
Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days - tompagenet2
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51968302
======
rococode
I've been having major internet issues lately (Seattle area), have had 4 techs
come try to figure it out. Yesterday's tech finally correctly diagnosed the
problem as happening before the connection reaches our home but was unsure of
the cause. He called his supervisor to investigate, and they found that the
capacity for our neighborhood's node was nearly at 100%, while ideally it
should always be under 80%. Fortunately they said they'll be able to fix it
within a few weeks by doing a node split. The tech mentioned he'd never heard
of capacity issues before in his ~20 years as a tech and that some smaller
ISPs have been having issues keeping their internet up and running at all.

I've been tracking the performance with PingPlotter, if you're curious how bad
it is right now here's the last 10 minutes:
[https://i.imgur.com/AnUqv3j.png](https://i.imgur.com/AnUqv3j.png) (red lines
are packet loss) Pretty interesting how current circumstances are pushing even
tried and tested infrastructure to their limits.

~~~
martin_bech
I’ve worked at a major ISP, for a decade, and spotting something like this
should be so easy to spot. There are tools on monitoring of load all the time,
and areas are routibely getting split etc. to improve bandwith, so I think
your ISP are basicly amateurs..

~~~
cpitman
Alternatively, load has gone up across the board in a short period of time, so
that preventive scaling has fallen behind and are in recovery mode.

~~~
martin_bech
Yes it can, but why would it take several techs, to spot something like load,
which is the first thing you would do, it should take no more than 10s to look
it up in a tool.

~~~
sulam
A "last foot" tech might not even have access to those tools, much less know
how to use them.

~~~
rwbhn
Rolling out that tech has got to be more expensive than checking the load
first.

~~~
toyg
Dunno how it is in the States, but here in UK rolling out the tech is
basically the first thing they do after the unavoidable "have you tried
turning it on and off again" phone call. They just don't trust the customer to
have any clue and maybe don't want to waste time doing troubleshooting at
their end when it's "probably" a downstream issue.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Network Operations should be raising _known problem_ issues to front line call
centre staff.

Network congestion issues shouldn't be handed off to field techs to check
local loop (last mile) and CPE (Customer Premises Equipment.

~~~
wtallis
I'm pretty sure it's standard practice at these companies to never let front
line call center staff acknowledge known problems. Sometimes, the automated
phone menu will give you a recorded generic message that they are currently
experiencing a service issue, but that's intended to convince you to hang up
and patiently wait for them to sort their shit out. I've never had a front-
line rep be at all useful in diagnosing a real problem.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Yeah true.

I guess I need to remember the ISP I work for here in Australia (front line
tech support, and then network operations physical security and
infrastructure) was widely recognised as the best ISP in Australia multiple
years running, so I shouldn't use it as a baseline expectation.

~~~
tacticus
So how was life at internode or aussie?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Internode.

Yeah, was a good place to work. I was in their Adelaide data centres when
iiNet acquired the company.

------
anonymouswacker
Paying isn't enough to get what you paid for, so...

[https://github.com/SickChill/SickChill](https://github.com/SickChill/SickChill)
\- automatically download TV episodes (about Linux)

[https://github.com/CouchPotato/CouchPotatoServer](https://github.com/CouchPotato/CouchPotatoServer)
\- automatically download Movies (about Linux)

[https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent](https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent)
\- torrent client for downloading your Linux tv/movies...

~~~
onedr0p
Sonarr and Radarr are 10x better.

~~~
salazryl
New here. What's the difference between these two?

~~~
xvector
Sonarr handles TV shows and Radarr handles movies.

~~~
salazryl
Thank you!

------
BenJong-Il
A few months ago there was blog post posted here from a guy making movie
reviews. In the blog post he described how he managed to get 4k Netflix
screenshots on his Chromecast. The effort he made was enormous and involved
reverse engineering the Netflix data protocol (I probably worded this wrong).

When doing that he found out that Netflix streaming in 4k isn't actually 4k.

Again not exactly sure how this worked but that was the result. And he put
some kind of device between the Chromecast and the TV. And at the end of the
post he shared his top movies of the year or in the previous post.

Does anyone know what I am talking about? I've thought about this pist several
times in the past weeks.

~~~
DavidVoid
On a related note, if you watch Netflix in Chrome or Firefox then you're only
getting a resolution of 720p.

    
    
        Google Chrome
            Up to 720p on Windows, Mac, and Linux
            Up to 1080p on Chrome OS
        Internet Explorer up to 1080p
        Microsoft Edge up to 4K*
        Mozilla Firefox up to 720p
        Opera up to 720p
        Safari up to 1080p on Mac OS X 10.10.3 or later
    
        *Streaming in 4K requires an HDCP 2.2 compliant connection to a 4K capable display, 
        Intel's 7th generation Core CPU, and the latest Windows updates.    
        Check with the manufacturer of your system to verify specifications.
    

From:
[https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742)

I really wish they'd just allow up to 4K streaming on all main browsers. The
Windows 10 app is awful and very buggy for multi-monitor setups. The two main
issues I run into with it are:

1\. The video will stutter unless I set both my monitors to the same refresh
rate. As you can imagine, it's somewhat annoying to have to lower the refresh
rate of my main monitor from 144Hz to 60Hz whenever I want to watch Netflix.

2\. When playing in fullscreen on one monitor, the video will randomly
minimize if I interact with _any_ applications on my second monitor! So if I
want to look something up online or whatever as I'm watching, I _have to_
switch to windowed mode or I risk having the video just minimize and mute
itself.

