
Netflix urged by EU to slow streaming to save internet - Cantbekhan
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/19/tech/netflix-internet-overload-eu/index.html
======
illumanaughty
This is a non-issue & complete speculation. Netflix already manages stream
quality based on network conditions and has likely done so for years. If the
government wants to ensure network access they should be talking to the ISPs,
IMO.

~~~
leereeves
That's a long term solution.

Short term, ISPs can't increase bandwidth availability, and Netflix can reduce
bandwidth consumption.

And I'm not sure it's a nonissue. The videos in my online classes are pausing
every few seconds lately. And watching those in a lower quality isn't an
option because the writing needs to be readable.

On the other hand, Zoom works better than EdX, so it may be the EdX servers
that are overwhelmed.

~~~
new2628
Why can't ISPs reduce Netflix data?

~~~
franky47
Some countries still have "Net Neutrality" laws preventing just that.

~~~
dogma1138
The EU for the most part doesn't, traffic shaping is still legal just a
practice that died mainly due to the difficulty of implementing it these days
than due to net neutrality.

[https://berec.europa.eu/eng/netneutrality/](https://berec.europa.eu/eng/netneutrality/)

>ISPs are prohibited from blocking or slowing down of Internet traffic, except
where necessary. The exceptions are limited to: traffic management to comply
with a legal order, to ensure network integrity and security, and to manage
congestion, provided that equivalent categories of traffic are treated
equally.

------
andybak
How ironic. Maybe CNN should stop autoplaying video that I don't even want?

I'm sure that will help bandwidth.

~~~
DamnYuppie
Can we get that turned of on ESPN too while we are at it please!!!

------
jedberg
Lots of comments in here getting it exactly right. Asking Netflix to change
will have almost no effect. Netflix already adjusts stream quality based on
"internet weather" and already has most of the stream sources really close to
the user. And has for years and is pretty good at it now. (Source: I worked
there and worked on a lot of this stuff).

But it also makes sense for the CEO to make the political gesture and appease
the EU commissioner.

~~~
lxgr
Could it not have a significant impact on the last mile of providers (which is
often a shared medium)?

Deprioritizing Netflix would also solve that, but given that this is illegal
in several countries, providers there are likely lacking the infrastructure or
know how to implement such a policy on short notice, even if these laws were
temporarily suspended.

~~~
jedberg
Unlikely, because Netflix accounts for traffic on the entire segment and
aggregates data. It would be possible that you are the only one on your
segment watching Netflix and everyone else is using Zoom or something, but if
that were the case then your one stream wouldn't make a difference if it was
at lower quality.

In other words, this would only help if a lot of people on your segment are
watching Netflix, and if a lot of people on your segment are watching Netflix,
then Netflix has a whole bunch of data on exactly how full that segment is and
will adjust accordingly.

~~~
lxgr
That makes sense! I didn't consider that Netflix would actively scale down
quality in that way (i.e., backing off to achieve less than 1/n proportional
bandwidth share), but ISPs probably ask for something like that quite
regularly.

------
sudhirj
Netflix has caches all over the world
[https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/peering/#locations](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/peering/#locations)
\- don't see how this would make any significant difference to backbones. I'm
in India and my Netflix downloads mostly come from a few neighborhoods away -
I seriously doubt Europe has it much worse.

~~~
lxgr
It's not only the backbones that are getting congested. In most access
technologies, there will be some shared medium between users and these caches,
and often that shared medium is close to saturated.

------
swinglock
Is this really a problem at all? Doesn't Netflix select a lower quality stream
automatically if the player buffer is being read from faster than it's being
filled?

It's already in their interest to not have users watching their video
"Buffering...". I'm sure that makes users disconnect. If users disconnect they
won't generate revenue.

In other words, in cases of congestion on the Internet, doesn't Netflix and
similar services already "slow down streaming"?

~~~
blensor
Doesn't adaptive stream quality or any form of responding to congestions
require the link to be saturated first. At least I don't know how it should
detect that the link is almost saturated but not quite yet. So every time it
detects that the link has been saturated the damage is already done.

