
 Netflix performance on Verizon and Comcast has been dropping for months - samsolomon
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/netflix-performance-on-verizon-and-comcast-has-been-dropping-for-months/
======
CamperBob2
Hint: never use Comcast for residential service. Sign up for business service,
even if you're just one person in an apartment. You get better support, less
BS, and (likely) improved immunity to copyright-trolling law firms.

They will still route about 10% of your packets via the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter, of course, but that's just the nature of the beast.

~~~
stock_toaster
This also prevents you from using your own modem and requiring you to lease
one of theirs (not to mention requiring a year contract), doesn't it?

~~~
bithive123
You can use your own modem with Comcast business service (I do) but it took
about two weeks of calling all the tech support numbers I could find until I
finally got a tech who was able to do it. Not because it's hard to do, but
because most of the people I talked to were lying or incompetent.

The guy seemed a bit weirded out at how profusely I thanked him -- after all,
all I'd done was tell him the model and MAC address of my generic Motorola
modem.

Don't waste your time explaining to them why you want to use a real modem (I
have my own router/firewall, their modem had NAT I could not disable) or that
it's the same modem that works on the residential service (which is the same
physical network). It won't help, just say "I bought a <VENDOR> <MODEL> modem,
can you set it up on my account?" and hang up and try again if they act like
your request is bizarre.

~~~
rbritton
Thanks for this. I've been wondering, so tomorrow. I'm going to start the
process.

~~~
JonSkeptic
It saddens me that I feel like every interaction with Comcast is a "process"
at best and an outer circle of hell on average.

------
tzakrajs
The problem here is that Comcast and Verizon don't want to pay for the
upstream bandwidth to the Netflix Open Connect CDN which means that as Netflix
increases quality and gains additional subscribers, the time-weighted bitrate
(TWBR, the metric they use to compare ISP performance) will continue to
plummet. This isn't to say that all Comcast and Verizon customers will feel
this pain, some markets have better performance than others (e.g. SF Bay being
an example of poor performance).

Edit: Other CDNs such as Akamai, Level 3 and Limelight pay to peer with
Comcast; whereas Netflix refuses to since Comcast will simply gouge them for
the opportunity. Netflix is increasingly moving away from third-party CDNs and
onto their Open Connect CDN which will escalate this to a fever pitch.

~~~
RKearney
It should be noted that having a Netflix OpenConnect Hardware Appliance is
100% free of charge for ISPs. The device itself is free, but I suppose you
could factor in the cost to power the 4U server and the rack space used by it
but those costs are negligible compared to the additional peering bandwidth
used by not having one.

From the FAQ[0]

    
    
      >What does the appliance cost my organization?
      > The appliances (and any necessary replacements) are provided
      > to participating ISPs free of charge when used within the
      > terms of the license agreement.
    

[0](PDF)
[https://secure.netflix.com/us/layout/signup/deviceinfo/OpenC...](https://secure.netflix.com/us/layout/signup/deviceinfo/OpenConnectDeploymentGuide-v2.4a.pdf)

~~~
aroch
It's also worth noting that a 10ge flatrate port to Cogent isn't going to cost
them that much either -- and then they don't have to deal with any additional
hardware, just a crossconnect. But for some reason, paying an additional ~$6K
a month so that millions of your subscribers have better service is too high a
price to pay

~~~
twoodfin
10 gigabit can't come close to covering the growing demand, no?

During primetime hours, Netflix represents some substantial fraction of total
U.S. internet traffic. If you're Comcast, running 25% of the U.S. broadband
market, you're seeing a big chunk of that traffic. What if Netflix decides to
double their max streaming rate? Or quadruple it? We can argue again about
what it means that Comcast sells you a 20Mbit-max connection, but as a
practical matter, it will cost them a lot more than $6K/month to keep up with
Netflix's growth in subscribers, average daily viewership and stream quality.

~~~
aroch
10Gbps isn't a _lot_ in terms of total capacity or utilization but even a 100
extra kbps of burstable bandwidth/user can greatly improve the experience.
It's the difference between buffering every 30sec and watching with only minor
stuttering. Also, bandwidth costs only go down/mbps as you get bigger.
$6K/month is what you pay if you're a small business; Comcast or Verizon would
get high-level pricing (puts their cost somewhere around ~$3.5K/mn). A 50Gbps
commit with another 50Gbps at 95th percentile pricing would would cost them
fractions of a cent per customer but would make people much happier.

Now they'll never to it because they'd rather keep that ~$25K.

~~~
twoodfin
100Kbps/subscriber is around 200Gbps for Comcast. And that's just 100Kbps!
Netflix is going to keep telling their customers they're getting a suboptimal
HD experience (and they'll be right!) until the average stream gets somewhere
near Blu-ray's ~20Mbps. Maybe half that if you think codecs are going to get
better, but by then 4K will be winding down the pike.

The point is that for Comcast and Verizon, there's no end in sight: A few more
ports connected in a few more data centers isn't going to do more than make a
few subscribers slightly happier for a few months.

~~~
aroch
It doesn't _have_ to be dedicated, just bustable to a reasonably large number
of subscribers at a time. Netflix will prefretch data and a small amount of
burstable bandwidth goes a long way in viewing quality. This isn't about
letting everyone stream SuperHD content at the same time, this is about
relieving some pressure around the average bitrate (somewhere around 1900Kbps)

------
notlisted
I have a theory... (based on personal experience). The issue for many is (was)
with Apple TV, and not Verizon.

