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Netflix Compares ISP Streaming Performance
boustrophedon writes "The Netflix blog compared streaming performance among 20 top ISPs for the past three months. A Netflix HD stream can provide up to 4800 kbps, but the fastest American ISP, Charter, could sustain only 2667 kbps on average. Most Canadian ISPs beat that, with champ Rogers providing an average of 3020 kbps. Clearwire, Frontier, and CenturyTel were in the doghouse with under 1600 kbps."
I've got Verizon FiOS, and though I know it's not that common, but I can get steady 3.7 MB/s streams.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
This is FiOS, this is SLOW...
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
Very nice. Rather impressive to pre-empt the ISP's.
"well, your competitor is able to provide better speeds to more customers, why are you whining? Oh? AND You charge more for lower service? Interesting. Well, lets let your customers decide for themselves with more facts who they want"
It'd make sense at this point for an ISP with a bit of sense to make a nice deal with Netflix to improve things here, then everyone wins.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Do these charts represent the speed from the ISP to the consumer? Is it possible that an ISP could make it appear to Netflix that the speed is higher, while slowing down the transfer to the actual user?
Yeah, my cable modem is stupid fast....only problem is, running full tilt I can go through my monthly bandwidth cap in eleven and a half hours.
Fortunately, for the moment, the overage cap is $50 so if you download a bunch some month you just say, "Woohoo, unlimited bandwidth." For example, in January I downloaded 750MB which put me 625MB over my cap and would have cost an extra $780. Ridiculous no? And now the CRTC (equivalent of FTC) has ruled that the major ISPs are allowed to pass usage based billing fees onto third party providers which means there will be no more unlimited plans and the billing cap will likely go away.
Basically, Rogers and Bell want you to watch their channels, not use Netflix, AppleTV, etc. And the wretched hive of scum and villany known as the CRTC is letting them do it.
Not much point in fast internet if you can't use it.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Well, that's not too hard, a sizable portion of the rest of the world is faster than America.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Why aren't we getting 10x this? For heaven sake we have had terabit optical data transmission technology for over a decade now. Isn't it about time to start getting REAL high speed to door steps?
...but how in the hell is anyone supposed to pick the colors out of those graphs, at least three of them are the same shade of sky blue.
I'd like to see this redone as the graph is certainly compelling, just a little bit more readable.
If the world isn't beating a path to your door you're doing something wrong.
Dear Netflix,
Subtle suggestion noted. Perhaps we can discuss the details of our offering you a superior service sooner rather than later. We would like to propose that in exchange for offering you a faster connection to our consumers, by prioritizing your traffic over others, you openly endorse us as your ISP of choice in the regions we serve. I think you'll agree that we can both come out ahead in this particular arrangement. You of course, will be free to make similar agreements with other ISP in regions that we do not service, and we will not consider this to be an issue.
Yours Truly, [Insert ISP Here]
Fantastic. The worst ISP in Canada is still faster than the best ISP in the US.
Also, while interesting, this is basically useless to the average US consumer. It's not like you get a chance to choose between those 16 US ISPs. In the US, you're lucky if you get to choose between 2 of them.
Uh what?? I do always get sustainable 12 Mbit out of my DSL line here in Germany (which is advertised as 16MBit, but due to bad lines only goes to 12). I get 7Mbit out of my prepaid cheapo 10 €/Mo unlimited (but slows down to GPRS after 1 GB of usage) mobile plan (vodafone) and am soon switching to 32Mbit cable at home (which i've been told is sustainable as well).
What exactly is the big deal with getting customers rates exceeding 4 Mbit??? Gotta be kidding me...
It's better than what I get from Netflix.
A big fact 0 kbps because of region restrictions.
Interesting to see Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast all in the top five. It seemed certain there would be at least one throttling between those three. We've had our Netflix on the first two and never had a problem (yet).
Fiber optical very high speed equipment (used behind the xDSL/Cable copper network and behind the wireless towers) has never been as cheap as its now.
Long range gigabit ethernet stuff is dirt cheap.
