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Netflix Throttling Instant Video Streaming
rsk writes "For the last few weeks I've been experiencing terrible streaming video performance from Netflix on both my Xbox 360 and PC. While my Xbox 360 would at least stream at a lower resolution, my PC cannot seem to avoid 2-hr. buffering times before playback even started. I smelled shenanigans and started digging. With some help finding the debug menu for the streaming video player, I set out to figure out why playback was so slow. It seems that Netflix is significantly throttling Watch Instantly users (on the PC) down to an unusable cap — in my case, 48 kbps — on a per-connection basis."
I dunno. I used it tonight and the speeds were fine even when fast fowarding through slow parts of my selected movie.
I'll try later tonight. The streaming is the only reason I use netflix. I haven't actually returned the one DVD I have in the last few months.
It seems that Netflix is significantly throttling Watch Instantly users down to an unusable cap â" in my case, 48 kbps
That's about the cumulative bandwidth Clearwire gives me on some days.
(on the PC)
They must have partnered with Apple.
Netflix. Silverlight. And a series of tubes.
Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got...an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
I had streaming issues through Xbox Live tonight. I thought it was just me.
demand might be spiking more than they are used to and cannot keep up
were you watching during a high peak time? maybe they need to invest in more bandwidth.
Slashdot should actually do a little fact checking before posting stories such as this. I have the Netflix service and it works perfectly, the problem here is the user's internet connection or internal network. The testing he utilized tripped of a DDOS on the Limelight network content delivery service.
Netflix doesn't even deliver the streams to individual users, so if this were an actual problem Limelight would be the one to go after, not netflix. Again, there is nothing wrong with netflix, the problem is behind the keyboard.
Now we have confirmed that Netflix is throttling instant streaming PC-users to a rediculous 50 or 60 KB/sec cap
That's an interesting argument. He showed that each thread was throttled to 50 or 60 KB/sec, but he never had any evidence to support his argument atht it's netflix at fault, not his ISP or some other internet issue.
FYI there was a misconfiguration in the Netflix service (I'm a Netflix admin). The throttling was SUPPOSED to be 480 kpbs, which we think should be sufficient. It's already fixed.
I read this article, and it seems to me this guy came to a conclusion before he came to an experiment.
What he DID prove is that a Netflix server in LA was only handing out 50KB/sec per http socket. Most web type servers will do this when under heavy load- better to give everybody a little bit than a few people a lot and the others nothing. I think this is correct behavior for a heavy-load situation.
However, when he accuses them of throttling, along with the way this article is titled, STRONGLY implies that they are throttling specific users who use too much. If he wanted to prove this the test is simple- log out of netflix and log in with a friend's account, preferably a friend who doesn't stream much.
Throttling also implies that Netflix is intentionally reducing the connection quality. I see no logical reason for them to do this to EVERYbody, as that would make the Instant Watch service useless for everybody. Far more likely, as stated above, is that he's on an overloaded server.
So my take on it is this article is incompletely researched, draws a bad conclusion (which doesn't make much sense) from too little evidence, and doesn't perform the one test needed to actually verify it's claim.
--IronHelix
Arrrrrrrr Life's grand ain't it?
Eat sleep die
In his blog lambasting Neftlix, he says:
"Bringing up the Status window I noticed my download performance was a far cry from my 7 mbps speed, but rather a measly 0.48 mbps, about 1/14th the speed of my line"
In the article summary above, he's now saying 48 kbps.
0.48mbps is actually 480kbps, so he's off by a factor of 10, which (while still pretty crappy) makes it sound much worse than it actually is. So which one is it, OP?
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
In the blog post, Riyad Kalla says it was going at "0.48 mbps" (should be Mbps BTW), which is 480 kbps, not 48 kbps. Still slow for high quality streaming video, but much faster than dialup.
If there is any throttling going on, it is more likely that your ISP is responsible for it. Cable companies and DSL providers who are getting into the video on demand business may not like Netflix beating them to market with a more cost effective product...
