
Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-19/wireless-carrier-throttling-of-online-video-is-pervasive-study
======
crazygringo
For both wired and wireless, it's time for legislation to address exactly what
it and isn't permitted with regard to advertised speeds, throttling, and total
usage -- both with respect to users, and with respect to peering.

It's not just an issue of policy, but one of _transparency_ too.

It's a fact of life that more people will want to consume data than a network
can support. So where are we going to make the cut? Diminish everyone's usage
proportionally? Provide a guaranteed minimum? A minimum per minute, per hour,
or per day? Prioritize traffic based on type? Implement caps? Allow people to
pay for more speed, higher caps, or both?

Some of these will be better or worse for different users. But since people
often have little or no choice over which carrier or ISP they use and
switching can be expensive, this is exactly where it makes sense for policy to
be made democratically, as with utilities. And publicized.

When I pay for a carrier, I want to know what I should be able to count on,
and what I can't count on.

~~~
14
It's a fact of life that more people will want to consume data than a network
can support.

Is this actually true or is it just a matter of the isp not building the
needed infrastructure required? Because if it is just an infrastructure issue
then I would question why they choose to not expand to a better service. Is it
because they can get away with providing crappy service as many people only
have a single choice of what isp is available in their area? I highly agree
with your final statement and it’s true people just want to know what they can
count on and not play the guessing game.

~~~
crazygringo
It's a matter of economics.

An ISP could build the required infrastructure to support everyone's peak
desired simultaneous usage... but then they'd probably have to quadruple (or
worse) what people are paying for it just to break even, which the market
wouldn't support, so they'd go out of business.

The same way restaurants could invest in enough space to handle all demand for
Friday nights and Valentine's Day... but would go out of business because they
couldn't keep it full enough to pay the rent the rest of the week/year.

~~~
plopz
Didn't we already give the ISPs money to upgrade their infrastructure?
Something like $400 billion.

~~~
rayiner
No we didn’t:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556).

Even if that number wasn’t fictional, even by its own narrative it applies to
money supposedly paid to telephone companies for fiber deployment. The gist of
the argument is that by promising to build fiber, telephone companies got
regulators to let them increase phone charges and depreciate phone
infrastructure faster than otherwise would have been the case. That’s where
the $400 billion comes from.

These arguments are all based on the peculiarly of his telephone service was
regulated before 1996 (and in the authors view the way it should have
continued to be regulated—even though all of Western Europe went away from
this sort of rate regulation around the same time the US did). That has
nothing to do with cellular, which was always regulated under a totally
different regime, and was built more than a decade after these events.

------
ben7799
I keep thinking I see this on my wired (Comcast) connection too.

Stuff just behaves too strangely for it to be anything else.

One video provider will get slow. Switch to the mobile connection and it's
fine. Switch to another site on the wired connection, that's fine too.

They've made it perfectly clear they're unhappy I won't pay them an extra
$100+/month for 900 channels of crap over and over.

~~~
jedberg
This is your ISP being sneaky, but probably not in the way you think. This is
what Netflix has been complaining about for years.

Your ISP is purposely providing a too-small link to your video provider. So
when a lot of people are using that provider, it gets slow. When you switch to
another provider, or a VPN, you get to use a fast connection to that other VPN
that isn't overloaded, and then a fast connection back to your video provider.

This way your ISP can claim they are not throttling traffic because they
aren't inspecting the packets for traffic shaping, they are just using
physically poor connectivity to certain providers for traffic shaping.

~~~
briffle
Not to mention, they can now go and ask that provider to pay them for the
right to 'upgrade' their connection, to enable their customers to get what
they are paying the ISP for.

~~~
jedberg
Yup, and in Comcast's case, when Netflix finally paid Comcast's ransom, the
problem was suddenly fixed a few minutes later, because Comcast literally just
had to reconfigure the router and plug in a second cable.