~~~
mikkelam
This is really driving me nuts... Netflix is consistently giving me subpar
resolution in firefox. It's quite rare that I even get 720p. Yet switching to
microsoft edge, boom suddenly it's great.

There used to be some extensions to switch the resolution up on chrome and
firefox, but I do believe they're not working anymore.

Another case for piracy I guess.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Change user-agent to impersonate Edge.

This is why I won't pay for premium resolution upgrades. It's too much of a
hassle to ensure the entire video chain is providing what I paid for.

~~~
jdnenej
It's more than that, Edge has far more DRM in it.

------
jazzyjackson
Maybe if we had kept using bittorrent for TV distribution we wouldn't have so
much global traffic downloading "The Avengers" for the millionth time, you
would just download it from the nearest host (also the way the internet worked
before HTTPS, there used to be way more local caching of content being
downloaded over and over again)

~~~
amelius
Except residential upload speeds are usually only 1/10th of the corresponding
download speed.

~~~
Sosh101
Maybe 10 years ago? I don't know anyone with a connection that badly
asymmetrical.

~~~
lxgr
My connection is 1000/50 – theoretically.

On a good day, that works out to about 100/2, thanks to my provider vastly
overselling their shitty overcongested network as "fiber to the home". (It's
just cable.)

~~~
sgt
So you've got a "gigabit connection" (in marketing terms), yet worst case your
upload speed is like that of ADSL. That's unacceptable.

------
newbie578
This is pure bullshit. If Netflix won't commit to it's part of the deal (FULL
HD and 4K) then why should I commit to my part (13.99 monthly)?

You cannot decide by yourself to lower the quality of your services and keep
the price same.

Sometimes I wish I had enough money and time to seek "legal retribution" from
these type of situations. I would love for this case to make it to the
European Court in Strasbourg.

"The video-streaming provider said lowering the picture quality would reduce
Netflix data consumption by 25%.

But it said viewers would still find the picture quality good."

How would they know what I find still good, if I found it still good than I
wouldn't have taken the premium plan!! So many fallacies in this way of
thinking..

~~~
joppy
During a pandemic which has forced a huge number of people to stay at home and
is currently crashing the economy and costing hundreds of lives per day, it
could help to be a little more sympathetic to measures like this. They might
not be perfect, because everyone is having to react so quickly to what is
going on, but we can appreciate that this is not a normal event and the vast
majority of companies have never planned for it (random ISPs, for example). If
this article [1] from Netflix is to be believed, 4K uses _five times_ the
bandwidth of HD, and is surely an easy target for something that can be traded
off while not affecting people's moral wellbeing too much.

Suffering a video quality decrease would seem a small price to pay for not
causing further problems, and perhaps once this is all over, or at least we've
stopped flying by the seats of our pants, we can see if people should receive
refunds of a few dollars a month.

[1]
[https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306)

~~~
csunbird
Except, people are PAYING for that upgrade.

~~~
hollander
Two or four euros per month. Call the army! I would start a class action
suite. /s

This stupid selfish attitude is not helping. Netflix will probably issue a
statement that they will refund all those affected. And if you don't like it,
downgrade! You probably have plenty of time if this is an issue for you.

~~~
ptx
If two or four euros is so little as to be entirely negligible, and if anyone
who would care about throwing such a small amount of money away deserved to be
ridiculed, why does Netflix ask for it? They could just let the customer keep
the money since it doesn't matter, right? If fact, everyone could just send
_me_ this silly sum that doesn't matter and they shouldn't complain about.

~~~
neuronic
Exactly, this is less than a single one of the overpriced Starbucks coffees
that those same people probably purchase without spending a single thought on
it.

Being empathetic to these measures is the right call, although I do find that
much more important for brick & mortar businesses than Netflix.

------
rjyoungling
There seems to be a big divide between two groups:

One is of the mind that we should be empathetic and since it's not a lot of
money, people shouldn't complain.

The other is of the mind that, Netflix can certainly take those actions but
shouldn't pass those costs on to the consumer.

I'm in the second camp.

In Holland, all the big gym companies still charge their memberships even
though the gyms are closed. Since they're legally required to refund the
money, they hide that from the consumer and get ahead of it by offering to
'give' consumers their own money back on their membership card. Thus not
losing any money.

I think that people in this thread don't have a problem with the measures
being taken, but specifically with companies not eating the cost and trying to
pass those on to the consumer. That's the shady part and it's not right IMO.

I also find it fascinating that people don't have an issue with paying for
services that they didn't receive if they're on a subscription yet they
wouldn't pay an invoice should their favorite club(s), restaurant(s), etc.
start sending them those.

While I'm open to having my mind changed, all of these practices do strike me
as kinda unethical. It appears to me as taking advantage of the user in order
not to sacrifice revenue and I think that that's what most people here are
objecting to.

edit: My perspective on companies whether the P&L of a company should be taken
into account.

I don't believe so.

I think people should be given the option to make an informed decision.
Actions like these feel like they're purposefully designing a choice
architecture such that there's an asymmetric information flow that can be
taken advantage of to serve one's own needs as a company. That's unethical
IMO; not unlike a shady 20th century used car dealer.

~~~
sebdd
Hard to draw a line, but there's a key difference between Netflix & gym
memberships/restaurants/… for me:

Gyms are forced to close, and are losing money in the process. As a consumer,
I can sympathize with the situation. Netflix is having issues because they are
_thriving_ , not because they're having a hard time.

