As a comcast customer, I've noticed that if I am having a problem with streaming video that if I go to speedtest.net, the video streams fine after the initial ping test from speedtest.net. It will be fine for a few moments (seconds to minutes), but will slow down or stutter again eventually. A fresh visit to speedtest.net again corrects the problem. I have a hunch that a visit to speedtest.net will disable traffic shaping for a set period of time in order to convince people that their connection is fine.
It is interesting that in the article about Verizon's shaping of traffic to AWS that the tech support had the author go to speedtest.net and test his traffic in order to tell him "see no problems!". I've had similar responses from AT&T when I was a DSL subscriber.
I understand that traffic shaping should only affect particular sites and that,in theory,there would be no need for a temporary disabling of traffic shaping for a speedtest. My theory is that due to the high volume of packets needed in order to have a good result on speedtest.net, the analyses of packets at the router for traffic shaping is enough of a slowdown to affect the results.
Anyone else ever notice this?
Any alternative explanations as to why going to speedtest.net would suddenly make paused streaming video run again? I notice this mainly when watching live streaming youtube events or sometimes when I am watching netflix during peak hours.
I would love to hear alternative hypothesis as to what is going so that they could be tested!
Netflix is unwatchable during prime time where I live.
However, I have also noted that on two separate occasions when I began examining the Frontier FIOS site, I received a personal knock on my door from my local Comcast representative. Wondering if there was a connection to my search for another provider and the person at my door, I asked her if she was talking to everyone in the neighborhood or just me. It was just me--they sent a person out to personally ask me about my Comcast service.
In my area, Comcast runs its own Speedtest.net server to hide the fact that the closest peering point that leads back to the same state is a few thousand miles away and is insanely oversubscribed.
If Speedtest had more integrity, ISP-owned servers would be deprioritized.
I can't find it now, but I have read an article about a guy who wrote a script to ping speedtest once/minute. It made a clear, measurable difference in his download rate from other sites as long as he kept the script running.
Try some alternative performance-testing sites, and see if there's a difference with those; if there might be different QoS rules in play for specific web sites.
The speedof.me site is one I've occasionally used, and that also avoids the need for Adobe Flash.
I would love to see some further investigation into this. My initial thought is that if it's shown likely, someone needs to make a little utility that just loads speedtest.net every minute or so in the background.
No one has pointed out that this is bad for the providers throttling traffic.
If Time Warner, Comcast, and AT&T want their names to be associated with budget brands then its ok. Customers accept poor quality when the price is really low and there is no lock in (pre-paid mobile phone service.) Good luck getting those people to purchase premium services from you years in to the future.
On Hacker News we complain a lot about things most people don't care about like privacy and security. Most big companies can disregard those issues with minimal visible impact to their business long term. Video streaming quality is different because its what basically all of your customers are doing. Anyone with an IQ over 70 knows something is wrong, and you can't excuse it away.
Its possible that the peak bandwidth doesn't exist. In that case these ISPs are overselling their "inventory" much like airlines oversell seats. It could be early signs of infrastructure issues to investors.
> If Time Warner, Comcast, and AT&T want their names to be associated with budget brands then its ok.
It is definitely not OK. Time Warner is absolute garbage and has been for a very long time. Cablevision has an excellent network.
I know this very well.
Unfortunately, some towns contracted with Time Warner and some with Cablevision and you can't pick who you want as your provider ... unless you decide on where you live based on the available ISP.
As much as I love a good connection, I will not make my decision on where to live based on the available internet provider. Reputation is worthless unless people have a choice.
They're not overselling their inventory, their purposefully throttling data from competitors to either a) extort more money from them or b) promote their own competing offerings.
Most in the US have no other options for high speed Internet access other than their local cable monopoly which is about as an extreme "lock in" as you can get.
Sure they're pissing people off but there is no alternative unless the FCC steps in and forces them into an "open carrier" model or at least some model other than what we have now which clearly isn't working.
Nobody dares to speak to how bad this is for the traffic. The "infrastructure issues" were introduced a long time ago when it was decided that all data needs to go through egress points, and conform to arbitrary standards for metadata. Japan doesn't have this problem because their internet actually is decentralized, and their culture isn't at threat from users streaming their own video to as many people as they wish (and the network supports it).
I see that petition has already meet the required signature count. I haven't followed the state of petitions.whitehouse.gov; do we expect them to actually comment on this petition?
This actually isn't a net neutrality issue because back in 2009 when the FCC was writing the open internet order it decided not to mess with peering and interconnection disputes. So designating ISPs as common carriers could be a first step here, but it wouldn't be the only step.
I wonder if publishing these metrics would go a long way to solving the problem. I know I'd must prefer to sign up with an ISP that doesn't throttle traffic I care about. I guess the big problem with that idea is that in many areas of North America there is very little competition in the ISP marketplace.
