Enraged Verizon FiOS Customer Seemingly Demonstrates Netflix Throttling 398
MojoKid (1002251) writes The ongoing battle between Netflix and ISPs that can't seem to handle the streaming video service's traffic, boiled over to an infuriating level for Colin Nederkoon, a startup CEO who resides in New York City. Rather than accept excuses and finger pointing from either side, Nederkoon did a little investigating into why he was receiving such slow Netflix streams on his Verizon FiOS connection. What he discovered is that there appears to be a clear culprit. Nederkoon pays for Internet service that promises 75Mbps downstream and 35Mbps upstream through his FiOS connection. However, his Netflix video streams were limping along at just 375kbps (0.375mbps), equivalent to 0.5 percent of the speed he's paying for. On a hunch, he decided to connect to a VPN service, which in theory should actually make things slower since it's adding extra hops. Speeds didn't get slower, they got much faster. After connecting to VyprVPN, his Netflix connection suddenly jumped to 3000kbps, the fastest the streaming service allows and around 10 times faster than when connecting directly with Verizon. Verizon may have a different explanation as to why Nederkoon's Netflix streams suddenly sped up, but in the meantime, it would appear that throttling shenanigans are taking place. It seems that by using a VPN, Verizon simply doesn't know which packets to throttle, hence the gross disparity in speed.
Thanks (Score:5, Funny)
Now they'll just throttle VPN traffic too.
Re: (Score:2)
Difference is the route, not the protocol (Score:3)
The reason the VPN connection went fast isn't that EEEVILLL Verizon was throttling the customer's Netflix connections by doing deep packet routing and didn't do that to the VPN. The pipes Netflix bought to deliver movies to their paying customers who use Verizon weren't big enough to carry all the demand, at least at the peering* point that customer's traffic went through, while the pipes they bought or peering they got for free were big enough to reach the VPN endpoint, and the VPN endpoint had bought eno
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
SO when you pay for that service it says something like "up to 75mbps" which in reality means that the speed test and google's home page could see that much speed and everyone else will look like dial up from the 1990's.
It would be much better if the services had to advertise their average speed across the most popular sites. That way if they throttle Netflix to .375mpbs, they have to inform customers that while they are paying $125/month for "blazing fast speed" they are actually getting blazingly fast dial up speeds.
What the hell kind of dialup did you have? (Score:4, Funny)
375k!?
No, I get your point... just...
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
SO when you pay for that service it says something like "up to 75mbps" which in reality means that the speed test and google's home page could see that much speed and everyone else will look like dial up from the 1990's.
I have a suggestion.... Web browsers should take some measurements and display prominently in a visible status bar or other location.... average TCP throughput --- And Estimated average bandwidth;
Both a "this site" value, a "this browser session" value, and (Optionally) if the user decides to share their numbers, Community average bandwidth for this site, Community average bandwidth for this ISP, and Community average for this site on this ISP.
If Community average for this site on this ISP is more than a standard deviation below Community average for this site,
Then a little warning exclamation point should appear to the right of the browser bar. On mouseover, and for a few seconds after loading the page, a little warning bubble should appear for a few seconds. "Your internet service provider seems to have below average performance in loading this page."
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
It will probably end up pissing off ISPs to the point of either finding ways of faking the data, blocking the data, or just as policy telling customers to ignore the speed numbers.
If the data is blocked, the browser should figure out why and explain to the user that there seems to be an issue with their network; in other words "Blocking" should make it even worse for the ISP. a smarter browser UI could be a tremendous help to support technicians, which the ISPs should absolutely love ---- perhaps even tell the user exactly which entity to contact, even display their ISP's support number on the screen, to help accelerate the problem resolution process, and providing access to comments by other users of the same ISP, leading to happier customers, and customers who can share info with each other pertinent to troubleshooting or why this is happening, etc.
A lot of people won't be able to distinguish when something is their ISP's fault and when it might be the end servers fault.
I am suggesting the browser should also take some responsibility to the interpretation of the results here. There should be a highly visible "troubleshooting" button that causes some tests to be run. Explanations should be right there in a natural language that any English speaker could understand.
The browser should not show an alert if there is not enough data to make a conclusion with a fair measure of statistical confidence.