10 Gigabit ethernet, which allows 2 thousand 4.8Mbps streams is already very affordable for carriers.
A pair of fiber strands can carry 16 10 Gigabit links easily, that's enough for 32000 top speed streams.
Long distance fiber optical cables typically have at least 36 strands. Some reach as high as 144 strands. Do the math and you'll see fiber capacity is almost never the issue.
But then there's a very interesting FACT. If you exclude p2p and video streaming, 10Gbps link can provide bandwidth for one million users. That's right, typical users that don't run P2P or use video streaming/download services require just 10kbps bandwidth.
That's the conundrum. Heavy users (p2p and video streamers) are responsible for such a disproportional share of bandwidth consumption that most providers just don't care about the quality of service they deliver for such users.
They might actually prefer you go elsewhere given the tight margins.
You should be glad if you can pay US$ 10 more to have higher quality service. At least that way you ISP can't complain that your piggybacking on the average light user. Honestly asking for a discount if you use little bandwidth isn't very reasonable either. A very large portion of the ISPs cost is last mile stuff that doesn't change if you're using zero bandwidth or maxed out in the xDSL case. Copper / coaxial cable stuff requires most maintenance, as they are most subject to ice storms, lighting, traffic accidents, ... Fiber can have redundancy.
ADSL is the best option for video, as long as you're close enough to your ADSL provider DSLAM that you can get fast enough speed. Cable is only better if you're far from the nearest ADSL DSLAM. DSLAM is the counterpart to the ADSL modem. Your ISP should be able to estimate your max link speed with your address and tell you when you're too far for your selected speed.
Just trying to demystify some facts. Most large ISPs / carriers won't discuss this stuff openly. They prefer you don't know the real facts. I'm not trying to judge what is right or wrong from either side.
The different connections need to be split.
For example, Verizon needs to have:
Verizon DSL 768kbps - 1Mbps
Verizon DSL 1.5Mbps - 3Mbps
Verizon DSL 4Mbps - 7Mbps
Verizon DSL 10Mbps - 15Mbps
Verizon FIOS 15Mbps
Verizon FIOS 25Mbps
Verizon FIOS 50Mbps
Obviously a low end DSL connection is not going to be the same as those who can order the 10-15Mbps DSL connection. And it is likely that the DSL 10-15Mbps connection is going to be different from the FIOS 15Mbps.
To group all of those connections into one Verizon line is completely misleading. And if they didn't take measurements from all of those connections, then then that makes the results even more suspect as the graph doesn't specify what type of connection they chose to test with.
The problem here is that you have the difference between the speeds the ISPs can run at and the speeds from the customer to Netflix. I am using the normal Cablevision 15Mbps service, and I DO see speeds up at around 11Mbps. Now, if I have to go through 5 other ISPs to get from Cablevision to the Netflix servers, the problem is the connections between ISPs is where the limits are, not Cablevision itself. The same may apply to the other ISPs out there, where you get the speeds, and you can get to many web sites at the high speeds, but getting to Netflix is where there could be problems.
Back in April, it seems that Netflix moved to the Amazon hosting....could it POSSIBLY be that they are not seeing great speeds due to Amazon?
There is a huge difference between the two, it kind of invalidates the who study.
"A Netflix HD stream can provide up to 4800 kbps"
To how many people simultaneously? Somewhere must be an evidence (assumption) that Netflix servers work at less than 100% capacity. I am completely unfamiliar of these. Saying "A Netflix HD stream can provide up to 4800 kbps" and missing the total number of users trying to connect is not saying much about that.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Wouldn't be the first time. *coughs* 1812 *coughs*
All that this shows is that there isn't much difference between the ISPs. They had to scale the chart (it doesn't start at 0) just to show the differences. As Netflix commented in the linked post, their HD streams are much higher (4.8kb) than these graphs. Of course the graph is just an average, so it doesn't speak to how HD users are affected.
I'm I reading this wrong? That's the limit that the ISP can reliably provide, right? Or are those numbers lower than ISP's max because many clients have low-end broadband connection (2M xDSL or something). My ISP can supply sustainably about 5 times that much. I'm on the other side of the Atlantic, but USA can't be that far behind?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
This is exactly what we need. They should run this test daily and have a website dedicated to it.