~~~
jerkstate
In those days it was typical for the costs of peering to be borne by the
sender, relative to the traffic ratio. This changed when Netflix and Youtube
decided to use their PR and lobbying strength to bring the negotiation to the
court of public opinion - and normal people started referring to typical
peering cost-sharing agreements using emotionally loaded words like "ransom"

~~~
jedberg
The ratio requirements are a red herring. If your ISP says you get a certain
bandwidth, it is on them to provide the appropriate pipes to get to where
_their customers_ want to go. How can the ISP on the other side of Comcast be
responsible for maintaining ratios if Comcast's customers are the ones that
are requesting the data?

~~~
jerkstate
How can Netflix claim to sell streaming video without paying for adequate
bandwidth to stream that video?

~~~
jedberg
They had sufficient bandwidth. Netflix paid _their ISP_ for sufficient
bandwidth. Comcast just refused to connect to it, to the detriment of _Comcast
's_ customers.

~~~
jerkstate
Cogent (Netflix's ISP) and Comcast had a peering agreement which spelled out
costs and ratios; Cogent sold Netflix bandwidth (probably very cheaply) that
they could not provide without breaching their peering agreement. Cogent was
unwilling to fulfill the financial terms of their peering agreement in order
to provide the product that they had sold to Netflix. Somehow, people think
this is Comcast's fault?

~~~
liability
Netflix is a very popular company and Comcast is a _deeply_ unpopular company.
Consequently people take Netflix's statements at face value while assuming
that Comcast always lies, even in situations where the facts suggest
otherwise.

But who's fault is any of this? I say you reap what you sow. Comcast has only
themselves to blame when consumers are skeptical of them.

------
big_chungus
There is an actual problem here, but wireless carriers use the actual problem
of how to balance traffic as a fake cover for charging more.

However, assuming we bypass the garbage tiering, there is a legitimate reason
to do this. Page-loads are simple and fast. Every one loading pages is not
much of an issue, as they typically load at different times for a brief moment
and then are done. This means for a rated connection speed, you don't need as
much actual capacity.

Video streaming (or other downloads) are constant. To stream video at rated
speeds, you must build to provide most users that speed at the same time.
Problem two here is that in cases of high traffic, video streaming is
_greedy_. If it's not going at full resolution, it will suck up all available
bandwidth it is given. If more is given, it will raise quality (by default
settings, at least).

A sensible solution to this is to stream video and audio over UDP and have the
router just drop UDP when TCP needs bandwidth (to a point). The point is,
requirements are different. People sending e-mails shouldn't have to wait a
minute to send because you _really_ want to stream your netflix every where
you go and in 4k.

Which reminds me, I thought mobile connections were for simple stuff. Light
browsing, email, what-have-you. Even with "unlimited" plans, you're throttled
after twenty-odd gigabytes of data per month. Why can't people just download
netflix in advance? Failing that, I'm not sure why people expect to use a
wireless internet connection in the same way as a wired one.

------
awinter-py
if I were legislating this I'd mandate transparency before I mandated
neutrality -- maybe consumers would be willing to pay up or switch to a
provider that provided neutrality for streaming.

one way for government to provide usable markets is to mandate good
information without setting standards.

NFLX is over neutrality for home internet (not sure about mobile), they're in
every server cage

maybe neutrality is the wrong policy

or maybe ISPs shouldn't be in the content biz

~~~
zacharycohn
Most people do not have another reasonable option to switch to.

~~~
mikepurvis
It surprises me that most people in the US wouldn't have at least one cable
and one DSL option. After all, cable TV is available most places, and everyone
has a phone line (or is at least wired for one).

Or is the issue rural locations which were never wired for cable because they
all just got satellite dishes?

~~~
xur17
I live 3 miles from downtown Austin, which has numerous internet options
(Google Fiber, Spectrum, AT&T, and Grande), but the options in my apartment
complex are:

* Spectrum (up to 400mbps)

* AT&T (5mbps dsl)

I technically do have _some_ choice, but given that one of these is close to
100x faster than the other, and the pricing is fairly similar...