We can definitely make a strong distinguishment between a "web site performance issue" and a client connectivity issue, with data from a sufficient number of users.
The browser would also need to take into account geographic location and client connectivity, however.
e.g. Is the site slow because the visitor is half way around the world from the nearest mirror, or is it slow because they're connecting over congested WiFi or 3G networks, instead of a wired connection?
I realize it's not "easy", but the web browser is the only software component that is in a position to take the kinds of measurements that are required and help alert the user to the problem, tell the user which entity they should contact, and assist with troubleshooting.
Re: (Score:3)
You could even run a network monitoring app. But the browser is one highly visible one that most people already have installed.
Perhaps you could, but now essentially you are having "users that think they have problems" downloading an extra application and they start monitoring after there's a problem most likely.
This means your app cannot get the right data on what's normal for the user or for the world, because you have a sample of app users that are biased towards users that already are experiencin
Re: (Score:3)
SO when you pay for that service it says something like "up to 75mbps" which in reality means that the speed test and google's home page could see that much speed and everyone else will look like dial up from the 1990's.
I have a suggestion.... Web browsers should take some measurements and display prominently in a visible status bar or other location.... average TCP throughput --- And Estimated average bandwidth;
Both a "this site" value, a "this browser session" value, and (Optionally) if the user decides to share their numbers,
Community average bandwidth for this site, Community average bandwidth for this ISP, and Community average for this site on this ISP.
If Community average for this site on this ISP is more than a standard deviation below Community average for this site,
Then a little warning exclamation point should appear to the right of the browser bar.
On mouseover, and for a few seconds after loading the page, a little warning bubble should appear for a few seconds.
"Your internet service provider seems to have below average performance in loading this page."
So tcp 80 won't be throttled but whatever netflix (or whatever) uses will be -
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong..
It is fraid for any ISP to purposely limit speed and bandwidth below the advertised speed speed while the network can handle it (congestion). No matter how you look at it, the up to speeds will never be availible when they purposely limit it.
This should be dealt with by consumer protection law (paying for services not delivered and possibly bait and switch or a host of others). People need to complain in those terms to thier state utilities commision or consumer protection department and file lawsuits over the said laws. Verizon and other ISPs will stop doing it and possibly be fined in the process.
Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also possible the the VPN packets are transiting a different upstream peer from Verizon and bypassing the peering bottleneck at issue. Assuming that Verizon is performing inspection of packets and throttling only Netflix packets is quite a leap.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not so much of a leap since Verizon and Comcast have admitted to such.
Wouldn't a simple tracert show the route (and any differences)?
Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score:5, Insightful)
Failing to have peerage agreements in place to honor your downstream sales commitments is a form of throttling - Or, I would daresay, a form of outright fraud.
If I offer to sell you "unlimited" beers from my fridge for $50 a month, but I only resupply it at a rate of one six-pack per week, I have intentionally cheated you. That basic relationship doesn't magically change because of some hand-waving technobabble about peerage agreements and network congestion.
(Yes, I know those don't strictly count as technobabble, and what they really mean - But they effectively reduce to Verizon having zero interest in upgrading its infrastructure to support its commitments to their customers as long as the FCC and FTC will allow them to outright lie)
Re: (Score:2)
I would think the more apt analogy is that you sold me unlimited access to your fridge (bandwidth) but Netflix (content provider) is only restocking at a rate of one six-pack per week. IOW, Netflix is the one failing to have peerage agreements in place to honor their downstream sales commitments.
Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score:5, Insightful)
If I offer to sell you "unlimited" beers from my fridge for $50 a month, but I only resupply it at a rate of one six-pack per week, I have intentionally cheated you. That basic relationship doesn't magically change because of some hand-waving technobabble about peerage agreements and network congestion.
This analogy is a little flawed. Let me correct it. Let us say the local municipality has granted pla (258480) a local monopoly in selling beer to its residents. And you sell beer at different service level all unlimited number of trips to the fridge, but at 1 trip/hr, 1trip/6 hours, 1 trip/min, 1 trip/sec etc. And you stock it with brewed-by-your-local-sewage-company beer all the time, and stock Buds, Coors and Coronas one bottle a month. Then your analogy is complete.