KDawson, you're pissed at Blockbuster and now Netflix. Can no one please you?
/. as your personal pulpit.
Perhaps you should go back to reading books and not use
Yes I do feel 2 posts in 8 hrs is excessive. And yes I fully expect your "friends" to mod me down.
Netflix streaming seems to work just fine to my PC - I just tried it. It works fine to my Tivo as well. On occasion, there are problems - but as a reasonably intelligent adult, my first assumption isn't that Netflix is causing these problems intentionally. And you know what? If I go back and try again later, things usually have sorted themselves out!
I have to wonder about the average age and/or maturity level of some Slashdot submitters, as well as the editors approving these "stories"...
#DeleteChrome
Throttling streaming video is so nonsensical that my personal suspicion is PEBCAK or an ID10T error.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Wow, is Slashdot making a news article out of every morons malware induced performance issues? I watch Netflix Instant View DAILY (love the Kojak, baby) and have NEVER had issues with bandwidth limiting in the last few weeks or ever for that matter. After I read the headline, I fired up Stargate Continuum on my PC (highest quality stream, according to the service menu) and my Xbox 360 (IN HD NO LESS) and it popped up instantly with no quality issues and no delay. Next time, try contacting your crappy ISP before you waste our time with your sky-is-falling BS.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Oh well.. I tried to go legit, but time to fire up bittorrent again, I guess. They are just shooting themselves in the foot.
Any time we have trouble it usually is associated with our provider Comcast, not Netflix. However, with some of the streams from Netfilx the audio is out of sync or the picture quality isn't as good as it should be.
We use the HD Tivo and at times I feel almost guilty for all I get from Netflix, with the 2 at a time unlimited, my actual dvd cost has been about $.95 per dvd (4 dvds a week) and I watch more instant shows than I do from Comcast. I cut back to 1 at a time starting next month, we just can not keep watching 4 rentals a week with the weather getting nicer. Netflix makes it easy to switch between the various plans.
Netflix cured me of downloading movies, I don't get the latest screeners these days but do get anything Netflix has, and they do carry a large selection of classics that you can't find with bittorrent - the best part is there are no upload ratios and I don't have to worry about getting to 90% and having all the seeders bail out. Some rentals you need to wait in line, but if you keep plenty in your queue, the rentals will arrive on a regular basis.
I do keep seeding Ubuntu & Kubuntu, bittorent is still great for linux . There will always be people that will want everything for free, but so far Netflix has done more to curb illegal downloading than any other effort. More companies should follow the Netflix lead, rather than play the silly lawsuit game. On the other hand, Rhapsody was not a worthwhile cost for us, in theory it sounded great but, for us the reliability just was not there, after several months we dropped that subscription - they might have improved it since that time.
>>>please remove "nospam" from email address
Oh well.. I tried to go legit, but time to fire up bittorrent again, I guess. They are just shooting themselves in the foot.
And that justifies downloading the movies? If you're going to do that, then do it, don't act as if netflix committing one sin is justification. I don't like the MPAA or the RIAA, but that's not why we download music or movies without paying for them. We do that because we can and it's cheaper than paying for it. Pointing to things netflix is doing wrong and saying "that's why I'm doing this" is just rationalization.
This. I stream Netflix vids on both XP and Vista boxes at different times of day, and I almost never see buffering. Maybe once a week if that. Either this guy cheesed off somebody at Netflix and they're picking on him, or there's something wrong with his connection or system config.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
One of my neighbors is a netflix subscriber. His work is such that he HAS to have access to the internet all the time. So he has both DSL and Cable through a router that allows him to use both. This router allows him to direct traffic through one ISP or the other. When he directs netflix through the cable connection, the video stream stutters and skips. When he directs it through the DSL connection, the problems disappear. This is despite the fact that the cable connection has a nominal bitrate that is much higher.