Better yet, the FCC should be running the test.
This is ridiculous. Amost no consumer internet connection will have a "sustained" speed of 4.5Mbps. That's the reason video streaming sites use buffering. There is always going to be dips and peaks in the bandwidth.
They also may not have tested with the highest-tier service offerings, but only the average consumer level.
Fifty-four forty or fight!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
there's my isp waaay at the bottom, no surprises there.
How surprising is that? Comcast is routinely bashed for performance - maybe Netflix paid them off?
Well lucky me i have the least worst ISP for netflix in america.
The larger the ISP, the more they’re penalized by the more rural regions which are limited to DS3 45 Mbps circuits feeding a whole town.
We are talking about AMERICA, yeah, the GREAT AMERICA, beaten down by the canajians???
Please say it ain't true, AMERICA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I once had a meeting with a software partner from a Canadian telecomms company when I worked in that industry who said: "Most of our country is below freezing for half the year. We're good at technologies that mean we don't have to go outside."
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The AT&T numbers will suffer somewhat due to Uverse (VDSL) and regular DSL being sold at varying speeds. While I like the idea of 18-24Mbps, I can't reasonably afford it at this time.
-l
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I have been streaming Netflix HD over the minimum service level of Fios (5Mbps) for 3 years now with nary a hickup. We use it in place of cable (Fios does not provide TV in our area).
And with the exception of Canada, the US is bigger then all those countries above it combined...
What this article forgets to mention is Rogers has Brutal bandwidth caps and speed throttling, and is very very expensive.
only problem is, running full tilt I can go through my monthly bandwidth cap in eleven and a half hours.
We badly need a "truth in advertising" law that would make it illegal to label a "100Mbps connection" with a 5GB monthly cap as anything above the 16331bps it really is (yes, less than 16kbps, this is not an error). Providing a bigger burst is ok but only if that's clearly marked as such.
Toss in something about the scam that lets ISPs call 100Mbps down/128kbps up by the bigger number. If you want to use just one number, you'd need to print the lower one. Anything else is deceiving the customer.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Yeah, I have a Verizon 3.0 DSL line.
Recently, with the exact same plan, Hulu suddenly seems a lot slower. I just recently had to start buffering the show again starting about a month ago, but all I can tell is my line is the same it has been. I don't know if there's advanced throttling going on to support the whole Hulu Plus push.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I am sure one of the ISPs will consider it harassment and sue.
Maybe.
I've been able to get an acceptable non-HD stream from Netflix using Clear.
Yadda, yadda anecdote, of course.
Where is Xfinity? I don't see it on this list.
Yet another reason Canada is better than the US, I miss being able to make fun of them.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Beware Canada!
According to the graph, Canada is producing Kill Bots at an alarming rate!
I once had a meeting with a software partner from a Canadian telecomms company when I worked in that industry who said: "Most of our country is below freezing for half the year. We're good at technologies that mean we don't have to go outside."
Your friend was either exaggerating or was misinformed.
Most major cities in Canada, and hence most people, only get about 4 or 5 months of below zero temperatures and cites like Vancouver may only get a few days. You have to go north of the Arctic circle before you get cities that have six months below freezing. Even Whitehorse has average temperatures above 0 for 7 months of the year.
That's not to say that when it does get cold it isn't $#^%$# miserable but it doesn't last half the year.
The reason we're good at communication technologies is not because it's too cold, it's because we have 35 million people in a country bigger than the U.S.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Netflix streams at rates that effectively consume the entire subscriber subscription rate for hours on end. It is obvious from the postings which are being made that most who are posting are end users with no network design knowledge. So, here goes.
Netflix streams at 1.0-6.0 Mbps at a fairly constant clip the entire time a movie is playing. There are exceptions to this behavior. But, for the most part, that is the picture the network engineering folks see. Now, take a rural telco of 5000 access lines that offers DSL to 100% of its customer base. Today 2000 of the 5000 lines are subscribed and running ADSL2+FAST and 90%+ can attain speeds of at least 3 Mbps. Most can attain much higher speeds.