What is really insidious is, pla is NOT buying any beer. All the beer companies come stock the fridge for free. Pla's only cost is keeping the beer cool. And it does not cost any more to cool a bottle of Corona than to cool a bottle of brew-from-sewer. Just because pla noticed people are drinking Corona more, pla wants Corona to pay him more money. Remember it is a monopoly. Corona has no other way of selling its beer without going through pla's fridge. Now you get the idea.
Re: (Score:3)
Failing to have peerage agreements in place to honor your downstream sales commitments is a form of throttling - Or, I would daresay, a form of outright fraud.
Only problem with that is Verizon has TONS of under-used transit capacity with other networks - when Verizon posted their thing about peering points with Netflix's partners, they also mentioned that their transit to other networks at times where Netflix was hitting 100% was only ~40% on average.
So, Verizon would have plenty of transit capacity if it was spread more evenly across all the peering Verizon has.
Re: (Score:2)
* Gas allotment limited to one gallon per week.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you could just link to the article or a particularly insightful comment you made instead of making a post that adds nothing to the conversation.
Not all of us read every comment on /.
I'm very curious as to why Netflix would degrade their own service and why Comcast and Verizon wouldn't point to this smoking gun every time they're accused of throttling.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
there are a dozen video providers i can name who stream video with no problems. Hulu, HBO Go, Amazon, Vudu, Cinemanow, Apple itunes, ABC, History Channel, Disney, Lifetime, PBS, Fox, ESPN, NBC and others. most of this is video on demand, but they have some live video they stream as well.
only netflix is having these issues. difference is that everyone uses a CDN to host their content inside the ISP's network or close to. there are at least a half dozen CDN's that do most of the hosting
the way it has worked f
Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score:4, Insightful)
Never say "bandwidth provider" to a telco monopoly. It grates their teeth and raises their dental insurance. They've been staring down the barrel of this reality for 20 years and have done everything they can do, bought every politician and generally screamed bloody murder to get us to where we are. They seriously think the world wants to go back to using them as their AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve.
Re: (Score:3)
If Netflix got a free CDN setup without paying ISPs anything, Verizon would quickly see all the other CDNs refusing to pay them, too.
On that same note, I know where you can get a FREE 40-hour/week job... You won't have to pay a penny for this FREE job.
Re: (Score:3)
Netflix isn't using any of Verizon's bandwidth.
Verizon's customers are using Verizon's bandwidth.
Re: (Score:3)
that link is dedicated netflix and it limits them to the amount of data they send. last year super hd was for a few selected ISP's but then netflix started sending it to everyone over Level 3 and screwed up everyone's service
the point is netflix is trying to increase costs on their business partners who will then have to increase prices of their customers.
Netflix isn't trying to increase costs to ISP's, they aren't forcing data to their subscribers -- it's the ISP's customers that are already paying for broadband who are demanding high quality video to feed their 1080p (and soon, 4K) big screen TV's. What reason is there to pay for a 75mbit connection if you're not planning on using large amounts of bandwidth?
If Verizon has to charge their customers more money to provide them with the network capacity they thought they were already paying for, then that's w
Re: (Score:2)
Verizon has pointed that out. Multiple times:
http://publicpolicy.verizon.co... [verizon.com]
http://publicpolicy.verizon.co... [verizon.com]
http://publicpolicy.verizon.co... [verizon.com]
Re: (Score:2)
But what Verizon aren't really saying is whether the bottleneck on that path is on their side or netflix' side.
I recognize that Neflix hold the power here, they have the popular service, they deliver most of the internet's traffic (in the US at least) and when they say "jump" my ISP should say "how high?". They are the primary reason a lot of us have broadband.
Re: (Score:2)
it doesn't matter
settlement free links have always had friendly agreements about traffic ratios and the reason behind them was to exchange data on the internet without the pain in the ass of a budget. it worked ok until cogent and L3 decided to throw those agreements away to take the netflix business.
in the past it was always OK for cogent and L3 to de-peer from a partner who didn't live up to their end until they wanted some free bandwidth and charge netflix for it on the other end.
Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score:5, Informative)
It is also possible the the VPN packets are transiting a different upstream peer from Verizon and bypassing the peering bottleneck at issue. Assuming that Verizon is performing inspection of packets and throttling only Netflix packets is quite a leap.
This is exactly what's happening. I do the same thing for a specific server I use. Standard routing via FiOS results in consistent 1mb download speeds. I set up a GRE tunnel to my VPS host and I get consistent 10mb download speeds. The culprit appears to be a shitty peering connection between so-4-1-0-0.LAX01-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net (130.81.151.246) and 0.ae2.XL3.CHI13.ALTER.NET (140.222.225.187).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If only magical boxes existed that could intelligently and automatically find the fastest route for traffic.
But what would we call these magical routing boxes?
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with the 'fastest' route is that it may not be the CHEAPEST route.
If L3 really wanted to relieve pressure on their bottlenecked links to Verizon instead of trying to turn this into a PR exercise to make Verizon cave in, they could re-route traffic through Verizon's other peers with under-loaded links but that could cost L3 more money and possibly cause peering disputes with those other peers.
Re: (Score:2)
I would even say, it's quite a Quantum Leap, unfortunately it's unavailable to stream on Netflix Canada. Which is funny because it's probably available on Netflix USA which I could access via VPN too.
Re: (Score:3)
This doesn't change the fact that the customer paid for 75Mbps and got... a lot less.
Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Why should Verizon spend many billions of dollars to subsidize Netflix?
They're not. Verizon's customers are paying them to provide a service. Just because a bulk of the traffic is coming from a particular source doesn't mean it's okay for them to charge their customers for a service that they're not providing. It all comes down to Verizon trying to double-dip.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You do not understand how BGP works.
The problem isn't the data that verizon is sending to netflix, it's the data netflix is sending to verizon. Verizon messing with routing policy on netflix's announced prefix's wouldn't have an effect on verizon's streaming speeds. The traffic flows from Netflix to Verizon.
Therefore, in order to influence streaming speeds, Verizon would have to change their routing policy on how they announce their own routes in order to influence which links netflix traffic can come in on
Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score:4, Insightful)
That is a load of horseshit!
Or let me be clear. That is a load of horeshit technobabble meant to obfuscate and mislead. Level 3 was pretty clear the other day when they offered to spend a few thousand dollars to upgrade their links to Verizon. Level 3 is a backbone Internet provider. There is no reason that any link between it and another network should remain saturated if both sides are acting in good faith to serve their respective customers, especially when L3 was willing to pay the costs to upgrade Verizon's own equipement to handle more traffic which it shouldn't have had to do because it is Verizon's customers who are requesting and already paying for the content in the first place.
Verizon is choosing to not upgrade its connections to shake down Netflix, and thus pass those costs on to Verizon customers. Period.
Re: (Score:3)
Verizon is choosing not to upgrade it's peering points with Level-3 because they are no longer evenly sharing traffic up/down as all free peering arrangements have ALWAYS required, yet Level-3 doesn't want to pay for the imbalance, and Netflix doesn't want to shift some of their Verizon traffic to a different transit provider than Level-3.
Considering the huge imbalance in download and upload speeds, how exactly is anybody supposed to peer with Verizon? Verizon knowingly set up a situation in which it is impossible for any peer to be on traffic parity with Verizon. Furthermore, traffic parity is almost impossible from a business perspective. Verizon and the last-mile providers have consumers and creators at one end, everyone else has pretty much only creators. The only way for corps like Level 3 to achieve traffic parity is to offer last-mil
Re: (Score:2)
You win the most absurd analogy ever award.
Hey, nobody told me this was a contest ...
Alternative explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Routing traffic via the VPN changes the path the traffic flows over, possibly avoiding routes that are saturated and (who knows) pending upgrade.
It's tempting to imagine the internet as a giant blob of fungible bandwidth, but in reality it's just a big mess of cables some of which are higher capacity than others. Assuming malice is fun, but there isn't enough data here to say one way or another.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Alternative explanation (Score:5, Informative)
Thats how the internet is paid for. The sending provider pays the receiving provider for the bandwidth, and this is the only rational way it can be.
