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I'm the founder of a startup[1] that provides paid FullHD downloads and streams globally to 120 countries, we mainly operate in Europe and US. Although we stil

by soci 13y ago

I'm the founder of a startup[1] that provides paid FullHD downloads and streams globally to 120 countries, we mainly operate in Europe and US. Although we still serve less than 4K resolution (we've not found demand yet), I can confirm that NONE of the things said in the article like TV set age or contracted internet speed are in the top list of issues that we are dealing with on a daily basis. In our experience, what is giving us most of the headaches is the network congestion at the time of download/stream; at weekend nights some ISPs just can't deal with the amount of traffic that this kind of services are demanding. We are spending quite a lot of resources in customer service for this reason. Unfortunately, at the end the solution is always the same, "please, try again later". Of course, this is not something people like, specially when they have paid for the contents they intend to watch "now". Surprisingly, people who have contracted a low speed internet connection seem to be already aware of his connectivity limitations and are not much of a problem. However, the ones who have good connections are not aware of the peering agreements his provider might or might not have with other networks[2]. Some might be even suffering from bandwidth throttling without even knowing. [1] https://KiteBit.com https://KiteBit.com [2] We use AWS Cloudfront CDN. We've talked with other netflix-like services, and although they use other CDNs, they still suffer from the same problems like us.

kapitalx 13y ago
How netflix solves this: https://www.netflix.com/openconnect https://www.netflix.com/openconnect
jackvalentine 13y ago
It's really hard to educate on ISP "quality". Here in my country, two of the most successful ISPs have horrible peering. Even some of my colleagues in a university IT department don't understand why I pay significantly more than them for my connection: because my ISP offers IPv6 and has peering arrangements that mean every packet doesn't get sent to a city 350km away first. Unfortunately this is the reality for "budget" ISPs. I may be paying $20 a month more than others do, but my quality is far more consistent in peak load times. I just really hope that my ISP doesn't end up having to compete with the lowest common denominator because all the customers leave for cheap providers.
vkjv 13y ago
It's very frustrating that content owners don't allow "downloading." This issue could be mostly mitigated by predicting what a customer will watch (not hard, most users are binge watchers, and you don't need it to work for everyone to be effective) and downloading that content ahead of time during non-peak hours.
mullingitover 13y ago
> However, the ones who have good connections are not aware of the peering agreements his provider might or might not have with other networks[2]. Some might be even suffering from bandwidth throttling without even knowing. In my case, Charter was simply oversubscribed, knew about it, and wasn't addressing the problem. I had a 100Mbps subscription, but the best I ever got (even with their own speed tests) was 65Mbps, and during primetime it averaged 30Mbps. I complained, explained that it consistently slowed during evening hours and bounced back late at night. They insisted on sending out a technician (who informed me that he wasn't allowed to run diagnostics that would bypass my connection and simply test the speed from the node). They replaced every inch of wire from the line to my house, and after they were done the speed was even slower. This was because by evening the traffic in my neighborhood had ramped up. Their techinican told me that they were fully aware they were oversubscribed, but they woudn't address the issue unless there was a complaint. Even then, they wouldn't fix the issue directly but would instead grease the squeaky wheels by offering a partial refund.

by soci 13y ago

kapitalx 13y ago

How netflix solves this: https://www.netflix.com/openconnect https://www.netflix.com/openconnect

jackvalentine 13y ago

It's really hard to educate on ISP "quality". Here in my country, two of the most successful ISPs have horrible peering. Even some of my colleagues in a university IT department don't understand why I pay significantly more than them for my connection: because my ISP offers IPv6 and has peering arrangements that mean every packet doesn't get sent to a city 350km away first. Unfortunately this is the reality for "budget" ISPs. I may be paying $20 a month more than others do, but my quality is far more consistent in peak load times. I just really hope that my ISP doesn't end up having to compete with the lowest common denominator because all the customers leave for cheap providers.

vkjv 13y ago

It's very frustrating that content owners don't allow "downloading." This issue could be mostly mitigated by predicting what a customer will watch (not hard, most users are binge watchers, and you don't need it to work for everyone to be effective) and downloading that content ahead of time during non-peak hours.

mullingitover 13y ago

> However, the ones who have good connections are not aware of the peering agreements his provider might or might not have with other networks[2]. Some might be even suffering from bandwidth throttling without even knowing. In my case, Charter was simply oversubscribed, knew about it, and wasn't addressing the problem. I had a 100Mbps subscription, but the best I ever got (even with their own speed tests) was 65Mbps, and during primetime it averaged 30Mbps. I complained, explained that it consistently slowed during evening hours and bounced back late at night. They insisted on sending out a technician (who informed me that he wasn't allowed to run diagnostics that would bypass my connection and simply test the speed from the node). They replaced every inch of wire from the line to my house, and after they were done the speed was even slower. This was because by evening the traffic in my neighborhood had ramped up. Their techinican told me that they were fully aware they were oversubscribed, but they woudn't address the issue unless there was a complaint. Even then, they wouldn't fix the issue directly but would instead grease the squeaky wheels by offering a partial refund.