~~~
NKCSS
This was requested by the EU, not their own decision. NetFlix has historically
always had more than enough capacity, it has always been ISP's that are
lacking with bandwidth.

~~~
xenonite
Well, in this case I don't see why a customer should stick with the ISP if it
doesn't deliver. In Germany, there are several examples where the termination
of contract was judged as being okay if the bandwidth regularly fell below 50%
of the promised capacity [1].

Therefore: Although the Netflix cut was triggered by the EU, it might actually
have been a successful lobbying action by the ISPs.

[1] [https://praxistipps.chip.de/internet-recht-dsl-
geschwindigke...](https://praxistipps.chip.de/internet-recht-dsl-
geschwindigkeit-langsamer-als-bestellt-das-koennen-sie-tun_46134)

~~~
Faark
But switching your ISP will take a week at best, likely multiple.

Right now politicians don't want me to enjoy the perfect weather outside but
instead to stay indoor and play online games or program something. Both I'm
less likely to do if my neighbors clog my internet by watching ultra hd
streams, apparently.

Don't think "the market will solve it" is best approach right now.

------
robocat
There’s so much that seems wrong about this.

1: home network capacity used to be at peak around 7PM IIRC. There should be
significant spare headroom on the network during the working day.

2: Netflix already downgrades when bandwidth is limited. The smart move would
be to tell Netflix to downgrade more aggressively, on the theory that would
allow more “important” traffic to get priority, while still allowing people to
watch Netflix (important to keep people from social contact!), and not
affecting quality for consumers where ISP capacity isn’t an issue (edit: added
clause).

3: Allow individual ISPs to ignore agreements and bandwidth limit Netflix
traffic from their POPs, if ISPs are having capacity issues.

This seems political, possibly pushed by Netflix so they can sell more
subscriptions while having a third party to blame for reducing service levels.
Or maybe just knee jerk dumb reactions from politicians - stupidity seems like
an option too!?

Edit: I keep being amazed at how consumerism drives side benefits. Without
Netflix and gamers, how much worse off would we all be right now?

~~~
rsynnott
> There should be significant spare headroom on the network during the working
> day.

Remember that essentially every kid in Europe is home from school right now.

> Netflix already downgrades when bandwidth is limited.

It downgrades when bandwidth constraints and congestion start bothering _it_.
By the time all the Netflixes which are competing with you do so, your Zoom
conference will be long gone. Netflix is quite tolerant of an unreliable
network. Many work-from-home things, VC in particular, less so.

~~~
robocat
Re 1st point: and kids are often heavy bandwidth users in evening. Network
bandwidth is mostly about supporting peak usage, a pipe with capacity per
second and not a fixed volume per day. Plans often regulate by volume cap, but
high capacity networks regulate by bits per second peak usage.

Re second point: you are misquoting, and making a point that is obvious. The
next sentence is "The smart move would be to tell Netflix to downgrade more
aggressively" to help your canonical zoom conference (which is a super poor
example - apparently Zoom failure is due to Zoom and not network capacity).

~~~
rsynnott
While the widespread zoom problems are due to issues with zoom, highly latency
sensitive applications like VC will be degraded before a Netflix client even
realises anything is happening on a network reaching saturation. It's very
hard for the client to be a good citizen in this situation. Network-level QoS
would help, but is a massive moral hazard (and generally illegal in the EU,
anyway).

~~~
red_trumpet
What is "network-level QoS"?

~~~
IAmEveryone
The opposite of net neutrality.

------
noodlesUK
Are there any illustrations of the volumes of traffic that are being sent
through core networks for netflix? I was under the impression the vast
majority of traffic was served at the edge.

~~~
tyingq
I think that's what they are relieving...edge traffic volumes. If the local
ISP cache box lowers it's maximum quality, the ISPs get relief.

The ISPs oversubscribed, and can't deal with this many people being at home
all at once.

~~~
jasoncartwright
Citation needed. In the UK...

"UK broadband companies say they can cope with increased demand as many more
people stay at home during the coronavirus crisis."

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

~~~
oblio
That's what they say now. Give them a few weeks and they'll start squealing.
Every ISP oversubscribes for consumer segments. In the UK I guess not enough
people are quarantined.

~~~
rossmohax
Some ISPs like Andrew & Arnolds don't oversubscribe, but they dont have
unlimited plans either

~~~
tialaramex
It's not true to say that A&A don't oversubscribe. Instead the situation is
that they're happy to buy more capacity to fulfil their offer, within reason.

If A&A subscribers could in theory move 10Tbps (if they all simultaneously did
some sort of download from a hypothetical unlimited source) but in reality
they never do and it peaks at something like 100Gbps, A&A are fulfilling their
promise by ensuring they've got 100Gbps to do that.

Typically you'll never notice the difference, except on your bill, because if
they had 100x more bandwidth upstream they'd pay a lot of money for that, even
though it was unused and they'd have to pass that to you in the medium term.

However, the reality is a little closer to oversubscribing. Suppose A&A are
paying for 10Gbps on a particular port somewhere, and at their busiest time of
the week it typically runs at 9.8Gbps. Unfortunately the company selling it
only wants to offer 100Gbps as the next step up, for five times the money.
Another 10Gbps port isn't an option as there are no 10Gbps ports free. So A&A
decides to sit on the problem, nobody is suffering at 9.8Gbps.

Next week it hits 10Gbps and seems likely it'd have gone to 11Gbps if that was
possible. Oops. The firm they're buying that capacity from still has 100Gbps
available, but they agree at last that they could add more 10Gbps ports, and
will do so for the same price as the existing port. Unfortunately it means
buying a new Cisco router, which Cisc says is on back order, it'll arrive in
July.