No. That is not how it works. The truth is that the smaller provider pays the larger provider, no matter which direction the traffic flows. Some companies, like Netflix, are nice enough to not use their size as an excuse to charge people -- they offer free peering at internet exchanges. Other companies are maximally greedy.
Re: (Score:2)
Thats how the internet is paid for. The sending provider pays the receiving provider for the bandwidth, and this is the only rational way it can be.
No. That is not how it works. The truth is that the smaller provider pays the larger provider, no matter which direction the traffic flows. Some companies, like Netflix, are nice enough to not use their size as an excuse to charge people -- they offer free peering at internet exchanges. Other companies are maximally greedy.
That's not how it works, either. A peering arrangement is an interconnection between two providers in which neither pays the other for traffic. Verizon would like to change this model and receive payment.
Re: (Score:2)
But that is not how the internet has traditionally worked. Teir 1 providers (those that pay nobody for bandwidth) which L3 and Verizon are do not pay each other ever. L3 is more than happy to increase port capacity/count and Verizon is refusing to do so. Put more simply Verizon is refusing to increase capacity in hopes to get the Comcast deal with Netflix. Netflix is also happy to give Verizon CDN gear to deploy on their network again a common practice.
Verizon is a teir 1 but pretty much an eyeball netw
Re:Alternative explanation (Score:5, Interesting)
The bandwidth disparity argument is bunk. I've love if Netflix or Level 3 would set up some data sinks in their network so I could use my FIOS to send them random data 24/7 and help even the disparity.
Thats how the internet is paid for. The sending provider pays the receiving provider for the bandwidth, and this is the only rational way it can be.
So... you're saying that Verizon should be paying me! I mean, they send me ALL THIS DATA (much of it sourced from Netflix), but I hardly send them anything. This makes me both a selfish person and someone who deserves a large monthly Verizon cheque.
Note that if Verizon doesn't want to pay a few grand for a few more 10GE ports and some short cables, they could pay even less and accept the caching servers that Netflix offers to all large ISPs; those cost just a few rack units and watts of power.
But Verizon would rather limit Netflix so that they can push their own video products.
Re: (Score:2)
I had responsibility for a corporate data network a number of years ago, when cross-country link speeds were substantially lower than they are now. About 80 sites distributed across the US. We charged a flat rate based on number of "subscribers" (network users) at each location to put a location on the network as part of our cost-recovery strategy. The CIO asked me to develop a traffic-based charge instead/in addition to the subscriber charge. We analyzed the situation as follows:
If the source of traff
Re: (Score:2)
Thats how the internet is paid for. The sending provider pays the receiving provider for the bandwidth, and this is the only rational way it can be.
Really? I'm only an end user, but my experience is that the charging is the other way round. Traffic to me is metered (and I pay for) whilst traffic which I originate is un-metered.
Re: (Score:2)
I will be an ISP that starts requesting random files from everybody else and CHARGE them if they are dumb enough to send them!!!
Thats better than the alternative, where you can just send unrequested data out to arbitrary IP addresses and then expect payment. In the scenario you suggest, the sender can at least opt out and stop sending if someone is abusing them.
This is the same reason that the sender pays the postage on snail mail and that it really cannot rationally be any other way except in rare circumstances that cannot be the general case.
Netflix pays Level3 a fee to send data to you. Verizon wants to be paid for handing d
Re: (Score:3)
This has been rather done to death (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/186576-verizon-caught-throttling-netflix-traffic-even-after-its-pays-for-more-bandwidth) , but Verizon doesn't appear to be throttling or shaping Netflix. They are running their peered links to Layer 3 at 100% capacity. Traffic that doesn't go via Layer 3 does not suffer. So if you find an alternative route that doesn't use Netflix's Layer 3 peering connections (such as a VPN) then things run well.
For this to be resolved, people re
Re: (Score:3)
It's not just Level3 (not Layer 3), it's also Alternet and possibly others. Peering has gotten tough. It's supposed to be hey, let's connect our stuff together because I want to send you a bunch of stuff and you want to send me a bunch of stuff and we both win. The Internet has evolved and that has resulted in asymmetric traffic flows where one party carries more (sometimes far more) of the burden than the other, but the cost models have remained the same.