Compared to say, just capping the quality a certain amount below the current
maximum for a while. For example turning off the 4K stream for the next 2
weeks. I guess people can live with HD for a while.

~~~
swinglock
Yes, but that's how TCP/IP (the Internet) has worked successfully for 40
years.

Basic congestion control uses packet drops as a signal of congestion and slows
down. You get packet drops if a queue was filled somewhere, which would be the
bottleneck between two stations. That's business as usual.

The best queue to fill is as close as possible to a station, i.e. in the user
modem or first hop, if not the application itself. If we begin to get
congestion between ISP networks it won't be as pretty but it won't "break the
Internet" and it's literally their job to upgrade the connectivity between
networks before that happens. Plenty of bandwidth means you don't need QoS.

That being said, there are modern congestion control algorithms that try to be
more clever. Your web browser may already be using one of them.

~~~
zozbot234
> Basic congestion control uses packet drops as a signal of congestion and
> slows down. You get packet drops if a queue was filled somewhere, which
> would be the bottleneck between two stations.

Bufferbloat gets in the way of that. As does packet loss due to non-congestion
reasons, e.g. noisy or unstable connections at the physical layer.

~~~
swinglock
Large queues without AQM is indeed problematic but the industry is far more
aware of this nowadays than it used to be.

If the EU really wanted to save the Internet they should have done something
about that, only it's 20 years too late.

------
the8472
IXP traffic only seems to be up by 10% or so. And any direct peering with ISPs
should be up to netflix and that ISP to manage.

[https://www.de-
cix.net/en/locations/germany/frankfurt/statis...](https://www.de-
cix.net/en/locations/germany/frankfurt/statistics) [https://stats.ams-
ix.net/index.html](https://stats.ams-ix.net/index.html)
[https://portal.linx.net/lans_flows](https://portal.linx.net/lans_flows)

~~~
cobookman
Netflix also is deployed directly in ISP's DCs.
[https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/)

~~~
the8472
That's the direct peering part I mention. It's up to the parties to hash that
out bilaterally on a case by case basis, there shouldn't be a need for netflix
to throttle things across the board.

~~~
nitrogen
Direct peering is probably not quite the same thing as installing a cache in
an ISP's racks.

------
danielfoster
I can’t speak for other EU countries, but Germany has systematically neglected
its network infrastructure over the last decade. Even in Berlin fast, reliable
Internet is hard to come by. I often find my LTE turn into Edge at the blink
of an eye.

We should urge leaders (public and private) to do a better job and hold them
accountable for bad policy.

~~~
downrightmike
The USA paid $4 billion to get FTTH by 2004, didn't happen. ISPs still got the
money. I'm honestly hoping Starlink shakes the ISPs to the ground.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Support your local municipal fiber efforts. StarLink is cool, but pulling your
own fiber financed with muni bonds at super low interest rates is available
today. Returns are chasing safe yield, muni bonds are safe yield.

[https://muninetworks.org/communitymap](https://muninetworks.org/communitymap)

These folks in the northern rural parts of England do it stupid cheap:

[https://b4rn.org.uk/](https://b4rn.org.uk/)

Contacting your local community representation/government about this can be
done from the comfort of your home during self-isolation.

~~~
gigatexal
There's dark fiber in my home town -- what would it take to run a muni isp and
finally give Comcast and co the finger?

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://startyourownisp.com/](https://startyourownisp.com/) to start (it’s
wireless last mile centric though). I will return with more links later when
I’m back at my desktop and have access to my bookmarks. I ran a small ISP a
lifetime ago, and have also helped others set them up.

~~~
gigatexal
past-tense -- would you do it again?

There's a company already doing gigabit over wifi to homes but you run into
line of sight issues -- if figure with all the dark fiber we would just patch
into that

~~~
toomuchtodo
As long as there are people without good internet options and I could break
even, yes. I plan on doing this in the Eastern Tennessee mountains, but I am
somewhat financially secure and work remotely, YMMV.

Like any bootstrapped venture, make it a side gig until you reach a
comfortably sustainable run rate and subscriber base. You’re not going to get
rich as a private ISP, but it can be a comfortable small biz.

~~~
gigatexal
Not losing money but being a viable alternative to the incumbents would be a
huge win for me.

I bet I would need to get some serious networking skills also, no?

------
mywittyname
Even HD streaming from Netflix requires around 7 megabits of bandwidth. That's
not too much. If the internet infrastructure is struggling the handle that
much throughput in 2020, it's the fault of ISPs, not Netflix.

Streaming video content has been ubiquitous for years now. A lot of households
probably have 3-4 devices streaming HD content for hours during "prime-time."
So ISPs should have kept up.

------
fulafel
Let's not forget how much we've slowed broadband rate of improvement lately.
In 2000-2010 speeds were doubling every few years with ADSL generations and
fiber was just around the corner. The tech is there but the investment is not,
from engineering POV we could easily and cheaply have 10G at home in western
cities for everyone.