I think wireless isps and 5g are our best chance at disrupting this.

~~~
briffle
I used to live 8 miles from Madison, WI (technically, one exit south of their
beltline interchange on I-90). My ONLY two choices were 2mb WISP for
$65/month, or 4g hotspot, and all of them were VERY expensive for over 15GB a
month. (I used about 20GB per month on the 2mb wisp because I had little kids
who loved netflix cartoons, faster speed would also cause higher quality
video)

There was NO cable or dsl. ATT always said DSL was available in our area, and
that they would schedule the install, then 3 days later, the local guy would
call, and say "oh, hell no, lol" and cancel it

~~~
mikepurvis
I don't know if this was viable at the time, but nowadays I expect you could
use an OpenWRT router to do per-domain/mac traffic shaping on the device
displaying the cartoons. That would force it down to 480p (or whatever) and
reduce your overall usage.

Another option that might not have been available at the time would be taking
the Netflix device to a different connection (work, the library, whatever) and
then pre-downloading a bunch of the cartoons for offline viewing.

------
JohnJamesRambo
I’m reminded of a comment I read a few days ago from someone that has their
own small isp that said bandwidth was basically an inconsequential cost for
them. Throttling like this is penny pinching of the highest order. How do we
get the benefits of competition if every company is doing it?

~~~
wbl
Shannon-Hartley is a harsh mistress. There is only so much wireless capacity
especially when you have a bunch of phones close to each other.

~~~
sixothree
> when you have a bunch of phones close to each other

Even when you don't apparenly...

------
dehrmann
Congestion is a real thing for LTE networks, so you have to throttle. There's
only so much bandwidth over a shared medium.

~~~
QUFB
I really, really hate to defend mobile carriers, but...

Congestion is a real thing. Mobile subscribers are now using significantly
more data due to video streaming, and wireless carriers aren't expanding their
capacity fast enough. 5G won't help for most of CONUS. Millimeter wave 5G,
which will help, will only be deployed in urban areas. Mid-band and low-band
5G will only increase spectrum efficiency around 20%.

For now, carriers are throttling videos and introducing various
deprioritization options. All the major carriers only offer plans with forced
traffic deprioritization. For some plans, all traffic is deprioritized. For
others, deprioritization happens after a threshold.

There isn't enough bandwidth in the US to support 240 million subscribers
streaming Netflix 24/7.

~~~
preinheimer
Sure, congestion is a thing, but:

\- I feel like there should be some oversight or required transparency about
how and when they're applying throttling. Can they throttle customers in under
served markets all the time to save money? \- They're currently throttling
sites not protocols or users. Why? Did some sites pay them off? If they need
to throttle they should be applying that process equally among sites. "But
AT&T didn't slow Amazon.com's Prime Video at all" \- I would be curious to see
where bandwidth problems play out in terms of "carrier could build more
towers, but hasn't" and "we've reached the actual peak of what's possible with
current technology.

------
larrik
> AT&T Inc. throttled Netflix Inc. 70% of the time and Google’s YouTube
> service 74% of the time

> T-Mobile US Inc. throttled Amazon Prime Video in about 51% of the tests, but
> didn’t throttle Skype and barely touched Vimeo

> Choffnes says Verizon can’t restrict his ability to publish research and the
> companies that support him don’t influence his work.

Yet, missing from this article: any %'s from Verizon

------
makecheck
I don’t necessarily want throttling at the ISP level but I do want rules on
what is “reasonable” for web sites on wireless. Data is expensive.

A big one: I often do what should be simple things data-wise, like tapping a
link to “view article”, and am punished. Is it my fault that the obnoxious
target site decided on its own to download and auto-play a huge video with
sound in a floating window, none of which was requested or required!?

I have the right to squash that crap to save my data plan and battery (and
sanity). That has meant installing blockers, and it doesn’t look like I’ll
ever be able to stop doing so.