Are A&A going to throw five times the money at the problem for this burst of
maybe 30-40 minutes per week? Or are they going to tell you sorry but it'll be
July and until then bandwidth at that peak across that particular link isn't
what it ought to be? They're going to do the latter. Because at the end of the
day it's a business. RevK is a good guy, but he's not looking to bankrupt the
company to make some point.

------
Hamuko
Is this for the entirety of Europe? Because I imagine we're not having any
issues with this in Finland.

~~~
turbinerneiter
It's a made up problem. In Germany, journalists asked the network providers
and they said everything is fine.

Such a ridiculous and pointless thing to do by the EU. Especially since all
the apps drop the quality automatically anyway if the connection is slow.

~~~
ritchiea
Here in Berlin my DSL connection has been awful since the social distancing
began. And many of my friends have complained of similar problems. Frequent
disconnections, broken up zoom calls. Though ironically the streaming has been
fine from both Netflix & Amazon.

~~~
t0mas88
I've had disconnected Zoom calls here (Netherlands) as well, but it seems
that's just Zoom not being able to handle the traffic because Google Hangouts
and MS Teams are both fine. And Netflix and Disney+ are also working fine.

~~~
akadruid1
It could be that they don't have local edge servers in the Netherlands, we are
using Zoom very heavily here in the UK and its working well with our
colleagues here and in the US but some European countries including
Netherlands are breaking up or disconnecting. I think Zoom are using AWS.

------
cowmix
When I had my Internet from Cox here in Phoenix and they started to invoke
data caps, I was forced to rate limit my TVs here in the house.

I have to say, Netflix does a GREAT job making sure their content works well
under lower bitrates as compared to HULU and Amazon Prime.

I was getting pretty good 1080 quality at 2.5mbs. If I didn't do the caps,
Netflix (and other services) will stream as fast as they can.

~~~
Dumblydorr
I have Cox in Rhode Island, ostensibly 150 mbps but meanwhile my TV buffers on
simple medium quality content. I am wondering if the apartment building's
connection isn't prepared for so many streamers?

------
myu701
Does anyone know of public ISP dashboards that show used/total capacity on
their network in terms of customer usage?

I'm sure its trivial for an internal employee to pull up solarwinds or
whatever, but I'd be curious to see if these ISPs are merely running above
normal, running hot, barely hanging on with intermittent "isp brownouts" etc.

This is probably a pipe dream but not gonna get any questions answered if I
don't ask.

~~~
qayxc
The largest backbone in the world publishes statistics:

[https://www.de-
cix.net/en/locations/germany/frankfurt/statis...](https://www.de-
cix.net/en/locations/germany/frankfurt/statistics)

~~~
dylz
For clarification, this is not a "backbone" \- it is an exchange fabric.

~~~
aeyes
And for further clarification, you won't see much Netflix traffic there
because the big ISPs have Netflix caches within their infrastructure.

~~~
hobofan
The big German ISPs don't have Netflix caches within their infrastructure,
which might be part of the problem here. Last mile infrastructure might be
even worse though.

~~~
dylz
Germany is rather odd compared to the other countries with its adoption of
broadband tech - for example you see a decent bit of FTTH/FTTx in NL, NO/DK/SE
(muni owned, early adopters), etc.

Then you go to Germany and it's mass of DSL (and some areas cable). I wonder
what happened or why?

~~~
hobofan
Not an expert on the topic, but IIRC this is the rough outline:

\- The main ISP of Germany is Deutsche Telekom, a formerly state-owned company
that was privatized ~25 years ago, which Germany still holds stock in

\- In the past Telekom was awarded big contracts to expand broadband access
across the country

\- Telekom is/was really slow at fulfilling those contracts, and at the same
time behaves in an anti-competitive manner towards any independent ISPs that
try to fill the void

\- The government doesn't punish any of that behaviour like they rarely do
with a big German company, even more so with privatized ones that they have a
stake in

To also be fair towards Telekom a bit, Germany is a very decentralized
country, which is a boon in a lot of situations, but also challenging for any
infrastructure projects. Part of the contracts was that they also have to
expand broadband access in all rural parts of Germany.

~~~
fragmede
I'm not sure that's (entirely) it. I don't know if this is why Netflix doesn't
do it, but Germany doesn't have the same First Amendment laws as the US. In
particular, there are some writings that are illegal under German law. Thus,
locating a box in Germany that could potentially hold material that is illegal
under German law is ill advised. That the box is operating simply as a local
cache doesn't seem to change the lawyer's perspective.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#Re-
unifi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#Re-
unified_Germany_\(1990%E2%80%93present\))

~~~
aeyes
Akamai has hundrads of cache boxes at German ISPs, including at this one.

There are some issues at play here:

1\. This ISP in particular has extremely weird peering rules, they only do
paid private peering (more expensive than other transit providers) and even
deny access to Tier 1 networks. For a long time YouTube was almost unusable
due to weird routing - they even had a website explaining why YouTube was
broken (Google doesn't want to pay _crycry_ ). Same with several popular
gameservers. Due to their market position they are completely fine with being
the bully.

2\. They have their own streaming and TV offer so they don't have many reasons
for making the Netflix experience better.

This information might be outdated, I don't live in Germany anymore and it
seems that they now have some sort of partnership with Netflix.

------
axegon_
That explains a lot. Fair enough though

> But it said viewers would still find the picture quality good.

I beg to differ and I'm watching on my tablet in bed and it reminds me of the
Avi files we used to watch on lan networks in the 90s.