~~~
tialaramex
Rule of thumb: Apparent exponential growth means you've zoomed in too far on
the chart you're looking at.

The important change was actually always-on Network access, but that's often
muddled up with the step to 512kbps or more commonly 1MBps DSL service
labelled "broadband" \- because for most users both happened together.

There wasn't then and isn't now a practical need for "10G at home in western
cities for everyone". Getting to 10Mbps allowed almost all the applications
you'd actually want, and 100Mbps makes that practical if several people in a
household are doing different things - maybe you're in a a video conference
while the kids watch movies. But continued exponential growth needs a
compelling application, and no practical application was found.

Fibre (often muddled together with these higher bandwidth offerings) makes
sense for new builds because it's cheaper to produce and has good reliability.
But ripping out working copper networks to add fibre is like demolishing an
otherwise perfectly good bridge to put in a nicer bridge. It's not impossible
but it is a waste of resources.

~~~
fulafel
Well, the mobile side is certainly betting on "if you build the bandwidth, the
apps will come".

In fixed broadband the same is still happening albeit more slowly, we have
streaming tv, then hd/4k streaming movies, then games ala ps live/Stadia,
enormous gb console/pc game downloads .. new apps are continuously enabled by
improving bw & latency.

~~~
filleokus
I moved from 100 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s (up/down both times) and haven't really
noticed a difference. I'm still the only one using it in my household, mostly
over wifi which caps me around ≈ 300 Mbits/s effectively.

I think you have to consider the quite limited multi tasking for bandwidth
consumption. Worst case scenario I'm downloading some big file and streaming
video at the same time, but that happens very early. Most realistically I'm
only using one service at a time.

We also have to consider the asymmetrical nature of service consumption.
Netflix et. al aren't event close to saturating a 100 mbit/s connection with
video, nor are most places I download stuff so fast that I'm saturating my
wifi-link.

This will probably age bad, but I think "100 Mbit/s low-latency bandwidth per
person ought to be enough for anyone".

------
smokey_the_bear
I've been impressed that Zoom isn't breaking down. I'm on it all day, and even
my kids now have TaeKwonDo three days a week over Zoom.

~~~
notyourday
If the stuff is breaking down already then has been improperly engineered from
the foundation up. Very few places are already in the work from home mode
apart from fairly technologically forward companies.

If the situation continues, I would expect the load on conferencing demand to
be at least 10x of what it is now when an average 4-10 person business starts
doing WFH.

------
swinglock
I'm smelling ISP lobbyists.

They want to abuse the situation by inventing a problem and getting support
from politicians with no knowledge and plenty to lose during a humanitarian
disaster - all of it to be able to introduce "HD packages" and similar later,
so you get to pay more while they get to invest less. This is a great first
towards selling "services" (by holding them hostage) and not being a "pipe"
(which is their job).

Think of the children.

------
ffk
Right now would be a fantastic time for these ISPs to start installing Open
Connect Appliances. It'll keep most Netflix traffic off of the backbone.

[https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/appliances/)

~~~
iptrans
It’s not up to the ISPs. Netflix requires a minimum of 5 Gbps of traffic
before an ISP qualifies for an appliance.

~~~
ceejayoz
It's up to the ISPs to apply, isn't it?

~~~
iptrans
Do you have any reason to believe that all those that qualify haven’t applied?

~~~
ceejayoz
Laziness, lack of awareness, being under the 5 Gbps limit a year ago when they
took a look, any number of other reasons?

------
rkangel
This is in direct conflict with what the (UK) broadband providers have said:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51870732](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51870732)

------
teilo
Of note:

"Netflix said it already adjusts the quality of streams to available network
capacity, and uses a special delivery network that keeps its library closer to
users as a way of consuming less bandwidth.

"The Commission said that while there has been a sharp increase in internet
usage, no outages or adverse affects have so far been reported."

So I'm not sure what the problem here is.

Meanwhile here in the US, my company has been holding large video conferencing
sessions (80+ people) for the first time ever, on Google Hangouts Meet.
They've been flawless. Sure, that can change, but I have a hard time believing
we aren't already near peak "at home" usage.

------
jbob2000
Are actual technical people reporting issues with internet bandwidth, or are
these unjustified fears by politicians?

~~~
ldng
Yes, I'm seeing issues and slowdown.

~~~
rodiger
Like what? Is it an issue with specific services/providers? Or total internet
bandwidth? Anyone know the bandwidth the submarine cables can handle in their
current configuration?

What's the real bottleneck here?