In Verizon's mind, they receive no benefit from incr
Re: (Score:3)
That is true perhaps.
However, this is all entirely Verizon's fault. They are the entity in this arrangement that has actively encouraged assymetric use of the net by offering assymeteric service. It's really rich to see ISPs complain that they are getting too much traffic all in one direction then that's how they f*cking design their service.
Verizon is selling massive downloads. So is every other consumer ISP.
Re: (Score:2)
They are the entity in this arrangement that has actively encouraged assymetric use of the net by offering assymeteric service.
This is half true. Verizon is selling asymmetric services (although they are changing most FiOS plans to symmetric [fiercetelecom.com]).
What is not true is that asymmetric connections encourages asymmetric usage. It's the other way around, and has been since the days of dialup.
Re: (Score:2)
If residential use was closer to symmetric, just what would the outgoing content be, and how many people would want to be consuming it?
Not only that, but just how many of the residential type customers *want* to be hosting services and offering content? How many kernel source mirrors, debian/ubuntu/mint/whatever binaries mirrors, etc. do we need?
Residential, and probably quite a few business accounts, are always going to be consuming more than producing.
Re: (Score:2)
They forgot one thing, though; their residential customers. They are the ones who need the additional capacity, and without it their service will continue to degrade.
You're giving Verizon too much credit: the way you write this, you imply they care about their customers and the service they offer.
Re: (Score:2)
You say "Layer 3"(a step in the OSI model), do you mean "Level 3"(an ISP)? They are the ISP and backbone provider that has owns the CDN appliances caching and delivering the [majority of] Netflix streams in the USA.
Re: Alternative explanation (Score:2)
It's up to Netflix to buy cdn hosting to improve their speeds. ISP is just a dumb pipe, remember?
Everyone buys cdn hosting for their content except Netflix
Re: Alternative explanation (Score:5, Informative)
You obviously missed the article where Netflix supplies a tower-pc sized box with all of netflix on it to ISPs for free:
Netflix Boxes [gizmodo.com]
Re: (Score:2)
They need to pay the ISP for hosting and maintaining it.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? It's saves the ISP massive amounts of bandwidth, I'm sure that saving hugely outweighs the cost of electricity for a few hard drives and a network cable. (yes, and the occasional HDD swap).
Re: Alternative explanation (Score:4, Informative)
Bandwidth is perhaps cheaper than you suspect.
I worked for a regional ISP that serves about 50.000 subscribers. We had multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections to various peering points, one of which happens to be where Netflix peered with us. Total cost for that peerage: the cost of the extra fiber capacity, plus engineering the peer.
As opposed to housing Netflix servers at our data center. First off, to service that many potential streams might require a few boxes and a not insignificant storage array. We actually did have a similar arrangement with another very large content provider: their stuff took about a half-rack. It then needs to be added to network monitoring, and you need to train your NOC staff what to do when that little red light comes on. And the equipment will fail: the "other content providers" equipment had a MTBF of a couple of months. The hard drives will take a pounding.
And we were small enough that when we asked Netflix to co-locate in our data center for free they actually said "Not interested."
Re: Alternative explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Netflix (and Youtube and some others large ones) don't buy CDN hosting; they offer it. They offer free CDN servers which large ISPs can put in their datacenters. Doesn't matter how much Netflix offered to pay, I doubt if any existing CDN could handle Netflix's traffic along with their other customers.
Many ISPs take advantage of this, but Verizon would rather degrade Netflix's products so they can push their own products.
Re: (Score:2)
Have they started naming and shaming the ISPs who refuse to host a Netflix Open Connect box in their data centres?
Re: (Score:2)
"It's tempting to imagine the internet as a giant blob of fungible bandwidth, but in reality it's just a big mess of cables some of which are higher capacity than others."
No, it's a giant blob of fungible bandwidth when you are talking about large ISPs and major media sites. It's not the dark ages.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Routing traffic via the VPN changes the path the traffic flows over, possibly avoiding routes that are saturated and (who knows) pending upgrade.
It's tempting to imagine the internet as a giant blob of fungible bandwidth, but in reality it's just a big mess of cables some of which are higher capacity than others. Assuming malice is fun, but there isn't enough data here to say one way or another.