~~~
Fiveplus
Are you in Europe? I'd love to know how are services like Hulu or YouTube
holding up?

~~~
axegon_
Bulgaria. YouTube is King still. To my knowledge, Hulu is a US only thing
so...

~~~
Fiveplus
Gotcha!

------
franciscop
On totally unrelated news, Popcorn Time 4.0 was recently released and using it
is decriminalized in many European countries (but not in others, so stay
safe):

[https://popcorntime.app/](https://popcorntime.app/)

~~~
koheripbal
What is the advantage of this over simple old torrenting?

~~~
risho
you can start watching immediately as it is downloading and it has a player
built in, whereas the traditional torrent client needs to finish the video
first and you need a separate video player.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Most torrent clients have a "download in sequential order as far as feasible"
feature, addressing the first issue.

~~~
Seirdy
It's generally a good idea to download the first and last pieces first when
doing sequential downloading to ensure that the file doesn't appear too
corrupted.

Also, always using sequential downloading isn't very good for the swarm; it
means that disproportionately fewer seeders are available for the later chunks
of a torrent.

I'd recommend downloading the first episode or two sequentially, but
downloading the rest of the torrent normally (or perhaps just first/last parts
first).

------
nabla9
Treating Europe as a one block seems like very low resolution decision.
Netflix content delivery network is sufficiently large in Europe to take into
account much smaller areas.

~~~
henriks
Yes, I doubt this was a very well-informed request by the EU as much as a PR
move. I doubt the fiber between me and Netflix's edge cache at my ISP is
significantly more saturated due to more people staying at home.

~~~
glenneroo
You might have missed it but yesterday it was all over the news that the EU
had asked Netflix to do something. Here is one of many articles:
[https://www.engadget.com/2020/03/19/eu-netflix-sd-
streaming-...](https://www.engadget.com/2020/03/19/eu-netflix-sd-streaming-to-
conserve-internet)

Today the Australian government is making the same request.

------
bmmayer1
Isn't this sort of rationing exactly the thing that anti-Net Neutrality
advocates have been warning about?

~~~
coffeefirst
No, that would be the ISP playing "you can't use Netflix or Zoom unless you
pay for Super Premium." This is the services themselves downgrading to handle
the highest peak service they will ever see.

~~~
op00to
Not just that. Eyeball network ISPs also shake down companies like Netflix
with extortionate fees when peering points are overloaded to upgrade the
connection.

------
john_alan
This drives me fucking mental.

It's not about being insensitive about the quality reduction, I KNOW PEOPLE
ARE DYING, I KNOW that's more important than Netflix.

I don't care if they stop ALL services, but DONT FUCKING CHARGE ME THEN.

~~~
mgoetzke
Well if 'doing your part' only means 720p instead of 1080 or 4k at the same
price for a little while, I think that is more than acceptable

~~~
ornornor
I don’t understand that. It’s not like Netflix is saving lives or is a non
profit. Why should it be our responsibility to subsidize their baseline? The
nature of business is that you’re taking risks. Offloading that risk to your
customers is bad taste. Netflix doesn’t share its profits with its customers
so why should we be shouldering their losses/subsidizing them as paying
customers?

~~~
john_alan
Precisely.

------
schnable
Interesting counterpoint to the "broadband is so much better in Europe" trope.
Unless of course we are under strain here in the US as well....

~~~
ketzu
Isn't the trope "broadband is better somewhere else" for most places?
Anecdotally, most people I know complain about the connection where they live.

~~~
jbarberu
Moving from Sweden to the US (Florida) I can't say I've noticed much of a
difference in connectivity. 100, 200, 300 & 1000MBps is readily available in
both places but usually around at 3x the price in the US.

Rural America seems to be an entirely different story.

~~~
jcims
15M down / 768k up checking in from rural america. I have to stop my camera on
video conferences if i want to talk.

~~~
notJim
My parents have been trying to get high speed internet for years. They're in a
semi-rural, but suburbanizing area. They are surrounded by houses that have
cable, but their house is older so it doesn't have it.

They had microwave for a while, but it didn't work in bad weather, and then
the trees got too tall. They've finally resorted to _paying the cable company_
thousands of dollars to bring cable to their house. It's such a ridiculous
opaque process though that my mom basically has to stalk cable vans in her
area and give the tech an earful to get status updates. The good techs know
how shitty the process is, and one even gave her his personal phone number.
However, it's not his department, so his ability to make things happen is
limited.

She made the payment back in November, they got permits in January, and she
hasn't heard from them since. I asked about how to get this done on DSLReports
a while back, and the answer was to just keep calling them over and over and
over, because every now and then you'd find someone with a clue.

~~~
jcims
I'm probably going to end up dropping $8-10k into a tower and point to point
microwave links to two different cities. The ISP i'm on now wants $30K to put
fiber in my house, but their network is so bad at the edge that i'd still need
to get a loop to something else to get reasonable performance.

I'd still do the tower and resell b/w to recoup some of the costs.

------
bilekas
I was working with a semi-competitor of Netflix a few years back and their
tech is great of course, their product offering is amazing, but their real
magic is with their contracts with ISP's.

I don't know the details of the contracts of course, but they are likely to
get a dedicated bandwidth within the ISP, if that comes under strain, of
course, that contract comes into play. So I think it's not just the
datacenters involved..

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

------
neteng
The reality is that there is no capacity issue. ISP networks are perfectly
capable to handle the demand (spoiler: it hasn't increased much, see public IX
stats). This is an attempt to revive the net neutrality debate from big ISPs
through the EU. This is about the wish of ISPs to double-dip (be paid once by
their end users, and another by the content providers).

------
dogma1138
Does it mean they’ll pay me back for the 4K package?