~~~
jrockway
I don't think the backbone of the Internet cares about this. ISPs get a box
with all of Netflix's content in it, so you probably never go out to the
Internet to watch something on Netflix. (YouTube also does this, though
obviously they don't cache every video in every local ISP's cache, and I
believe that Apple has a system like this as well.)

If there is any slowdown, it is likely due to limitations in the last mile.
Netflix isn't sending 4k video streams from California to everyone else in the
world individually, assuming everything is working.

------
tibbydudeza
Fortunately SAPGUI uses up so little bandwidth , can't Netflix and chill they
still expect me to do work.

~~~
hef19898
Nice one! On premise hosting could save you so!

------
techntoke
Can we get the millions if not billions back we gave to ISPs to roll out and
improve broadband services that they never delivered?

~~~
me_me_me
We should give them more money to improve infrastructure.

I am sure 'this' time it will work.

~~~
jdmg94
nice try ISP executives!

------
thedance
My ISP, Sonic, said yesterday their evening peak traffic is up 25% since Bay
Area counties ordered people to stay at home.

[https://twitter.com/dane/status/1240155938193051648/photo/1](https://twitter.com/dane/status/1240155938193051648/photo/1)

------
gorgoiler
Here in the UK there is talk of 2020 being the year society gets its act
together and starts making significant changes for the better. I’ve heard this
praised as an opportunity, or bemoaned as lefty idealists trying to take over.

One positive outcome we can all agree on though: the end of BT OpenReach’s
passive aggressive “monopoly“ couldn’t come soon enough though. The amount of
makework that goes on in UK broadband caused by OpenReach’s emplacement at the
heart of it all is ridiculous.

Kelly Communications (a major broadband hookup contractor for OpenReach and
Virgin): your days are numbered.

Any mention of Netflix is a deflection.

------
duncans
Plenty of headroom:
[https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1240286131658293249](https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1240286131658293249)

------
adrianmonk
Where are the calls for cable companies to downgrade their traditional TV
channels (set top box) from HD to SD so that they can re-provision some of the
bandwidth toward internet?

I don't know enough about the tech to know for sure that this is possible, but
it seems likely since it is the same wire and they offer different levels of
TV and internet service.

If I'm right and it is possible, why is it that only streaming providers are
being asked to sacrifice the quality of their service?

------
throwaway55554
How soon until we find out the EU was nudged to do this by ISPs that can't
handle the network load and want to push blame? I mean, everyone knows that
Netflix already uses available bandwidth measuring to adjust bitrate/quality.

------
jiveturkey
[http://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_4ebb7231fb7dfae120768199d6b...](http://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_4ebb7231fb7dfae120768199d6bd1430)

Why can't ISPs throttle them??

------
igetspam
Netflix solve backbone pressure with open connect. Last mile delivery is still
up to the ISP but that won't "break the internet."

------
speedgoose
Isn't it automatic? If the network speed is slow, Netflix will switch to a
lower bandwidth video stream.

------
paxys
"Urged" by who exactly? Some random politician who thinks the internet is a
series of tubes?

~~~
vsl
Pretty much: Thierry Breton. A political hack with a pressing need to feel
relevant in the crisis and nothing useful to do.

The daily briefing at ec.europa.eu was edited after Netflix caved, but
yesterday it was evident from it that the person responsible had no clue about
how any of it works, was deeply confused by the difference between "the
Internet" and _mobile_ networks.

Part of the text freaking urged people to "use Wi-Fi" to relieve Internet
congestion. Because as everybody knows, Wi-Fi uses magic and bypasses the
Internet.

So we got our 25% reduction in Netflix quality on broadband connections
because some moron was told by telcos that mobile networks are strained. While
the actually competent people at IXes all over EU are saying there's nothing
to worry about, they know how to do their job.

EU in a nutshell for you.

------
techntoke
Poor ISPs can't deliver the broadband that we pay for and now it is the
customers fault. :(

~~~
revax
Well, ISP design their network for the average broadband used (plus a safety
margin) and not for the worst case scenario.

Just like the electricity utility companies cannot provide everyone at the
same time with the maximum power they are allowed to use.

~~~
chrismeller
Sometimes I really wish people got their internet bill and saw their peak vs.
off-peak usage as something like megabits per second, just like they do with
their power bill in kilowatts per hour. You could even provide the same kind
of "neighbors near you used" metrics.