I suspect that whats going on is that Netflix put the majority of their traffic on Level3 and Level3 is trying to charge Verizon an exorbitant rate for enough bandwidth to handle that peer. Verizon said "No" and told Netflix to go with another peer. So Verizon has plenty of bandwidth, Netflix has plenty of bandwidth... it's where those peers are located that's the problem. Level3 has been giving Netflix huge discounts to try and force ISPs into unfriendly peer agreements.
So yes, if you VPN'd out to somewher
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect that whats going on is that Netflix put the majority of their traffic on Level3 and Level3 is trying to charge Verizon an exorbitant rate for enough bandwidth to handle that peer.
It's Verizon who is trying to charge for access to their customers (who have already payed for the service that they're not getting), not the other way around.
Re:Alternative explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that whats going on is that Netflix put the majority of their traffic on Level3 and Level3 is trying to charge Verizon an exorbitant rate for enough bandwidth to handle that peer. Verizon said "No" and told Netflix to go with another peer. So Verizon has plenty of bandwidth, Netflix has plenty of bandwidth... it's where those peers are located that's the problem.
Ok, but you're wrong.
Level3 has admitted they have settlement free peering with Verizon. Level3 does not pay Verizon anything. Verizon does not pay Level3 anything.
Netflix pays Level3. This is why Level3 gives a shit about this situation.
What's going on is that Verizon is trying to cut out the middleman. Verizon wants Netflix to pay them to get traffic into their network instead of paying Level3 to deliver traffic into the Verizon network. Why? Because they don't make any money from Level3.
Naturally, Level3 is all in a huff about Verizon trying to fuck with their revenue stream.
Re: (Score:2)
Is Verizon service even available wherever the main netflix datacenter(s) is/are? If it is, wouldn't they just need to offer a better monthly connection rate, or better speed for the same rate, and let it be a "normal" competitive service for business?
Re: (Score:2)
they are in the process of doing direct peering with netflix like comcast is doing, but it's taking a while
when the comcast deal was announced they had already done the engineering, etc
with verizon they have to build out the peering location and they are saying sometime this year
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, but there's 2 things going on that you're neglecting to mention.
1) When Level3 started delivering Netflix streams, suddenly their peering traffic was extremely unbalanced... That's when one side has to start paying the other. Verizon wants Level3 to pay, but they won't, so Verizon refuses to upgrade the interconnect. In the bad old days, these peering disputes ended with a disconnect, and big portions of the internet broke o
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't a trace-route serve to show whether traffic is flowing over a distinctly different route?
Re: (Score:2)
No, the traceroute wouldn't show the hops between your PC and the VPN server, so that part of path could not be compared. So the point the VPN packets leave the ISP network also couldn't be compared.
You could probably compare an unencrypted proxy with a direct route to Netflix.
Re: (Score:2)
Surely what you'd do is traceroute to the VPN server, which will show you where the packets leave the ISP network (as long as the VPN is outside of it), and then traceroute to Netflix via the VPN. The compare it do the route taken directly to Netflix.
Re: (Score:2)
Good point, I didn't think of that doh.
Re: (Score:3)
People assume that the Internet is a strict connection from server to client. But actually from a non-linear, non-connected viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, streamey-wimey... bits.
Re: (Score:2)
If there are many paths to a node their system should be choosing the fastest path.Verizon obviously is not doing that and deliberately allowing congestion.
And Netflix would happily give them OpenConnect appliances too, to avoid _their_ bandwidth costs as well. But Netflix competes with Verizon's VoD services - this isn't hard to figure out.
There are at least three underlying problems for the congestion issue - one is the DMCA and related copyright laws that prevent any sort of sane caching, the general fe
Re: (Score:2)
Multicast is not a viable technology for truly large scale deployments (more than a few hundred thousand hosts perhaps). Routers and switches do not have the required resources to maintain multicast routing/switching tables for millions of multicast sessions.
The correct way to solve the problem is to push it to the end nodes. They have much more CPU power and memory than routers and switches. The technology to do so has existed for a long time: P2P.