~~~
throwaway55554
Why would they? Do they pay you back when your ISP can't provide enough
bandwidth for 4K? How much is 4K on top of regular Netflix service? Is it
worth worrying about?

~~~
izacus
Why would they? Because they charge extra for it and they're themselves have
stopped providing this service.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>and they're themselves have stopped providing this service //

Is it them, or is it overselling by ISPs?

~~~
sp332
There's no evidence the ISPs were overloaded by Netflix traffic recently. Note
that this conversation was with politicians, not ISPs.

------
gandalfian
So they are rolling out gigabit fibre in homes but 5mbs is overloading the
system?

~~~
Hamuko
Just because they're selling you Gigabit, doesn't mean that they actually have
the capacity to provide you a guaranteed Gigabit pipe. They're
overprovisioning their network and hoping that not enough people want to max
their connection out at the same time.

~~~
op00to
In other words, a bill of goods.

------
N0RMAN
So they are throttling because they can't fulfill the demand and want to save
money on network traffic?

~~~
jedberg
The EU asked them to. They were having no problem keeping up.

~~~
N0RMAN
Why would anyone in Europe ask for that. All ISP publicity said they have more
than enough capacity available.

Also it would be the first time that a U.S net company does something
voluntarily just by kindly asking.

~~~
jedberg
[https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/19/tech/netflix-internet-
ove...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/19/tech/netflix-internet-overload-
eu/index.html)

"European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is responsible for the EU internal
market covering more than 450 million people, spoke to Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed
Hastings on Wednesday and again on Thursday about the strain video streaming
was placing on networks."

Apparently the EU thinks it's a problem.

The truth is that this will probably make little difference, but it makes
sense for Netflix to do this since it doesn't cost them anything and now they
are owed a favor by a regulator.

------
tripzilch
Let's first address the elephant in the room.

If it weren't for the ridiculous power of the copyright industry, there would
be no problem.

Because _non-live streaming doesn 't make sense_ except as an artificial way
to control copyright.

There literally is no other reason why you would download an entire movie _and
then throw it away_.

Instead of this bullshit, people could easily have a small box of microSDs
with their favourite films and series. You could exchange them with friends,
it would be fun. Again, why did Netflix used to be mailing around DVDs instead
of much more efficient read-only SDs? Oh yeah, copyright bullshit.

It's very easy to forget that everybody together made up this one completely
artificial rule that, unlike normal data, this is "magical data" that we have
to pretend cannot be copied or stored. What ever.

------
mschuster91
What an utter joke. This is only needed because unlike the backbone operators
who are pushing ridiculous record traffic through the IXs these days and don't
even hit any limit on their capability, the last-mile operators have _not_
done any major investments in their infrastructure.

Cable TV internet is horribly oversold - Kabel Deutschland was already
infamous, when they got bought up by Vodafone shit got even worse. DSL ...
let's just say most of Germany is happy to have 16/1 ADSL. I have 100/10 FTTB
via M-net and even they have load problems.

Cellphone internet is even worse but as data is horribly expensive in Germany
no one dares streaming Netflix over that anyway...

tl;dr: it's not Netflix fault, it's last mile telcos who have done jack shit
the last decade to build out new FTTP infra coupled with appropriate uplink
capacity to the nearest IX, but people are too dumb to understand this and
blame Netflix instead of directing their anger towards politicians and telcos
where it belongs!

~~~
dewey
> Cellphone internet is even worse but as data is horribly expensive in
> Germany no one dares streaming Netflix over that anyway...

Luckily we have net-neutrality infringing features like Telekom's "Stream On"
where it's included /s

------
navidr
It is kind of unrelated to this, but I am asking maybe somebody could help me.
Do you guys know where can I read and learn more about the details of the
Netflix network? I looked at their technical blog, but I wanted something more
detailed and technical. Is there something like Netflix research papers (e.g.
Google published Bigtable IIRC).

~~~
rckclmbr
Its not a whitepaper, but look into OpenConnect, since i believe thats how
they serve a majority of traffic

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

------
ineedasername
I don't quite understand the "how dare they!" attitude some of the comments
here convey.

If you want to talk legality etc., most contracts have a "force majeur" clause
that would cover this sort of thing. And even if it didn't, if enough
businesses start having to modify or break service agreements in these ways
through a world-wide crisis then governments will step in and legislate them
out of liability. There won't be too much sympathy for the "victims" of
Netflix either. Not from the general public, especially those who lose friends
or family to the pandemic. Not over someone's pixelated experience of End Game
or The Office. I know people who are sick, one closely, and I don't know if
they're going to survive. Suffering through SD quality (or worse!) isn't what
I concern myself with at the moment.

~~~
YayamiOmate
Yea. And what was the process here? One guy told another he's afraid. That's
not how we in EU are used to governing. This is not a dictatorship.

There is absolutely no legal reason to downgrade performance of service. It's
a big WTF.

What's next. A guy telling other to sell lesser quality of what?

