
There’s something rotten in the state of online video streaming - kfitchard
http://gigaom.com/2014/02/06/theres-something-rotten-in-the-state-of-online-video-streaming-and-the-data-is-starting-to-emerge/?post_id=744271220_10152208272006221#_=_
======
j_m_b
As a comcast customer, I've noticed that if I am having a problem with
streaming video that if I go to speedtest.net, the video streams fine after
the initial ping test from speedtest.net. It will be fine for a few moments
(seconds to minutes), but will slow down or stutter again eventually. A fresh
visit to speedtest.net again corrects the problem. I have a hunch that a visit
to speedtest.net will disable traffic shaping for a set period of time in
order to convince people that their connection is fine.

It is interesting that in the article about Verizon's shaping of traffic to
AWS that the tech support had the author go to speedtest.net and test his
traffic in order to tell him "see no problems!". I've had similar responses
from AT&T when I was a DSL subscriber.

I understand that traffic shaping should only affect particular sites and
that,in theory,there would be no need for a temporary disabling of traffic
shaping for a speedtest. My theory is that due to the high volume of packets
needed in order to have a good result on speedtest.net, the analyses of
packets at the router for traffic shaping is enough of a slowdown to affect
the results.

Anyone else ever notice this? Any alternative explanations as to why going to
speedtest.net would suddenly make paused streaming video run again? I notice
this mainly when watching live streaming youtube events or sometimes when I am
watching netflix during peak hours.

I would love to hear alternative hypothesis as to what is going so that they
could be tested!

~~~
coffeedrinker
Netflix is unwatchable during prime time where I live.

However, I have also noted that on two separate occasions when I began
examining the Frontier FIOS site, I received a personal knock on my door from
my local Comcast representative. Wondering if there was a connection to my
search for another provider and the person at my door, I asked her if she was
talking to everyone in the neighborhood or just me. It was just me--they sent
a person out to personally ask me about my Comcast service.

All they have to do is fix the evening streaming.

~~~
codezero
And maybe stop monitoring your personal searches, right?

~~~
angersock
Yeah, that's creepy as fuck.

------
AJ007
No one has pointed out that this is bad for the providers throttling traffic.

If Time Warner, Comcast, and AT&T want their names to be associated with
budget brands then its ok. Customers accept poor quality when the price is
really low and there is no lock in (pre-paid mobile phone service.) Good luck
getting those people to purchase premium services from you years in to the
future.

On Hacker News we complain a lot about things most people don't care about
like privacy and security. Most big companies can disregard those issues with
minimal visible impact to their business long term. Video streaming quality is
different because its what basically all of your customers are doing. Anyone
with an IQ over 70 knows something is wrong, and you can't excuse it away.

Its possible that the peak bandwidth doesn't exist. In that case these ISPs
are overselling their "inventory" much like airlines oversell seats. It could
be early signs of infrastructure issues to investors.

~~~
maratd
> If Time Warner, Comcast, and AT&T want their names to be associated with
> budget brands then its ok.

It is definitely not OK. Time Warner is absolute garbage and has been for a
very long time. Cablevision has an excellent network.

I know this very well.

Unfortunately, some towns contracted with Time Warner and some with
Cablevision and you can't pick who you want as your provider ... unless you
decide on where you live based on the available ISP.

As much as I love a good connection, I will not make my decision on where to
live based on the available internet provider. Reputation is worthless unless
people have a choice.

~~~
warfangle
> unless you decide on where you live based on the available ISP.

Interestingly, if I ever move out of my current neighborhood, this (along with
apartment price) will dictate where I look. I'm pretty happy with Cablevision
for now, though.

~~~
drcube
What happens when you pick a town with a good ISP, which then gets bought by
GiantEvilCo a month after you move in?

I don't think voting with your feet and mortgages is a solution. Perhaps
forgoing entirely? When Charter dicked me around in 08, I went back to dialup
for over a year before DSL became available at my house. Screw 'em. I can
still read HN and text-based websites at 56k.

Which isn't a whole lot slower than AT&T is giving me now. But at least they
don't treat me like a subhuman ATM like Charter did.

------
blueblob
Make the cable companies common carriers!