The conclusion that he came to is that his cable provider is messing with netflix because it is competition for their own on-demand service.
I think something similar may be happening here.
This makes a lot more sense than the notion that netflix would drive away customers by providing a broken service.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
> We do that because we can and it's cheaper than paying for it.
The fact that there is a nonzero number of users for Netflix's streaming service proves that's not true. Yeah, I could get everything off Bittorrent, but instead I'm an outspoken enthusiast for Netflix's instant streaming. Why would I, when it's cheaper and easier to just grab the torrent?
Because not everyone who downloads is the {MP,RI}AA caricature you seem to have bought into. We very much _want_ to "go legit", and we're waiting on the much-vaunted free market to deliver a solution that isn't 3 orders of magnitude more stressful to deal with than the Bittorrent method.
As a further example; since Amazon started selling non-DRM'd MP3 files that could be accessed from a Linux browser, I haven't gotten a single song that was available from them through any other channel, and every song that I've listened to from my pre-existing collection, I've gone back and purchased from them.
(Some) people want, very much, to support a legitimate online content delivery mechanism. We're still waiting on the free market to come up with one that isn't awful.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
With an average of a 50ms response time, Iâ(TM)m going to go ahead and say my 7 mbps Qwest DSL service is working as advertised,
Most likely his provider blows.
This must be the 20th comment slagging kdawson.
You know, there's two ways of looking at this ... one way being that the article is posted and the community then gets to either verify or debunk it. If Netflix WERE throttling, instead of individual IPSs, the only way to know would be to get people from all over to post their observations. So, aside from posting the article, can you come up with another mechanism that gets feedback from everyone?
Not every rumour is true - but this is as good a way as any to weed out the wheat from the chaff - put the problem to the community to either confirm it with multiple data points, or debunk it.
might just be his ISP throttling him if he streams a lot or is a heavy user or if theyre generally craptastic.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Define "particularly well". I can't watch Netflix streaming on the Mac because of the constant stutters. Every 5-10 seconds or so, the video will stall for about a second, then catch up. It's not a connection issue as it's buffered out fine. It's not a speed issue as I'm on a 2.8ghz Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM. It's just shitty software.
me too. my mac is fast. I can speed test my connection for both burst and sustained transfers. I can watch Hulu and related without gaps. yet Netflix chokes. Not all the time. Just between 6 and 11 at night.
When you trace route the connection you find it makes about 5 hops in comcast network than about 5 to 10 hops in the limelight network. limelight is netflix's stream provider.
There appear to be huge latentcies-- like 500 milliseconds.
When I talk to the netflix techs they say the latencies are the issue. They cause packet resends.
I point out to them that if their streaming protocol were designed properly, given there is ample bandwidth, they should be able to work around the latency. Besides which I'd be even happier if I could switch between streaming (for browsing movies) and pre-loading them for viewing (like apple).
They say that they have no control over the transfer protocol--that's handled by silver light. and they have no control over the ability to buffer or pre-load because that's set by their drm contract's with the movie providers.
Basically if you want to watch a movie at assuredly good resolution and without gaps then maybe it's worth paying apple a couple bucks to pre-download it. Of course, the drawback is you have to know what you want to watch first.
Having done it both ways I find that part of the magic of a good movie is the immersive suspension of disbelief it creates when it is uninterrupted. So these interruptions are more than just annoying. They move the experience to a different part of your brain-- the part that likes TV not the part that suspends reality (like a good book can do).
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
>>>Qwest Zone - download videos
I thought internet neutrality made it illegal for ISPs to block other providers (like Netflix) simply to boost their own products?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Agreed.
I had issues w/Netflix and found them ALL related to Comcast. Adding a ~7 Mbps connection from AT&T solved all of my Netflix issues. Not surprisingly, Comcast would also screw up my T-Mobile UMA (IP based) cell phones and my non-Comcast IP phones at the same time.