If the government was going to do something, I'd prefer it concentrate on increasing competition. Ideally, every home should have at least two or three options for high speed network access.
> If the government was going to do something, I'd prefer it concentrate on increasing competition.
Indeed, competition would help tremendously. Mandated wholesale access to the last mile delivery would be a great start (and something that used to be mandated for DSL from ILECs). I believe AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc can do a good job of connecting my house to their network, and deliver my data to their office; from there, I'd prefer to have someone else take responsibility.
Bonuses if new regulation in the same spirit covered all mediums (or at least more of them), and addressed unfair pricing practices by AT&T from the last time (direct to consumer offerings were priced significantly below the wholesale pricing, which was anti-competitive). Some parameters for dealing with congestion in the shared medium between the end user and the central office(s) might be appropriate too.
"But they built the last mile so they should be able to do whatever they want with it..." /sarcasm
You know that comment is coming to this discussion at some point.
Wish there was a good answer to this. Making internet connectivity a 'utility' has its downsides and upsides. It really is becoming a pressing issue though (and not just because of netflix being slowed).
Many people don't realize much of the bit torrent debate ended because bit torrent switched from TCP to µTP. The problem was bit torrent clients caused massive congestion by making hundreds of TCP connections. µTP is extremely congestion/network friendly. It backs off based on latency, so it doesn't fill every buffer on the network.
This is fine let them keep screwing around with Netflix, Amazon, and Google(Youtube) it won't be long before they get pissed and build their own internet backbone/service providers(already happening).
I wish ISPs business where completely out of the content business.
Slowing competing content could be justified as a "fiduciary duty", yet it's much simpler than that: Gatekeepers and highwaymen, extracting private taxes on content they did not create.
Is there any interest in a Chrome plugin that would passively report anonymized download speed for things like YouTube or Amazon? I can imagine that kind of info would be useful.
YouTube used to offer a view of your download speed, compared to other customers of your ISP, other ISPs, and other countries, but it appears to be closed down, sadly.
I think if you could do some detection of what connectivity is being used, and other sorts of relevant connection data, it would be a valuable motivator to see, "We've detected you are 30% slower than other customers with x and y differences in service"
This is super hand wavy, but I think with proper data it could be a useful tool.
If AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and other ISPs are intentionally limiting bandwidth to certain content providers, as the measurements seem to indicate, they may be actually doing us a favor. By doing this, they are causing people to discuss the issue and eventually lead to market changing trends or new regulations and potential legal hazards for ISPs that do this in the future.
If anything, Amazon is a smart company, there might be an opportunity here for last-mile internet delivery...Amazon Fiber Prime anyone?
I wish we could amend the constitution that they are not allowed to do anything at all but sell bits to consumers. No selling of content, access to consumers, devices or ice cream or whatever other scheme they come up with. Their sole interest has to be selling more bits! If they even as much as think about doing anything else there need to bd draconian penalties. I would even argue that they are endangering infrastructure and charge them with terrorism.
>While I was seeing my episode of The Good Wife falter at what appeared to be 1.9 Mbps, I was able to measure connection speeds of 28 Mbps to my house using a Speedtest.net test from Ookla. This is exactly the dichotomy that the M-Lab data is showing, and my example is not an isolated one; Comcast users have been complaining for months.
How do we know that it is not just the provider being sapped for bandwidth? I notice that speed tests I run in the mid-day and evening come back pretty much the same, but Netflix takes noticeably longer to buffer in the evening. I always assumed this was because their servers were much busier then.
The first rotten thing there is DRM. There are no DRM-free video services where you can buy anything (Headweb doesn't count because it's regionally restricted). So there simply is nothing to chose from. Failure at step 0. It's not just rotten - it's completely decomposed.
[+] [-] j_m_b|12 years ago|reply
It is interesting that in the article about Verizon's shaping of traffic to AWS that the tech support had the author go to speedtest.net and test his traffic in order to tell him "see no problems!". I've had similar responses from AT&T when I was a DSL subscriber.
I understand that traffic shaping should only affect particular sites and that,in theory,there would be no need for a temporary disabling of traffic shaping for a speedtest. My theory is that due to the high volume of packets needed in order to have a good result on speedtest.net, the analyses of packets at the router for traffic shaping is enough of a slowdown to affect the results.
Anyone else ever notice this? Any alternative explanations as to why going to speedtest.net would suddenly make paused streaming video run again? I notice this mainly when watching live streaming youtube events or sometimes when I am watching netflix during peak hours.
I would love to hear alternative hypothesis as to what is going so that they could be tested!