------
Izmaki
Are they gonna cut my bill also? I would hate to pay for a service i a, not
getting (4k streaming)

~~~
Slartie
You will still get 4k resolution. Just at 25% less bitrate. But since the
thing that's necessary to fulfill your contract is the number of pixels, which
have not changed, you are out of luck, unless you find some clause in your
contract with Netflix that guarantees a certain bitrate.

------
StreamBright
Torrent as means of distribution would have been just perfect for the
bandwidth.

------
Slartie
I am really wondering whether this means they have to re-encode all the
streams at 25% less bitrate, or whether they already have them available at
that exact bitrate and can thus just change a default.

Because what I usually observe when Netflix compromises the streaming quality
because of bandwidth problems with my connection is a far larger drop in
quality than would be expected at just 25% less bits - it normally feels more
like 75% less bitrate, if it doesn't switch down from HD to SD entirely.

~~~
jedberg
I'm sure they already have the entire library at that bitrate as one of the
standard bitrates.

In fact, you've probably gotten that bitrate in the past and just not noticed,
because you have to be looking hard to see the quality difference.

------
keriati1
It won't be just for 30 days. How can people complain about Netflix quality
now? I will be grateful if we have anything still working in a few months...

~~~
izacus
Noone is complaining about quality, people are complaining about having to pay
for quality they're not getting. Netflix can easily charge everyone the SD
package price during this time.

------
iod
Reminds me why I love my ISP. My residential fiber ISP in Rochester New York,
Greenlight Networks, decided to give everyone symmetric upload connections for
free upgrade in the name of Corona Virus (used to be 10:1 download:upload). So
now I have a 1gbps symmetric for only $100/mo as their mid-tier option. They
even have a 2gbps symmetric option also. That is how ISPs should be handling
this.

------
pankajdoharey
I dont understand the issue here, as far as i am aware Netflix installs media
boxes at the data-centers of every ISP. And a video demand from netflix device
is directly resolved to these media boxes instead of resolving the content and
downloading through Internet. So arent they already saving Internet bandwidth
and rely on a Intranet like solution for distributing its contents?

------
Havoc
Netflix is full of BS anyway. I have yet to see a single instance of 4K
despite paying for it & having suitable gear and fiber line.

~~~
jedberg
Go to [http://fast.com](http://fast.com) and see what bandwidth you're
getting.

There is a good chance your ISP is limiting your bandwidth to Netflix,
preventing you from getting 4K.

If you get a good speed from that test, you should call Netflix customer
service to help you diagnose.

~~~
Havoc
970 mbps.

>good chance your ISP is limiting your bandwidth to Netflix

Possible, but unlikely. Forunate enough to be in a jurisdiction where
broadband generally does what it says on the tin.

Also using the netflix win10 app and hdcp screen so that I can get all that
juicy DRM.

>you should call Netflix customer service to help you diagnose.

Yeah probably a good idea

------
sniperjzp
This is interesting, would YouTube cut the quality too? If no, does this mean
Netflix has much higher traffic than YouTube?

------
radicaldreamer
Comcast has been doing some emergency maintenance and/or upgrades with 1-2
hour downtimes for the last week or two in San Francisco. Haven't noticed any
slowdowns here though. I imagine they had a few upgrades ready to go and
decided to pull the trigger on them/roll them out ahead of schedule.

------
kryptokommunist
With Netflix having content caches this seems like incompetency from the EU
commissioner paired with an openness to virtue signaling in this time from
Netflix. Isn’t it the job of the ISP to shape the traffic accordingly if they
overprovisioned and are now failing their customers due to that?

------
Gatsky
If there ever was a quintessential example of a “first world problem”, this is
it right here.

------
tomaszs
Lately i was looking for internet transfer data for last, say, 60 days per day
to confirm / reject claim transfer is higher now in Europe. But couldnt find
it. And broken Google results does not help much. Do you know of any of such
resources?

------
dntbnmpls
Makes one wonder, why doesn't europe have a netflix of their own?

Considering europe has a GDP comparable to the US and a few hundred million
more people, you'd think they'd have one or two or more netflixes of their
own.

------
louiechristie
Time for the Negroponte Switch
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negroponte_switch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negroponte_switch)

------
tpmx
Swede here:

Ok, I'll unsubscribe from Netflix. I've been eying those HBO shows anyway.

Edit: 8-year running subscription now cancelled. I have no polite words for
what I feel for this action by Netflix. Fxxk them.

------
syntaxing
Kind of off topic, but has anyone used Nvidia's Shield TV "AI Upscaling"?
Super curious if it would make the viewing experience better for situations
like this.

------
ChrisArchitect
similar to the other discussion thread about this.... what is this based on?
Who's pressuring who to get a meeting with Netflix to make this kind of
request?

------
dschuetz
Well, I hope Netflix is going to cut prices just as well.

------
rb808
Had my first Netflix problem today at 5pm. Has always been solid before today.
Other streaming services were good (though YouTube searching etc looked
loaded)

------
sunflowerfly
The real news is that Europe's internet backbone cannot handle this stress
test. Once this blows over that needs addressed.

------
mk3
And this is how I will switch to lower tier plan. As paying and not getting
service seems to be unfair even with COVID-19 in sight

------
jeffrallen
BBC: It is not clear if this applies to the special snow flakes on the island
off of Europe.

Netflix: You're Europeans again, England. Suck it.

Scotland: Ha ha.

~~~
joshuahughes
Actually, we've never NOT been Europeans, and we've never NOT been in Europe.
Europe's just a continent
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe)).

However, we did recently leave the European Union. (See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union.))
Completely different thing, but very commonly confused.