I don't like the MPAA or the RIAA, but that's not why we download music or movies without paying for them. We do that because we can and it's cheaper than paying for it.
I don't download (because of the current legal exposure, and because much of MPAA/RIAA content isn't worth my time), but back when I did, it was never about it being cheaper. I would gladly pay significant sums of money for good content offered the way I want to view it. The *AA companies simply don't offer this, are not interested in offering this, and are more interested in suing their customers than figuring out how to offer it.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I use the Watch Instantly all the time as I do not have cable and have no problems. I'd check with my ISP before blaming Netflix.
OP: Are you doing any P2P stuff with your connection? I think you better check all your activity before you go blaming Netflix.
No laws currently exist either way, but ISPs (at least US-based ones) are currently operating in a net-neutral manner in order to keep common carrier status and therefore not be liable for any of the illegal downloading their customers do. It's certainly in their best interest to continue doing so; trying to force their own service over a competitor's may net them a bit more cash, but it would also allow them to be put directly in the crosshairs of $100B mass copyright infringement suits from the RIAA and MPAA, among others.
Don't confuse that with QoS between protocols, though. AFAIK, it's okay for them to prioritize VOIP over HTTP over streaming over bit-torrent without losing common carrier status, so long as the prioritization is equal for all destinations (i.e., Skype and Vonage would be on par with their own VOIP offering).
IANAL of course - that's just my understanding of the issues. Could be way off, in which case please correct me.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
ISPs are not common carriers, and never have been. It's a common misconception on Slashdot for some reason. Like this article notes, ISPs have historically not wanted to be regulated under the pre-existing common carrier regulations.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
The Roku player is only $100 and I have only had it stutter once when my maximum download speed via DSL was 1.5 Mbps.
I have upgraded to 7 Mbps service from Qwest and it works like a dream. I have Tomato on my router so can view the bandwidth as a real-time graph and I see pulses of around 5 Mbps down with about a 25-33% duty cycle.
Obviously you need to pipe the Roku output to something to display it. I pipe it to my TV instead of trying to watch movies on my Mac. But the convenience factor is very nice.
The Roku player has also just had a firmware upgrade that allows you to tie the player to Amazon as well as to Netflix. They say even more is coming. But it's now possible to rent or buy movies from Amazon to watch on the Roku too. Quality is the same as Netflix movies as best I can tell.
One thing to watch out for if you want to rent a movie on Amazon and have a Netflix account - make sure it isn't available on Netflix already for streaming viewing. It's interesting that a number of Amazons movies available to rent or buy are also available through Netflix as part of your regular account.
I use computers for lots of stuff but for me, watching a movie or TV show on a big display in my living room or bedroom is much nicer than sitting at my desk or holding a warm laptop.
Agreed. My personal strategy is to get the Netflix DVDs (4 a week) and rip them immediately for watching later on the weekends. I am unsure of the legality of this (since it's useful, it's probably illegal) but I am much more comfortable with the ethics than downloading directly.
For me, Netflix makes it as easy or maybe easier to consume media than piracy does, and the price is low enough that it's worth it. This is the perfect example of "the way forward" for media cartels - you will not beat piracy unless you can provide media that is of better quality, cheaper, or easier to consume than piracy can. At the very least you need to hit one of those three! In my mind, Netflix hits two (ease of use and price - while not free, it's well within what I'm willing to pay).
Now if they'd only get rid of that stupid DRM... I currently run (pirated!) Windows virtualized so I can watch streaming Netflix media. What with several big players getting rid of DRM for music, I can only hope that movies are next; when Netflix grows the backbone (and buys the lawyers) to shove DRM-free streams down the throats of the media providers, I'll be recommending Netflix to everyone.
As to the actual "article"... your connection to Netflix's servers is slow.. it happens. Could be your ISP, could be Netflix. Probably not throttling. This is the kind of thing you call your buddy about and say "hey is your Netflix slow too?", not post to Slashdot.