Of the 2000 DSL subscribers, lets assume that only 1% are Netflix customers (arguably a low number). If 1% are Netflix customers, then twenty customers will be consuming 60Mbps of bandwidth at 100% capacity constantly. If 10% are Netflix customers, then 200 customers will be consuming 600Mbps of bandwidth at 100% capacity constantly. This rate is twice the rate of the purchased bandwidth capacity for the entire ISP. And this assumes only 3 Mbps service.
Now lets assume that those 200 customers are paying $29.95 for their 3 Mbps service. The total revenue for those 200 customers would be $5,990.00 per month. That amount is almost $3000.00 per month less than the cost of the upstream port capacity without any transport fees. Oh and the bandwidth being purchased for the entire ISP is only 300Mbps redundant capacity. BTW - There is no regulatory recovery for Internet bandwidth. So, please don't play the telco monopoly card.
So, there are a bunch of end users who think you are getting the short end of the stick from the ISPs. Think again. Just because Netflix wants a free ride to the end customer and the end customer wants to use 100% of their purchased link on the cheap doesn't make the ISPs the villians. With this kind of network utilization, the ISPs are no longer able to make any money on their services. As well, they are now having to rebuild their networks to make sure they can support over the top video services like Netflix. And, Netflix is rating the ISPs???!!! That is like the fox guarding the chicken coop. Why would anyone want to hear from Netflix how well ISPs perform for their service when Netflix isn't paying for the network or bandwidth.
A smile and a hug never hurt anyone
We have two Verizon DSL lines at work for our clients to use. During certain parts of the day, both can barely stream Youtube videos without buffering. Verizon support SUCKS. When I call, they refuse to acknowledge I have two separate business DSL lines with static IP addresses and both have problems. They start with having me reboot the "computer", checking the eth cable, they have sent me new DSL routers, this list goes on. I finally gave up and our guests live with crappy speed. Both are attached through their own M0nowall based router and there are no rogue PC's taking up the bandwidth. They just suck. It might be a quick fix on their end in the CO but I just don't have the hours it takes to be on the phone with them.
The first thing is to blame the chart maker for not having any education in how to visually display quantitative information and for not putting any thought into people trying to read the chart and differentiate between a number of very similar colors.
There's a number of things the chart could have that would have helped -- ensure no two similar colors are close (black and brown should be in the top band instead of 3 blues), callouts to indicate which line was which instead of relying on a color-coded legend.
The next thing to blame is Excel. Excel should be reprogrammed so that once the first six or eight easily distinguished colors are used, additional chart elements should switch to a patterned line/fill (and a different color). This by itself would solve all the problems and make uneducated chart makers look a lot smarter.
There would have to be some serious peering/colo for any isp to be able to provide that. We will have to raise our rates. All of us have to raise our rates. We simply have more people using it than we used to. Even two years ago our little isp didn't ever top out our 45 meg connection. Today we have upgraded two two times and still have major loads during the evening. I am the one man tier2 at this company. I hear a lot of people upset that they can't get the supermega(tm) stream from nexflix. We also sell media(tv). You can asume that the telcos and backbone providers will be the only ones who will profit by this. I would also really love to crash netflix by giving them what they want im betting they couldn't handle giving all their customers that speed.
label a "100Mbps connection" with a 5GB monthly cap as anything above the 16331bps it really is
I completely agree.
I'm getting more and more pissed off as greater numbers of people are beginning to understand what monthly transfer caps are, and then proceed to voluntarily or forcedly believe the outright fucking lie that these assholes are perpetuating (and that most folks here also believe!):
[bullshit]
Enforcing a limit on data transfer over a given period of time is a very direct and extremely effective method of completely alleviating the problems that can be caused by a small number of users consuming most or all of the bandwidth on any given, shared network segment.
[/bullshit]
The statement that you just read, enclosed in [bullshit] tags, is 100% bullshit.