------
jcims
If these streaming providers would actually provide consumers with effective
tooling to determine if throttling is taking place, this would get a lot more
traction. I fought with CenturyLink for 18 months collecting stats on overall
network performance vs. throughput to YouTube because it was clear something
was going on. It was a giant pain in the ass trying to come up with figures
for YouTube.

~~~
jedberg
Check out [https://fast.com](https://fast.com) from Netflix. It's a speed test
based off of Netflix's servers, so it will tell you your bandwidth _to
Netflix_ at any given time.

Then complain to your ISP if that doesn't match your advertised speed.

~~~
psim1
When the advertised speed is "up to XX Mbps" and you occasionally do get those
speeds, then what is the proper complaint? They are providing "up to" the
speed purchased. It works very well in the provider's favor.

~~~
jedberg
I guess the best you can do it test it multiple times and then complain that
you've never seen over XX Mpbs and then ask when exactly you'll get "up to"
the advertised speed.

FWIW, even if you don't complain, it will help Netflix gather data that they
can use to complain on your behalf.

------
hristov
I am going to say the obvious here but sometimes the obvious needs to be said.
This is why we need net neutrality!

~~~
dehrmann
This is where net neutrality fails. I'm all for not letting vertically
integrated carriers give their own services an unfair advantage, but if
throttling a high-bandwidth user to improve the service of nearby users? I'm
more ok with that.

~~~
MrStonedOne
But thats not whats going on.

This is throttling by content, not by user.

All video content gets throttled so that the html5 video player negotiates a
lower video resolution. t-mobile literally touts this as a feature.

Net neutrality is the belief that isps should only be allowed to throttle by
user, never by content, all data should be equal.

~~~
sixothree
Not only that, but they advertise that they are giving you "10 GB of data at
LTE speed" and that's not what you get.

------
geggam
Use a VPN in AWS to see the difference over the same line. It is interesting
to say the least

Easy way to implement one to test with here

[https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand](https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand)

~~~
gruez
>VPN in AWS

at 9 cents a gigabyte, it's definitely going to be pricey.

~~~
geggam
Given the reduction in size streaming ... not really.

 _So that same 2 hour movie on Hulu may be as little as 1.25 GB - Yep, 1
/1200th of the original…. Or as much as 5–7GB for Netflix or Youtube._

------
esotericn
I don't see an issue with throttling video at all - the idea that I can bang a
4K stream down on LTE, which might be limited to 100mbit from the tower for
everyone, means that's necessarily going to happen.

That said, I use secure encryption to prevent the ISP from viewing my browsing
habits. Throttling VPN use carte-blanche because you don't know what's in
there would be overkill.

It seems to me that it's best to just throttle based on allowing burst usage
and treating all bulk downloading including streaming video identically.

------
kwhitefoot
The title should say "US Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is
Pervasive: Study"

The article doesn't suggest that this problem exists outside the US. Perhaps
it does.

~~~
cryptoz
The second sentence of the article links to the paper cited, which shows the
international data.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Ah, thanks.

A cursory scan of the paper found table 4 which suggests that the problem is
principally a North American one nonetheless.

------
avidetto
Here's a thought - just mandate that all carriers should have an API that
returns true congestion rate and throttling rate of users at a given time.
This way we can keep everyone honest and transparent. That way - If i'm unable
to watch my Netflix show in HD without bufferring across LTE, Netflix app can
call an API to see if the throttle is limiting them.

------
projektfu
I see a number of people who use YouTube just to listen to music on their
phone. If you have an unlimited plan it's cheaper than paying for Spotify. So
instead of a cheap 128kbps stream they are sending full motion video for
someone who isn't watching anyway. I am curious what portion of streaming this
represents.

------
berbec
If companies were better about being up-front, I would have no issue. I
usually can't tell when my phone's streaming resolution drops to 480p, so I
really don't care. It's being sneaky about it, on page 13 in small text, that
bothers me.

------
badrabbit
How can they do this if the connection is over TLS? Or is this regardig real
time UDP video?