Re: (Score:3)
There are at least three underlying problems for the congestion issue - one is the DMCA and related copyright laws that prevent any sort of sane caching, the general fear of multicast that everybody on the Internet still seems to have (half a million unicast streams of the same show is insane - where are the global warming people on this?), and the grants of monopolies and/or prohibitions on competition that prevent local competition.
I agree with you that half a million unicast streams can be nuts, when it comes to on demand content, multicast is a non-starter (we'll ignore the fact that multicast is sorely lacking in security features and would require some serious re-engineering on many networks to work... there's a very big reason why inter-domain multicast routing is not seriously employed, and it has nothing to do with fear).
Think about how this traffic flows -
Sub1 wants show A and starts playing it on Netflix.
10 minutes later, Sub
Re: (Score:2)
You do not do networking for a living very well then.
The problem isn't how Verizon is egressing traffic to Netflix, it's in how Verizon is allowing traffic from Netflix to ingress to their network. Once the Netflix traffic makes it into their network, I have no doubt it is being delivered over the most efficient route.... which means jack shit when the ingress point is such a tight bottleneck. Inbound traffic engineering is a very different animal from outbound traffic engineering.
You're not incorrect in th
Role reversal (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to wonder, what would happen if customers were to start throttling the payment of ISP's?
"You will get your payment when you actually fulfil your end of our contract, but not before."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
(*) actual speeds not guaranteed.
It's in every agreement so to them, they _are_ providing the service they claim.
Re: (Score:3)
Those customers will just get disconnected.
Re: (Score:3)
Simple, they cut off your service for non-payment, and you move your internet connection to the competi....er... well, does Netflix still run a DVD service?
Re: (Score:3)
I have to wonder, what would happen if customers were to start throttling the payment of ISP's?
"You will get your payment when you actually fulfil your end of our contract, but not before."
You should go review your contract.
The Answer is Violence (Score:2)
Verizon is too big, and our government does not care.
The only answer is to actively work to destroy Verizon until they acquiesce or no longer exist.
Re: (Score:3)
Verizon is too big, and our government does not care.
The only answer is to actively work to destroy Verizon until they acquiesce or no longer exist.
Strange, it feels like we already did that once [wikipedia.org].
well now that cat's out of the bag (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to say that. They'll just play whack-a-mole and start throttling that traffic next.
Too bad it won't do any good. (Score:2)
Funny thing is (Score:2)
I recently upgraded my FIOS service and they used Netflix streaming as one of the reasons that I should do it. After going from 25/5 to 50/25 I still get downgraded quality when watching flix.
Throttling vs routing (Score:2)
However, to *really* convince people, more rigorous experiment has to be performed: find a VPN (or set up your own with a colo) that's connected as closely to Verizon as possible, as close to their peering with Netflix as possible. That way the route between Verizon and your VPN/colo is as similar
A little disappointed in slashdot (Score:3)
Seperate content creation from Bandwidth provision (Score:3)
The FCC should make Comcast and Verizon and all these other companies chose... They can be content creation companies or bandwidth providers, but not both. This is all about making it easier and more convenient to pay them for their video services than to attempt to get it from a third party it's monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior...
Faster VPN Access (Score:3)
Back when I was in the process of switching providers, I bought a subscription to a VPN service so I could have a secure connection and routable IP through public internet access points. Later one of the things I noticed with my new AT&T U-Verse service was that *all* access was faster in either latency or throughput using the VPN to tunnel through U-Verse to half way across the US including things like DNS. Some things were a little bit faster and some things were an order of magnitude faster.
Re: (Score:2)
"So obviously the traffic through the VPN is taking a different path."
Oh? Funny, my VPN tracert shows it taking pretty much the same path across Verizon's networks before hitting Level3 and Netflix.
Re: (Score:2)
If the start point of your VPN is not the VPN server IP address then your VPN is not working. Or your VPN exits within the same network as it starts which could render it pointless.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny enough, you're right, my VPN host is inside Verizon's network. But that still goes to show, it's quite possible Verizon is actively throttling that which they can see.
Re: (Score:2)
because netflix contracts with level 3 and cogent to send their data to before it reaches the ISP and that is who it goes through. netflix can't just send their data to every tier 1 backbone on the internet without paying them