It's a problem with bandwidth, not a problem with transfer. Don't ever believe the utter lie that these two concepts are inherently and directly correlated. While they can be correlated, they do not have to be, and, in true Slashdot spirit, they are most certainly not causal.
Lastly, if you don't understand WHY what I say is true, think of it this way:
Take a look at the gigabit switch sitting on your desk (or pretend you have one). You've used it very lightly. You just browse the web through it. Maybe some games. No youtube, no torrents, no downloading. You've owned it for a while now, and you've transferred about 10 gigabytes of data through it in that whole time.
I own the exact same model, and I'm coming over your house later and swapping out switches with you, but the difference between your switch and mine is that I pushed 5 terabyes of data through mine every single day I've owned it.
Given that neither switch is defective, when I switch hardware with you, will you notice the difference?
The worst part about this whole thing is that bandwidth is a fundamental commodity and property of multi-segment interconnected networks in general (read: the Internet). It's so fundamental that, rather than paying specifically for the connection speed of a physical link into someone's network, ISPs pay specifically for bandwidth usage based on a well accepted model commonly called 95th percentile billing because of how fairly and accurately it reflects a given link's impact on the network. Overall transfer over a given period, while it may be calculated, is irrelevant because the amount of data pushed through a link simply doesn't fucking matter. Data transfer at all levels of a network is a function of bandwidth, not the other way around. Were you to graph it out as a function, as time approaches infinity, transfer does as well.
On behalf of the ISPs though, this misconception and billing model is absolutely genius. If I literally possessed a LIMITLESS source of product (data transfer) and, irrespective of size, somehow managed to convince you that it was reasonable for me to charge you for a finite, expiring quantity of it, I'd laugh all the way to the fucking bank every time you came back for more.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
They don't differentiate between offerings from each ISP. An ISP the majority of whose users are on slow 1.5 Mb/s connections (but with a few on super-fast 20 Mb/s connections) would fare poorly in this exercise compared to a competitor with of its users on mediocre 4.0 Mb/s connections. As a consumer interested in bandwidth, though, I'm going with the first ISP assuming their backbone is capable enough to actually feed that 20 Mb/s pipe.
Where I live the two highest-performing options are Time Warner (Roadrunner Extreme) at 20 Mb/s for $50/mo and AT&T's U-Verse (Max Turbo) at 24 Mb/s for $65/mo. Currently I have AT&T's "Elite" DSL service which is 6 Mb/s for $40/mo. What I would find interesting is whether each of those can support the full 4800 kb/s Netflix stream, or if backbone issues crop up.
Is the real offense here by Netflix, as evidenced by comments there on the site, is that they've exposed the dirty little secret of many ISPs--that they oversell capacity?
Dude, where's my packet?
The graph doesn't accurately represent the data. Note the Y-Axis. It's values are as follows:
- - - - - - - - -
3000
2800
2600
2400
2200
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
- - - - - - - - -
Without taking the axis all the way down to ZERO, the graph gives the impression of greater disparity than there actually is. You see this frequently with tech review sites where they start a bar graph at "140fps" so that a difference of 3fps looks epic and the shelling out of $40 more on one video card is suggested.
I have frontier DSL with only 3mb down and 1.5 at night... It is horrid sometimes I can only get 1 bar of quality from Netflix and this is their highest plan in my area even though I am right next to fiber lines to Purdue University. Frontier needs to wake up and build a better network IMO. Also Verizon shouldn't have sold out.
TekGoblin
that's there's actually someone below Centurytel.
the low throughput in the US is surprising because... ?
It doesn't surprise me one bit. The good old USA has long ago given up being first, or the best in lots of things, except perhaps for making tons of $$ off of people who can least afford it.
Why bother to have the BEST ISP in the country for your customers, when you can be the richest CEO of an ISP company?
Could you tell me, by count from the bottom left, which one is Frontier? And but the way, I prefer chromatically challenged. Thanks.