~~~
dmitrygr
other side's IPs? They are usually well known

~~~
badrabbit
I suppose without a CDN that makes sense

------
JustSomeNobody
I have AT&T. Fast.com never goes over about 4Mbps. Any other speed test shows
20, 30, or more Mbps.

------
tcxqy
Wireless is a medium that is severely limited because of the laws of physics.
I 100% support QoS.

And by QoS I don't mean limiting video even if there's available bandwidth, I
mean limiting it if other people are trying to use their connections
reasonably.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Now, please explain why, in the case of contention, the user using video
should get less than their fair share of the available capacity?

~~~
tcxqy
Because in case of congestion the user watching video is abusing the system.
It's like going to a congested public road with a convoy of lorries just
because you can. Really, don't be a dick.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> Because in case of congestion the user watching video is abusing the system.

Why do you think that a user that is using exactly the same amount of
bandwidth as any other users (i.e., their fair share) is abusing the system?

What would you say if some user was watching a video stream that used only
half as much bandwidth as their fair share? Would that still be abusive?

~~~
tcxgy
Because in case of congestion (let's say everybody gets allotted 50 KB/s) you
can't even watch video. Dozens of users trying to watch video at 50 KB/s
aren't even watching video; they're just launching a DDoS attack. I'd be very
happy to throttle them to 1 KB/s so I don't have to wait 10 seconds to receive
a picture through Whatsapp.

You're arguing against the laws of physics here, and you're arguing that
stupid users should be able to screw everybody else. No thanks.

~~~
scrungus
>You're arguing against the laws of physics here and you're arguing that
stupid users should be able to screw everybody else. No thanks.

i think there is a misunderstanding here. he's not arguing that ISPs shouldn'
be able to bandwidth-discriminate based on customer. He's arguing that they
shouldn't be able to discriminate on the type of data. what would it matter to
the other users if they were slowing down the network by html5 video, VNC, or
playing a game over TCP?

I don't know a lot about networks, but i think a potential solution could be
to discriminate between high-bandwidth and low-latency transmissions. For a
video game or something you would want to have low latency, but you wouldn't
need a lot of bandwidth. on the other hand, video streaming requires a lot of
bandwidth but doesn't depend so much on latency as long as it has a big enough
cache. images are probably somewhere in the middle. this would allow low-
bandwidth applications to be prioritized.

~~~
tcxgy
Cool, so you're arguing for QoS. Thanks for supporting my argument.

~~~
mschuster91
If the customer _specifies_ QoS, why not? There are 6 reserved bits after HLEN
in a TCP packet header, which could be used to annotate the priority of the
stream - one for low-latency but also low bandwidth (=Whatsapp, messengers,
gaming, VoIP), and one for bulk transfers (=high latency acceptable, high data
volume).

Default would be the first so that networks may only have special treatment
for apps that explicitly opt in to say "i'm ok to wait a bit" like Netflix,
Youtube and friends.

------
JustSomeNobody
On the one hand, I can see needing the ability to throttle for network traffic
handling because you'll always have that one person who goes into an all you
can eat, grabs 10 plates and all the chocolate pudding because they have to
feel like they got one over on ... well, everyone. On the other hand, doing
this 24/7? That's just not right and I think this runs afoul network
neutrality legis... oh, wait.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> On the one hand, I can see needing the ability to throttle for network
> traffic handling because you'll always have that one person who goes into an
> all you can eat, grabs 10 plates and all the chocolate pudding because they
> have to feel like they got one over on ... well, everyone.

So, you want to allow companies to not fulfill contracts because the company
has failed to fulfill contracts?

Mind you, if customers in this scenario of yours don't get to eat as much as
they can eat, that has absolutely nothing to do with the other customer that
happened to eat as much as they can eat, and everything with the company not
being able to fulfill the contract that they entered into. It is the company's
fault, and only the company's fault, if they enter into contracts with
multiple people that say "N bucks for as much as you can eat", if they then
don't have enough food to feed all those people.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
No, that's not what I said at all. I want someone tending the eatery telling
the person scooping out all of the chocolate pudding that, sure, they may have
as much as they like, but let others have some now and we have more in the
back that we're bringing out. You just need to wait a few moments, so have
your one plate, _then_ come back for more.

