

USA ISP Speed Index - justinzollars
http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/usa

======
tinbad
I have Comcast home internet in the bay area (Speedtest is around 30mbit
down/8 mbit up) and every time I try to watch anything on Netflix it buffers
for a minute and the resolution usually stays unacceptably low (320p?!) while
usually having to buffer again every 2-5 minutes, sometimes for the whole run
time of the show. Meanwhile, Comcast's own XFINITY streaming service delivers
instantly (no buffering) at full HD resolution.

I actually never understood what the whole net neutrality discussion is about,
as it's very obvious that we're already getting screwed over by ISPs.

~~~
rosser
Contrariwise, I have Sonic's "Fusion" bonded ADSL in SF. My modem and
Speedtest.net report around 12/2 Mbits down/up, and both Netflix and Amazon
Prime consistently stream flawless HD for me.

~~~
cowsandmilk
poking around, it seems Sonic is part of Open Connect. I would expect that to
explain a lot.

~~~
kbenson
For Netflix yes, but I doubt that explains Amazon Prime.

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bhousel
The fine print: "These ratings reflect the average performance of all Netflix
streams on each ISPs network from Nov. 2012 through Sept. 2013 and average
performance during prime time starting in Oct. 2013. The average is well below
the peak performance due to many factors including the variety of encodes we
use to deliver the TV shows and movies we carry as well as home Wi-Fi and the
variety of devices our members use. Those factors cancel out when comparing
across ISPs, so these relative rankings are a good indicator of the consistent
performance typically experienced across all users on an ISP network. - See
more at:
[http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/usa#sthash.ufsSY1Bi.dpuf"](http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/usa#sthash.ufsSY1Bi.dpuf")

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aaront
I wonder why Canada is never on this? Our ISPs deserve a little public
humiliation.

~~~
middleclick
Right! I even entered /canada manually but it seems like they just don't
measure it. Though humiliation means nothing to the Big Three but it is still
fun to watch how horrible our internet providers are.

~~~
jmreid
I actually have an amazing ISP (start.ca, uses Rogers' cable network, but with
their own peering infrastructure behind it)

I always hear about people saying "I can't play YouTube videos!" or like the
comments above this "Netflix keeps buffering!". I've had absolutely zero
issues like that.

But, I'm starting to think that people's issues with their home internet comes
down to their network setup. I have the fast Asus RT-N66u with Tomato
firmware, good QoS rules, Apple TV wired and not wireless, etc.

Maybe some of these folks have the crappy gateway from the ISP, or really bad
wireless environments, or bad cabling.

Case in point, I was at a person's house the other day who wasn't even aware
that their DSL connection from Bell was disconnecting every 5-10 mins for
30secs or so (probably due to bad phone lines in the old building).

But they went on watching Netflix and checking their email totally unaware. So
Netflix drops it quality or buffers a little then continues on it's way and
people go "Oh man, my ISP sucks! Netflix is always buffering!"

I bet there's a good business in going around to people's homes to fix network
issues.

~~~
lstamour
Yeah. I agree. I was with start.ca Rogers cable on the 150/10 plan and at that
point you really need gigabit or 802.11ac to feel the speed of your home
internet. Luckily I've both, and switched back to Rogers to have a go with
their 250/20 plan. I sometimes feel like I'm the only one on HN satisfied with
my ISP. Even if I'm paying too much for it ($125.99/mth), consistent downloads
of 270-320mbps and an uplink of 20mbps with a terabyte bandwidth cap is
nothing to sneeze at. I suppose I've Teksavvy/start to thank for it. I still
highly recommend start.ca for those that aren't as insane about speed as I am
:) But don't get me started on people who use the ISP's free email address and
so cannot switch...

~~~
codfrantic
My guess is many people on HN are happy with their ISP but you never hear from
them :-)

I have 100/100 from xs4all.nl with no bandwidth cap whatsoever :-) (55€ /
month and it includes spotify premium)

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CWuestefeld
I don't see that this tells us anything of interest at all. It's certainly not
saying how fast a given ISP _can_ go if you pay for it. I think it's largely
reflecting a combination of which ISPs have a higher-proportion of subscribers
on cheap plans, and who has users that are pulling content through marginal
WiFi connections.

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brownbat
Would be more useful if it controlled for what plans people are on.

You really need a scatterplot here, or to look for clusters at certain speeds.
Say you're looking around 15 Mbps. At that rate, which company has all the
subscribers coming in at 16, and which ones at 13 or 14?

Since there are a relatively small number of speed options, it should be
possible to notice these sorts of clusters in the data.

Also, how sensitive is a certain company's speeds to time of day? Whose
average dips the most during peak viewing times?

It seems like even a little data analysis would go a long way here...

------
ihsw
And the related blog post:

[http://blog.netflix.com/2014/01/new-isp-performance-data-
for...](http://blog.netflix.com/2014/01/new-isp-performance-data-for-
december.html)

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b0b0b0b
Why does anyone lend credence to speedtest.net scores, particularly in the
context of a net neutrality discussion?

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penguindev
hmm. comcast dropped from 2.17 to 1.63 mbps YOY. awesome.

luckily, speedtest.net shows me a lot higher than that... 25mbps, to be
precise.

Edit: I see Netflix has tweaked their results to use 'Prime Time' readings
only. I guess I should retest this evening as well.

