How is that consistent with the sudden drop in bandwidth shown in the article's graph ... which is in mbps so if netflix increased their quality, you'd expect i

How is that consistent with the sudden drop in bandwidth shown in the article's graph ... which is in mbps so if netflix increased their quality, you'd expect it to remain level. To me, that looks an awful lot like our observed Cogent <-> Verizon/Comcast performance starting around October. It also looks like what happens when a network connection becomes saturated: Performance doesn't drop off linearly, it drops off much faster. Netflix and Comcast/Verizon don't have enough bandwidth between them to support subscriber demand and Netflix's high bit rate streams at peak hours. There are three obstacles to improving that: - Somebody's got to pay for bigger interconnect. This is actually the cheapest part, and Netflix would be happy to forgo the interconnect by putting a few boxes loaded with video cache on Comcast's or Verizon's networks. - Somebody's got to pay for the added bandwidth on Comcast and Verizon's networks to push these video packets to subscribers. Well, duh, Comcast and Verizon should, right? Except now they're at the mercy of Netflix, who can keep loading on subscribers and upping the bit rate until a substantial fraction of home broadband subscribers are trying to pull 10Mbit constantly from 7pm-12am EST. Comcast and Verizon are not thrilled to have to pay for this, especially when it's unclear how they benefit. - And of course: Netflix is in direct competition with Verizon and Comcast's own "OTA" TV and video on demand services. Every dollar Comcast and Verizon spend to make Netflix more appealing for their subscribers is a dollar they're spending encouraging those same subscribers to cancel or scale back their expensive TV packages.