Linux -- the Ultimate Windows Service Pack
Its possible ISPs may be filtering streaming services like Netflix. That the bandwidth shown on the graph is only what the ISPs are allowing in speeds to customers. Maybe this data release by Netflix is their response to news from the other day-
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/01/26/1820236/Senators-Bash-ISP-and-Push-Extensive-Net-Neutrality
I'm actually okay with giving burst speed and caps...it's pretty easy to transform this to constant bandwidth.
Better graph: http://waxy.org/2011/01/colorblind_leading_the_blind/
The reason we're good at communication technologies is not because it's too cold, it's because we have 35 million people in a country bigger than the U.S.
I would even add to that, the majority of those people are clustered into a relatively few cities, whereas the US, people live all over the country. I would be curious to see a comparison of the percentage of population within 20 miles of a city between the US and Canada.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Netflix is paying for the bandwidth on their end, so it's not like they're getting anything for free. The issue is that all of the sudden people want to stream massive amounts of information and it's breaking all the assumptions that went into oversubscription ratios.
The answer is for ISPs to be honest about what they provide. If there's a monthly cap, say so.
That said, it would be good for netflix users to be able to pick a speed and have it stay there rather than sucking up all available bandwidth.
I have a 1.5 Mbps Qwest DSL connection. I have been seeing those constant Qwest "Heavy Duty Internet" commercials on TV advertising speeds up to 40 Mbps. But, the only speed available where I live is 1.5 Mbps for $39.99 per month. I confirmed that by going to the Qwest webpage and typing in my telephone number to see what speeds are available for where I live.
The comparison chart in the article, shows Qwest having a typical Netflix performance speed of somewhere around 1800 Kbps.
According to my DSL modem, I am currently connected at a downstream rate of 1536 Kbps and an upstream rate of 576 Kbps. At least my download speeds are consistently close to that speed.
I am not actually complaining, because I am happy that I am no longer stuck on dial-up. They finally made DSL available here several years ago, shortly after digging a 3 mile long ditch and putting in a couple of new underground conduits, and adding another new small windowless building for the DSL stuff. I live in a city of about 50,000 people, about 1/4 of a mile from the nearest small windowless Qwest building that has a DSL switch in it. Since I am so close to their nearest DSL switch, I am surprised that faster speeds are not available here.
I do not have satellite or cable and am planning to sign up for Netflix. I plan to use the one at a time DVDs by mail plan for $9.99 per month. I do not know if the slowest Netflix steaming method would work here or not.
NUMBERS, damn it. >.
Great, I can stream a whole 3 movies before I hit the bandwidth cap for the month!
I'm in Canada on Telus. I was and have been disappointed with their service for price for quite a while now. I had assumed that with more ISP's in the US, there would be greater competition, and therefore, better service for less money. What happened? Is it that each of these providers has their own little fiefdom, which they defend like a hungry wild animal over a freshly killed carcass, and anyone who tries to move in has a blood sport on their hands? You cannot argue that 'Canada is a very huge population in a tiny little space, so high speed broadband is easy to implement'. You just can't make that story stick, its too big a lie. I still think high speed internet is vastly more expensive in Canada than it needs to be (with far too little service to justify the cost). The US? How did they fall off the technological bandwagon (and I'm not talking about "oh, Freddy such-and-so has quadruple fiber links with a 50 terabyte monthly cap for 4 cents every 6 months", I'm talking about the average).
I'm with Telus on the 6 Mb/s (dowload) plan. And I can get about 600 kB/s (that's bytes) when downloading a torrent, which is far in excess of what the netflix chart shows. Just my 2 cents.
Being that I work for a call center contracted to do tech support for Frontier I'm not the least bit surprised. There *are* customers who get like 7Mbps connections, but they're like 1 in 100 or worse. The vast majority are 1.344 or 1.5Mbps. The rest are 3Mbps or something ridiculous like 768K which balances out. The buyout of Verizon's copper did not help. VZ had shit running with bubblegum and shoestrings.
I would be curious to see a comparison of the percentage of population within 20 miles of a city between the US and Canada.
I couldn't find that particular stat but according to Wikipedia 80% of the population lives within 150km (93 mi) of the U.S. border. NationalGeographic.com estimates it as 75% within 161km (100mi).
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.