[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-net-
neutra...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-net-neutrality-
directing-fcc-classify-internet-providers-common-carriers/5CWS1M4P?t=1)

~~~
Buttons840
I see that petition has already meet the required signature count. I haven't
followed the state of petitions.whitehouse.gov; do we expect them to actually
comment on this petition?

~~~
blueblob
I am not sure. There seems to be evidence that they do not respond to a few
petitions, even when they meet the 100K signatures (at least immediately)[1].
Since [1]'s release, it appears that they have responded to a few of the
petitions mentioned, and if you look at the site itself[2] (assuming "popular"
is actually sorting by the number of signatures) there are only 15 unanswered
petitions that meet the 100K requirement (though they changed the limit a few
times and some may have met the original requirement). I suspect that they
only respond to petitions that are in the mutual interest of the public and
the politicians themselves but I have no evidence to support it.

[1] [http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2014/01/white-house-
owe...](http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2014/01/white-house-owes-
responses-30-citizen-petitions-some-have-been-waiting-years/76172/) [2]
[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions/popular/0/2/0](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions/popular/0/2/0)

------
nas
I wonder if publishing these metrics would go a long way to solving the
problem. I know I'd must prefer to sign up with an ISP that doesn't throttle
traffic I care about. I guess the big problem with that idea is that in many
areas of North America there is very little competition in the ISP
marketplace.

If the government was going to do something, I'd prefer it concentrate on
increasing competition. Ideally, every home should have at least two or three
options for high speed network access.

~~~
ForHackernews
Google is making performance metrics for YouTube public to help people when
choosing an ISP (in places where there is a choice): [http://www.ntca.org/new-
edge/video/google-to-rate-isps-based...](http://www.ntca.org/new-
edge/video/google-to-rate-isps-based-on-youtube-metrics)

~~~
JRobertson
Direct link to the Google Reports site:
[http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/#how_video_gets...](http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/#how_video_gets_to_you)

------
ItendToDisagree
"But they built the last mile so they should be able to do whatever they want
with it..." /sarcasm

You know that comment is coming to this discussion at some point.

Wish there was a good answer to this. Making internet connectivity a 'utility'
has its downsides and upsides. It really is becoming a pressing issue though
(and not just because of netflix being slowed).

~~~
ddorian43
weren't they payed with tax money to build the infrastructure?

~~~
skywhopper
Varies by municipality, but pretty much everywhere the "last mile" is a local
monopoly, granted by the town, county, or city with the rights to do so. And
so long as that's the case there's no real competition and thus no way for
Internet users to route around these abusive practices of their ISPs.

~~~
klipt
What's funny is that now the incumbents have the monopoly (paid for using
taxpayer money) they're pushing to prevent new competitors like Google fiber
from working with the municipalities at all:
[http://consumerist.com/2014/01/30/kansas-legislature-
wants-t...](http://consumerist.com/2014/01/30/kansas-legislature-wants-to-
stop-any-other-kansas-cities-from-getting-google-fiber/)

------
incision
Reminds me of the Comcast situation with Bitorrent in 2007 [0].

I have little doubt that ISPs will continue to escalate this game of service
degradation and denial without strict regulation.

0: [http://consumerist.com/2007/10/27/damning-proof-comcast-
cont...](http://consumerist.com/2007/10/27/damning-proof-comcast-contracted-
to-sandvine/)

~~~
jcampbell1
Many people don't realize much of the bit torrent debate ended because bit
torrent switched from TCP to µTP. The problem was bit torrent clients caused
massive congestion by making hundreds of TCP connections. µTP is extremely
congestion/network friendly. It backs off based on latency, so it doesn't fill
every buffer on the network.

~~~
zokier
The BitTorrent discussion didn't end because of uTP. It ended because ISPs got
bigger fish to fry. Fish with actual money, like Google/Youtube and Netflix.

~~~
pessimizer
Yup. In 2007, bittorrent was 25% of internet traffic. With streaming becoming
the standard way to consume since, bittorrent has become a drop in the bucket.

At least torrenters only download content once...

------
tenpoundhammer
This is fine let them keep screwing around with Netflix, Amazon, and
Google(Youtube) it won't be long before they get pissed and build their own
internet backbone/service providers(already happening).

I can't wait to get Amazon High Speed Internet.

