motorola modem. Don't waste your time explaining to them why you want to use a real modem (I have my own router/firewall, their modem had NAT I could not disable) or that it's the same modem that works on the residential service (which is the same physical network). It won't help, just say "I bought a <VENDOR> <MODEL> modem, can you set it up on my account?" and hang up and try again if they act like your request is bizarre.

tzakrajs 13y ago

The problem here is that Comcast and Verizon don't want to pay for the upstream bandwidth to the Netflix Open Connect CDN which means that as Netflix increases quality and gains additional subscribers, the time-weighted bitrate (TWBR, the metric they use to compare ISP performance) will continue to plummet. This isn't to say that all Comcast and Verizon customers will feel this pain, some markets have better performance than others (e.g. SF Bay being an example of poor performance). Edit: Other CDNs such as Akamai, Level 3 and Limelight pay to peer with Comcast; whereas Netflix refuses to since Comcast will simply gouge them for the opportunity. Netflix is increasingly moving away from third-party CDNs and onto their Open Connect CDN which will escalate this to a fever pitch.

infecto 13y ago
Thanks for the great explanation. Moved to the Bay Area a year ago and have gotten to the point of debating canceling my Netflix account. The quality is terrible over comcast. No problem with Prime Videos. Next move I will hopefully go for someone else, maybe Monkey Brains.
RKearney 13y ago
It should be noted that having a Netflix OpenConnect Hardware Appliance is 100% free of charge for ISPs. The device itself is free, but I suppose you could factor in the cost to power the 4U server and the rack space used by it but those costs are negligible compared to the additional peering bandwidth used by not having one. From the FAQ[0] >What does the appliance cost my organization? > The appliances (and any necessary replacements) are provided > to participating ISPs free of charge when used within the > terms of the license agreement. [0](PDF) https://secure.netflix.com/us/layout/signup/deviceinfo/OpenConnectDeploymentGuide-v2.4a.pdf https://secure.netflix.com/us/layout/signup/deviceinfo/OpenC...
- aroch 13y ago
  It's also worth noting that a 10ge flatrate port to Cogent isn't going to cost them that much either -- and then they don't have to deal with any additional hardware, just a crossconnect. But for some reason, paying an additional ~$6K a month so that millions of your subscribers have better service is too high a price to pay

beedogs 13y ago

Lesson: don't get your internet service from a company that also tries to sell you entertainment content. They're going to fuck you over both ways.

sudomal 13y ago
Yep. The disadvantage of consolidation in that industry is these big providers have a conflict of interest. In an ideal world, platform providers would be broken up and prevented from selling their own content. That goes for Google too.
badman_ting 13y ago
Too bad there are no other reasonable options. Not sure what the lesson is there - move, I suppose

jsz0 13y ago

Part of this is seasonal traffic trends. Here in the North East when the weather starts getting hostile around November we see a big uptick in bandwidth usage among our customers. Utilization tends to peak in January and starts breaking as soon as the weather warms up. You can see a less dramatic dip on this chart from the same period last year. With the long stretches of cold weather all over the US this year I suspect ISPs all over the country got hit hard. It's also the season for many millions of new devices to get unwrapped and turned on.

notlisted 13y ago

I have a theory... (based on personal experience). The issue for many is (was) with Apple TV, and not Verizon. I updated my Apple TV in november (shortly after Netflix introduced its SuperHD mode). For a long time after that, Netflix performance was abysmal (dropping down to sub 480p at times, especially during the night time). I complained to netflix and verizon. The latter suggested I try connecting to netflix on a PC connected to the modem. I did and experienced no problems. No problems on my Android device or chromecast either. Only my Apple TV box had issues. Ultimately I found a thread on the forums which suggested a hard boot (power down) of the Apple TV device. Once I did that, the problems went away. If you have Verizon and use Apple TV to watch netflix, give it a shot. I would love to see ars/netflix display a bandwidth graph by device.

Bill_Dimm 13y ago
Interesting, but what percentage of people have Apple TV? Is it enough to have that much of an impact? Note: Edited to remove part that was actually addressed in original post.
- notlisted 13y ago
  Not sure (Apple TV and Verizon I assume). This article might implies quite a few might: http://www.tuaw.com/2013/07/16/report-half-of-streaming-boxes-sold-are-apple-tvs/ http://www.tuaw.com/2013/07/16/report-half-of-streaming-boxe...
67726e 13y ago
For what it's worth, I've had the same type of issues with my Roku on Comcast. I have multiple Roku boxes in my house and all have the same issue. For the past two or three months I've had buffering issues out of the blue.
- fixedd 13y ago
  Our Rokus all worked great, until one day around 1.5 years ago, something changed. They are only barely functional at this point. Charter cable here.

mml 13y ago

I have residential fiber from a local isp @100mbps up & down, and have definitely noticed netflix has been horrible for a few weeks (appletv). I took a look at my airport stats, and it seems the atv had connected at 1mbps to the AP, which would certainly cause problems. A reboot of the ap & the atv resolved the issue. If you have apple gear, you can see the data rate for your device by option-clicking the AP in airport assistant.

paul_f 13y ago

It really annoys me when people present data on charts and the lower range is not zero. This article shows a speed comparison for Verizon and Comcast. The Verizon chart ranges from 1.8Mbps to 2.3Mbps. The Comcast chart goes from 1.4Mbps to 2.2Mbps. This is lazy at best, disingenuous at worst. People, stop doing this! Start a chart like this at zero. Only if that is meaningless, do something different (it's not here). But is really that hard to at least be consistent?