[+] [-] coffeedrinker|12 years ago|reply
However, I have also noted that on two separate occasions when I began examining the Frontier FIOS site, I received a personal knock on my door from my local Comcast representative. Wondering if there was a connection to my search for another provider and the person at my door, I asked her if she was talking to everyone in the neighborhood or just me. It was just me--they sent a person out to personally ask me about my Comcast service.
All they have to do is fix the evening streaming.
[+] [-] nitrogen|12 years ago|reply
If Speedtest had more integrity, ISP-owned servers would be deprioritized.
[+] [-] corysama|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstalin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hoff|12 years ago|reply
The speedof.me site is one I've occasionally used, and that also avoids the need for Adobe Flash.
[+] [-] kbenson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AJ007|12 years ago|reply
If Time Warner, Comcast, and AT&T want their names to be associated with budget brands then its ok. Customers accept poor quality when the price is really low and there is no lock in (pre-paid mobile phone service.) Good luck getting those people to purchase premium services from you years in to the future.
On Hacker News we complain a lot about things most people don't care about like privacy and security. Most big companies can disregard those issues with minimal visible impact to their business long term. Video streaming quality is different because its what basically all of your customers are doing. Anyone with an IQ over 70 knows something is wrong, and you can't excuse it away.
Its possible that the peak bandwidth doesn't exist. In that case these ISPs are overselling their "inventory" much like airlines oversell seats. It could be early signs of infrastructure issues to investors.
[+] [-] maratd|12 years ago|reply
It is definitely not OK. Time Warner is absolute garbage and has been for a very long time. Cablevision has an excellent network.
I know this very well.
Unfortunately, some towns contracted with Time Warner and some with Cablevision and you can't pick who you want as your provider ... unless you decide on where you live based on the available ISP.
As much as I love a good connection, I will not make my decision on where to live based on the available internet provider. Reputation is worthless unless people have a choice.
[+] [-] josefresco|12 years ago|reply
Most in the US have no other options for high speed Internet access other than their local cable monopoly which is about as an extreme "lock in" as you can get.
Sure they're pissing people off but there is no alternative unless the FCC steps in and forces them into an "open carrier" model or at least some model other than what we have now which clearly isn't working.
[+] [-] Fasebook|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueblob|12 years ago|reply
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-net-neutra...
[+] [-] Buttons840|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shigginbotham|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nas|12 years ago|reply
If the government was going to do something, I'd prefer it concentrate on increasing competition. Ideally, every home should have at least two or three options for high speed network access.
[+] [-] toast0|12 years ago|reply
Indeed, competition would help tremendously. Mandated wholesale access to the last mile delivery would be a great start (and something that used to be mandated for DSL from ILECs). I believe AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc can do a good job of connecting my house to their network, and deliver my data to their office; from there, I'd prefer to have someone else take responsibility.
Bonuses if new regulation in the same spirit covered all mediums (or at least more of them), and addressed unfair pricing practices by AT&T from the last time (direct to consumer offerings were priced significantly below the wholesale pricing, which was anti-competitive). Some parameters for dealing with congestion in the shared medium between the end user and the central office(s) might be appropriate too.
[+] [-] ForHackernews|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ItendToDisagree|12 years ago|reply
You know that comment is coming to this discussion at some point.
Wish there was a good answer to this. Making internet connectivity a 'utility' has its downsides and upsides. It really is becoming a pressing issue though (and not just because of netflix being slowed).
[+] [-] ddorian43|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] incision|12 years ago|reply
I have little doubt that ISPs will continue to escalate this game of service degradation and denial without strict regulation.
0: http://consumerist.com/2007/10/27/damning-proof-comcast-cont...
[+] [-] jcampbell1|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tenpoundhammer|12 years ago|reply
I can't wait to get Amazon High Speed Internet.
So please, let them keep acting jerks.
[+] [-] EEGuy|12 years ago|reply
Slowing competing content could be justified as a "fiduciary duty", yet it's much simpler than that: Gatekeepers and highwaymen, extracting private taxes on content they did not create.
[+] [-] ogreyonder|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pronoiac|12 years ago|reply
* youtube.com/my_speed
[+] [-] existencebox|12 years ago|reply
This is super hand wavy, but I think with proper data it could be a useful tool.
[+] [-] stox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kriswill|12 years ago|reply
If anything, Amazon is a smart company, there might be an opportunity here for last-mile internet delivery...Amazon Fiber Prime anyone?
[+] [-] hussong|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amurmann|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredgrott|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steeve|12 years ago|reply
Why are they pushing people so much to piracy?
And don't get me started about the situation once you're outside the US.
[+] [-] goggles99|12 years ago|reply
How do we know that it is not just the provider being sapped for bandwidth? I notice that speed tests I run in the mid-day and evening come back pretty much the same, but Netflix takes noticeably longer to buffer in the evening. I always assumed this was because their servers were much busier then.
[+] [-] shmerl|12 years ago|reply