So please, let them keep acting jerks.

------
EEGuy
I wish ISPs business where completely out of the content business.

Slowing competing content could be justified as a "fiduciary duty", yet it's
much simpler than that: Gatekeepers and highwaymen, extracting private taxes
on content they did not create.

------
ogreyonder
Is there any interest in a Chrome plugin that would passively report
anonymized download speed for things like YouTube or Amazon? I can imagine
that kind of info would be useful.

~~~
existencebox
I think if you could do some detection of what connectivity is being used, and
other sorts of relevant connection data, it would be a valuable motivator to
see, "We've detected you are 30% slower than other customers with x and y
differences in service"

This is super hand wavy, but I think with proper data it could be a useful
tool.

~~~
shigginbotham
That's what many of the tests at M-Labs are trying to do (I encourage people
to take a look
[http://www.measurementlab.net/](http://www.measurementlab.net/)) but packets
don't traverse networks in a straightforward path. I think focusing on that
data and trying to figure out ways to prove traffic manipulation and pinpoint
consistent places/times/applications where it slows would be valuable. It's
also worth understanding how the FCC currently measures speed and treats speed
tests. It's not at all straightforward [http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-
broadband-america/2013/develope...](http://www.fcc.gov/measuring-broadband-
america/2013/developer-and-researcher-faq-measuring-broadband-america-
feb-2013)

We should have a technically-dominated discussion about tests and the right
way to look for problems, that we aren't having today because it's so wonky.
We totally need data, but we also need to figure out what data will be most
useful to prove bad behavior. For example, if my speed drops to 1 Mbps for 30
minutes during prime time but my speeds the rest of the day are 55 Mbps then
that blip is heavily discounted, but shouldn't be given that I'm probably
trying to stream video.

~~~
nitrogen
Indeed; ISP-level stats aren't fine-grained enough. We need route- and hop-
level stats to find the real bottlenecks.

------
stox
We've all known this was coming for years, actually, it is amazing it has
taken this long.

------
kriswill
If AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other ISPs are intentionally limiting bandwidth
to certain content providers, as the measurements seem to indicate, they may
be actually doing us a favor. By doing this, they are causing people to
discuss the issue and eventually lead to market changing trends or new
regulations and potential legal hazards for ISPs that do this in the future.

If anything, Amazon is a smart company, there might be an opportunity here for
last-mile internet delivery...Amazon Fiber Prime anyone?

------
hussong
I wish ISPs could stay out of the content business since their content
curation and presentation are usually subpar at best.

~~~
amurmann
I wish we could amend the constitution that they are not allowed to do
anything at all but sell bits to consumers. No selling of content, access to
consumers, devices or ice cream or whatever other scheme they come up with.
Their sole interest has to be selling more bits! If they even as much as think
about doing anything else there need to bd draconian penalties. I would even
argue that they are endangering infrastructure and charge them with terrorism.

------
fredgrott
The most interesting thing is the astroturffing comments form unnamed Verizon
employees in the first 10 comments

------
steeve
So now not only's the catalog is meh, the quality/stream too.

Why are they pushing people so much to piracy?

And don't get me started about the situation once you're outside the US.

------
goggles99
> _While I was seeing my episode of The Good Wife falter at what appeared to
> be 1.9 Mbps, I was able to measure connection speeds of 28 Mbps to my house
> using a Speedtest.net test from Ookla. This is exactly the dichotomy that
> the M-Lab data is showing, and my example is not an isolated one; Comcast
> users have been complaining for months._

How do we know that it is not just the provider being sapped for bandwidth? I
notice that speed tests I run in the mid-day and evening come back pretty much
the same, but Netflix takes noticeably longer to buffer in the evening. I
always assumed this was because their servers were much busier then.

~~~
xur17
I'm guessing it's that link to Netflix from your provider that is busier at
that time. I use a local provider for internet service, that despite offering
crappy customer service, has given me consistent speeds, and no buffering
issues with Netflix or Youtube at all.

------
shmerl
The first rotten thing there is DRM. There are no DRM-free video services
where you can buy anything (Headweb doesn't count because it's regionally
restricted). So there simply is nothing to chose from. Failure at step 0. It's
not just rotten - it's completely decomposed.