~~~
thisiswrong
False. Speedtest.net gives results in Mbit/s. 25 Mbit/s ≠ 25 Mb/s. 1 Mbit =
0.125 MB

~~~
misframer
Megabit = Mb. Megabyte = MB.

25 Mbit/s = 25 Mb/s. 25 Mb/s ≠ 25 MB/s.

Generally I see Mbps when referring to megabits per second and MB/s for
megabytes per second.

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skue
We have Cox in my state, and I have been incredibly impressed with how
reliable they are for Internet. It's refreshing to just take my connectivity
for granted and not even remember the last time I've had issues or slowdowns.

The only real downside is that when I recommend Cox to friends, I have to be
very careful how I say it.

~~~
el_benhameen
After living in a Comcast stronghold for > a decade, I was flabbergasted at
how ... decent Cox is, in terms of both quality and customer service. I'm
still waiting with baited breath for them to realize that they can get away
with more and pull one on me.

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GigabyteCoin
They have Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, and Finland listed on that site
but not Canada? All of which have a combined population smaller than that of
Canada.

How odd.

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webjames
Forgive me if i am not reading this correctly, but surely we need to know what
bandwidth netflix is streaming at?

For example Virgin in the UK offers 20mbps+ on their fibre network for most
customers, so this is telling me that netflix is able to stream at a maximum
bitrate (of assumably 3mbps)?

What this is not telling me is that Virgin's average network speed.

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ancarda
I don't understand how this is measured. For instance Google Fiber is 3.69
Mbps. For a gigabit internet service, it seems fairly low.

~~~
Rebelgecko
It looks like this is just measuring the average bitrate that people are
streaming at. It won't reflect whether or not someone is capable of watching
higher quality streams than Netflix is actually giving them. I don't think
their highest quality is more than 6 megabits/sec, and it's only available on
certain devices and movies.

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PaulHoule
All I can say is "Wow".

Out here in the flyover states, complaining about Frontier's terrible service
is right up there with deer hunting and watching old episodes of "Hee Haw".

Now we see AT&T and Verizon are doing even worse than Frontier and somehow a
cable provider is getting flattened by DSL. What's up?

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jrockway
Kind of meaningless since they only push 5Mbps streams.

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c0nsumer
My ISP, WOW!/WideOpenWest, isn't even there despite having a decent
penetration. They are also great customer service-wise, etc. Oh well.

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jessaustin
How is ClearWire considered "fixed"? Anyway it's not called that anymore.

I guess this info might be useful for public policy, but there's so much
variability within a single provider that you wouldn't want to choose an ISP
based on this alone.

~~~
ambler0
I think it's "fixed" as opposed to "over time". You can view the latter by
clicking the little button on the right that looks like a chart.

EDIT: I'm wrong. It still says fixed when you use the "over time" view.

~~~
jessaustin
I just assumed that "fixed" was in contrast to "mobile". Anyway it seems a bit
too generous to the actual "fixed" providers to compare their performance with
a WISP.

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shmerl
Such low values for Google Fiber, Fios and Optimum are surprising.

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avis
this seems more of a breakdown of the avg customer link speed/ isp than an isp
performance chart.

~~~
ghshephard
It's actually more a breakdown of Netflix -> ISP -> Customer performance
chart.

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geraldcombs
Why no latency measurements?

~~~
RKearney
My guess is because latency is not relevant when it comes to streaming videos
from Netflix. A consumer will not be able to notice their video took 40
milliseconds longer to start streaming. They will, however, notice when the
video stops to buffer every 10-15 minutes because their ISP can't keep up with
the throughput.

~~~
geraldcombs
Would latency affect the non-streaming parts of Netflix, e.g. browsing titles?

~~~
virtue3
of course. but not greatly. Generally (depending on the client
implementation). The actual download of the data (and the images) far eclipses
latency issues.

30ms vs 160ms delay is irrelevant when it takes you 3 seconds to download all
the image tiles :D