Each measure could be based off of what the ISP has factored in for the
"average" usage at a given time. It would be a purely synthetic number, but it
would give people a better idea of exactly what they use, when, and how that
compares.

~~~
tialaramex
My ISP provides me detailed traffic charts. For example on Monday night I lost
link-layer service (as did a neighbour and perhaps my whole street, this isn't
exactly the ideal time to go asking everybody in person) and I can see that on
the chart, and then I can see the next night when I had a multi-way video
conference with friends for several hours.

Apparently in March 2019 I used a total of 106GB of download 25GB of upload,
and this month so far is way below those numbers. This is biased by me working
from home, so hour-long video conference calls aren't a new thing for me.

The ISP's policy (for which they charge significantly more than a typical ISP
in my country) is to "never be the bottleneck". If things are too slow it is
never (intentionally) their fault. So that's one reason they provide these
charts - you can see latency info in them, drop rates, everything.

------
m3kw9
Would edge servers alleviate some of the bandwidth issue for this?

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
That’s what the openconnect service does. It’s an appliance installed directly
into the ISP data center.

------
aorth
How much would AV1 help this?

------
Animats
What does "standard definition" mean today? NTSC, 480i, 30FPS? HDTV, 1080p,
30FPS?

------
say_it_as_it_is
"Pornhub urged to slow streaming to prevent breaking the internet"

------
sschueller
How about instead of urging people to do something they wont, remove content
or only make certain content available at certain times for certain people.

------
saiya-jin
Nobody should be surprised by this, I mean if you lock down hundreds of
millions in western countries, what will they do in 2020 but online?

I am fine with throttling these services, hospitals and research should be
given top priority, followed by all remote workers (or general traffic if
that's hard to distinguish). These massive leisure services should be at the
very bottom of priority.

~~~
paulie_a
I fully disagree, no one should be given priority.

~~~
smkellat
There are basic communications principles that pre-date having an Internet.
One of them is that emergency traffic let alone health & welfare traffic have
precedence over routine traffic on communications systems. There can be
voluntary prioritization of traffic to support emergency response now or the
full legal power of multiple nation-states can be brought to bear to ensure
traffic supporting emergency response gets handled first.

What we have here is a critical vulnerability in that too much is dependent
upon one backbone.

------
alecco
The problem is in Europe Google/CloudFlare/Akamai/Netflix/Amazon tend to have
DCs in Ireland/Netherlands. And there was obviously little investment in
backbone fiber connecting across countries. And even worse for services based
in USA.

Now EU politicians are shift-blaming after they blew their budget and have
nothing to show.

~~~
jgrahamc
You are 100% wrong about Cloudflare. We have servers in:

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Athens, Greece

Barcelona, Spain

Belgrade, Serbia

Berlin, Germany

Brussels, Belgium

Bucharest, Romania

Budapest, Hungary

Chișinău, Moldova

Copenhagen, Denmark

Cork, Ireland

Dublin, Ireland

Düsseldorf, Germany

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Frankfurt, Germany

Geneva, Switzerland

Gothenburg, Sweden

Hamburg, Germany

Helsinki, Finland

Istanbul, Turkey

Kyiv, Ukraine

Lisbon, Portugal

London, United Kingdom

Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

Madrid, Spain

Manchester, United Kingdom

Marseille, France

Milan, Italy

Moscow, Russia

Munich, Germany

Nicosia, Cyprus

Oslo, Norway

Paris, France

Prague, Czech Republic

Reykjavík, Iceland

Riga, Latvia

Rome, Italy

Saint Petersburg, Russia

Sofia, Bulgaria

Stockholm, Sweden

Tallinn, Estonia

Thessaloniki, Greece

Vienna, Austria

Vilnius, Lithuania

Warsaw, Poland

Zagreb, Croatia

Zürich, Switzerland

~~~
antoinealb
And for Google, we have CDN PoP in

Amsterdam, Netherlands (3) Budapest, Hungary Dublin, Ireland Frankfurt,
Germany (3) Groningen, Netherlands Hamburg, Germany (2) Hamina, Finland
London, England (3) Madrid, Spain (2) Marseille, France Milan, Italy Munich,
Germany Paris, France (2) Prague, Czech Republic Sofia, Bulgaria St. Ghislain,
Belgium Stockholm, Sweden (2) Warsaw, Poland Zurich, Switzerland (2)

[https://cloud.google.com/cdn/docs/locations](https://cloud.google.com/cdn/docs/locations)