------
mindslight
Kodi and mpv continue to work as normal...

~~~
karatestomp
Jellyfin is _really_ nice if you have a semi-powerful, wired-network machine
to run it on. Former Kodi user, now a convert.

Kodi on an Rpi makes a good cast target for it, though.

~~~
mongol
What is semipowerful, approximately?

~~~
karatestomp
The main thing is being able to handle transcoding for certain clients that
need it. I’ve got it in Docker on an oldish workstation I bought for like $100
on eBay and threw an SSD in for the OS, but that thing’s surely serious
overkill. If you’re only streaming to one or two clients at a time, being on a
wired network and having hardware support for any codecs you’ll be dealing
with are probably the most important factors.

------
alexellisuk
Should we look forward to a 25% discount too? :-) Hopefully this is not going
to be downgrading to SD.

------
admax88q
Such a shame that multicast never took off.

Would save tremendous amounts of bandwidth in times like this.

~~~
basilgohar
This may work when a live stream is being watched at many locations from a
single or few sources, but in the case of video on demand, the utility of
multicast would be very limited – maybe some folks would coincidentally
request the same packets at the same time, but the chance of that should be
vanishingly low.

------
gaius_baltar
Best approach is just cancel Netflix (saying this was the reason) and go back
to the torrents -- they will still have the best quality.

They are lowering quality (of service or the catalog size, not always video)
and keeping or increasing the prices for a while. Using a global pandemic as
an excuse is just a new low.

~~~
echelon
Hogging bandwidth is detrimental to everyone, especially emergency personnel.
Please don't do this. The government wouldn't ask if there wasn't a need. The
alternative is having everyone's internet cut outright.

~~~
martin8412
I'm sorry - I'm sure you mean well, but this is downright false. This is not
the US. In most European countries bandwidth is plentiful and this is
completely unneeded political intervention based on not understanding
technology. ISPs do actually upgrade their infrastructure without it being
past collapse in Europe.

------
0xEFF
Is it just me or has Hulu been down entirely for the past couple of days?

------
RubberShoes
And Disney+ hasn't even launched yet. March 24th will be interesting

------
bluedino
I'm curios to what load the cellular networks are seeing

------
dabei
Are they going to deliver the lower quality videos with AV1?

------
agumonkey
2020, year of the VHS

~~~
Finnucane
We still subscribe to the Netflix DVD service. Now filling our queue.

~~~
agumonkey
such a luxury

~~~
Finnucane
It works.

------
chacha2
Anyone know where that remote is from in the picture?

------
beamatronic
If we have Ultra HD plan, should we downgrade?

------
softwarejosh
i severely lucked out being in a college town during all this, so many people
just left the town, our networks are blazing :P

------
AtOmXpLuS
Everything in AtOmXpLuS.CoM

------
yu_chen
Crazy

------
johnghanks
man everyone here's an expert all of a sudden.

------
justlexi93
Netflix forced to give customers a lower quality product instead of ISPs
forced to give customers the product they're paying for. Classic!

------
kabapadum
That's all that you need to know about the efficiency of remote work

------
vimslayer
This is totally offtopic but since bunch of people are talking about
torrenting here I figured I'd ask - are you getting subtitles from somewhere?

I think my English is pretty good but still watching shows without subs feels
like it takes more work and doesn't let me focus on the content.

I used to use opensubtitles.org but it's gotten from difficult to use to
impossible to use due to all the popups and crap like that.

------
quotemstr
This sucks. If bandwidth were metered, the market would ration is
appropriately. Generally speaking, anything "free" or "unlimited" gets
misallocated. When you put a price on something, it gets better.

~~~
iptrans
What’s the point of rationing something that costs a hundredth of a cent per
GB?

You get 10TB of bandwidth for a dollar. Once average usage per subscriber goes
over that, then we can talk.

~~~
wtallis
I think the real problem is that the supply is too inelastic. The marginal
cost of delivering more data is trivial, until part of your network gets
congested, and then your short-term options are limited. This is the same
problem that water utilities often face: it's cheap, until you run out.

Assigning a single rate ($/TB) requires you to make some assumptions that are
at risk of being violated in exceptional circumstances. Using variable pricing
to charge more during peak hours is too complicated for consumers to keep
track of and their options for changing behavior are limited, so this earns
the ISP more money but doesn't eliminate congestion during peak hours.

~~~
quotemstr
> Using variable pricing to charge more during peak hours is too complicated
> for consumers to keep track of

Why? It works for electricity.

~~~
wtallis
Peak vs off-peak prices for electricity aren't that far apart—up to a factor
of 3 in my area for residential service. And that's for a fixed schedule of
peak/shoulder/off-peak hours. More dynamic demand-based pricing of electricity
_doesn 't_ work all that well for residential service; it basically requires
automated load-shifting that's far more practical for industrial customers
than residential.

The cost curve for internet service during peak hours is a lot steeper. I
think it would take much more than a 3x price multiplier during peak hours to
get any noticeable demand reduction beyond what streaming applications already
do by dropping down to lower resolutions automatically. (Assuming that the
base cost for off-peak usage is remotely realistic, ie. orders of magnitude
lower than the metered prices we pay for cellular data in the US.)

------
sergiotapia
Makes you think, how much further we could stretch things if we were all using
the Nims/C/C++ of the world instead of the Ruby's.

Please don't immediately flame, I'm just saying objectively, we could stretch
hardware out much further. What do you guys think about this?

~~~
cortesoft
I don't think C++ generates more efficient packets than Ruby.....

~~~
jjgreen
In fact they are more efficient, but not as elegant.