I updated my Apple TV in november (shortly after Netflix introduced its
SuperHD mode). For a long time after that, Netflix performance was abysmal
(dropping down to sub 480p at times, especially during the night time).

I complained to netflix and verizon. The latter suggested I try connecting to
netflix on a PC connected to the modem. I did and experienced no problems. No
problems on my Android device or chromecast either. Only my Apple TV box had
issues. Ultimately I found a thread on the forums which suggested a hard boot
(power down) of the Apple TV device. Once I did that, the problems went away.
If you have Verizon and use Apple TV to watch netflix, give it a shot.

I would love to see ars/netflix display a bandwidth graph by device.

~~~
drone
We have a 40Mb link from XFinity (Comcast), and we _only_ have problems with
Netflix. Amazon prime streaming works great, Hulu worked great when we had it
(I couldn't stand paying to watch the same commercial over and over again),
HBOGO, XBLN movies, and the assorted Xfinity services all work perfect. It's
only Netflix that we have trouble getting a HD stream from.

We use these services on an Xbox, Roku, and Kindle/PC - and Netflix is
consistently the slowest of them all, no matter the platform -- sometimes not
getting an HD stream at all during playback, but usually only getting HD
stream for about 30-40% of playback.

~~~
eli
I had the opposite experience: Netflix was fine on Comcast, Amazon Prime was
surprisingly poor.

------
beedogs
Lesson: don't get your internet service from a company that also tries to sell
you entertainment content. They're going to fuck you over both ways.

~~~
badman_ting
Too bad there are no other reasonable options. Not sure what the lesson is
there - move, I suppose

------
jsz0
Part of this is seasonal traffic trends. Here in the North East when the
weather starts getting hostile around November we see a big uptick in
bandwidth usage among our customers. Utilization tends to peak in January and
starts breaking as soon as the weather warms up. You can see a less dramatic
dip on this chart from the same period last year. With the long stretches of
cold weather all over the US this year I suspect ISPs all over the country got
hit hard. It's also the season for many millions of new devices to get
unwrapped and turned on.

------
paul_f
It really annoys me when people present data on charts and the lower range is
not zero. This article shows a speed comparison for Verizon and Comcast. The
Verizon chart ranges from 1.8Mbps to 2.3Mbps. The Comcast chart goes from
1.4Mbps to 2.2Mbps. This is lazy at best, disingenuous at worst.

People, stop doing this! Start a chart like this at zero. Only if that is
meaningless, do something different (it's not here). But is really that hard
to at least be consistent?

------
dangrossman
I'm on Verizon FiOS in Pennsylvania, with the standard residential 15/5
service, it's 10:44PM, and Netflix is streaming at a steady 3-4Mb/s. I guess
I'm lucky?

[http://i.imgur.com/akih9HA.png](http://i.imgur.com/akih9HA.png)

~~~
samstave
You're on FIOS and you're getting 3-4MB/s and you're feeling lucky?

How sad.

~~~
xxpor
He only has 15 Mbit service. He's actually getting ~2x what he's paying for.

~~~
tzakrajs
3Mbps is 0.20x (of 15Mbps) what he is paying for.

~~~
willvarfar
Bits != Bytes.

Mbps == Megabits/sec

MBps == Megabytes/sec

~~~
chomp
>I'm on Verizon FiOS in Pennsylvania, with the standard residential 15/5
service, it's 10:44PM, and Netflix is streaming at a steady 3-4Mb/s. I guess
I'm lucky?

He wrote bits, he's only using a 5th of his pipe.

~~~
reeses
Corroborated by the png he linked.

------
TheMakeA
What if we started netneutrality.js? Something that shows a banner on sites
for people using Verizon/Comcast. Perhaps that will raise more awareness for
the issue?

~~~
malandrew
It would be interesting if such a script used WebRTC to collect data from many
users in a distributed manner and stored the information in a DHT that
researchers could query for data to determine which providers are and are not
being a good netizens.

~~~
fpgeek
It's worth nothing that the FCC has a speed test app which is trying to gather
exactly that kind of data:

[http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-unveils-mobile-broadband-
spe...](http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-unveils-mobile-broadband-speed-test-
app-empower-consumers)

(source available here: [https://github.com/FCC/mobile-mba-
androidapp](https://github.com/FCC/mobile-mba-androidapp) ).

It's currently more focused on mobile networks, but it also gathers Wi-Fi
performance data as well. And given recent developments, I wouldn't be
surprised to see the FCC broaden that focus.

------
mml
I have residential fiber from a local isp @100mbps up & down, and have
definitely noticed netflix has been horrible for a few weeks (appletv).

I took a look at my airport stats, and it seems the atv had connected at 1mbps
to the AP, which would certainly cause problems. A reboot of the ap & the atv
resolved the issue.

If you have apple gear, you can see the data rate for your device by option-
clicking the AP in airport assistant.

------
ajp
Is there any way to (do these comparisons) differentiate between Comcast
Residential & Business?

------
degobah
I cancelled Netflix as a Charter customer because performance was terrible,
while Amazon Prime works fine.

~~~
joemaller1
Don't Amazon and Netflix both stream from the AWS cloud?

