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Is Verizon Already Slowing Netflix Down?

hondo77 points out a blog post by Dave Raphael, who noticed some odd discrepancies between two different Verizon broadband connections he has access to. His personal residential plan and his company's business plan both went through the same Verizon routers, but his residential plan is getting unusably slow speeds to places like AWS. He suggests that Verizon is already waging a war on high-bandwidth services like Netflix after the recent court decision against net neutrality. His discussion with a Verizon service representative seems to confirm this, though it's uncertain whether such an employee would have access to that information.

13 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops this by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most people support Net Neutrality because they think things like this will not happen.

    So then, under the net neutrality rules you need to explain why what Verizion is doing would not happen.

    What will stop Verizon from doing this? My canceling my phone service and telling them I'm switching to T-Mobile because of cloud throttling.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  2. Verizon is denying it: by bobstreo · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://bgr.com/2014/02/05/veri...

    “We treat all traffic equally, and that has not changed,” a Verizon spokesperson told BGR in an emailed statement. “Many factors can affect the speed a customer’s experiences for a specific site, including, that site’s servers, the way the traffic is routed over the Internet, and other considerations. We are looking into this specific matter, but the company representative was mistaken. We’re going to redouble our representative education efforts on this topic.”

    It is still unclear exactly what was causing the issues that Raphael described, but it’s apparently not any form of bandwidth prioritization. Instead, the issue may relate to congestion specific to the Amazon servers or connections that Raphael was testing, but nothing has been confirmed by Amazon.

  3. Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because it would be illegal, and they would be subject to legal repercussions, unlike now. What part of this do you find confusing?

  4. Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're confused by the part that conflicts with their ideology.

  5. Laws by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure you can stop them. You can revoke their Incorporation Charter.

    One thing we seem to have forgotten is that Corporations are creations of the state, and thus subservient to the state (ostensibly).

    The problem is, that when HARM is done, we have never simply revoked Corporate Charters. If we start doing that, then CxOs and boards will take their fiduciary responsibility a little more seriously.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  6. Re:rumor is netflix is pushing its own CDN by sexconker · · Score: 5, Informative

    if you search on the internet, netflix is pushing it's own CDN with the condition that they don't pay the regular CDN fees. most of the big ISP's haven't signed on which is why netflix is slow on their networks. the pipes to the CDN provider are probably maxed out like the issue with Cogent a few years ago

    business scuffle with two companies trying to lower their costs of business. not like netflix is the angel here either.

    This is the second time you've posted about this here as if you have some sort of inside information.
    It's not a rumor, and it's not newsworthy. Netflix announced this shit a year ago when they started touting "Super HD". https://signup.netflix.com/ope...

    Netflix gave ISPs 3 options:

    A: Peer with us at favorable rates and we'll allow your users to access our higher quality streams and help make sure shit is routing efficiently.
    B: Drop our content boxes directly on your network and we'll allow your users to access our higher quality streams and pay you fair rates.
    C: Don't peer with us at lower rates or let us store content on your network, and we'll name and shame you as not fully supporting Netflix.

    Once all the major ISPs agreed with A or B, Netflix opened up "Super HD" to (almost) everyone. They now have a lot of those distributed content boxes and favorable agreements, and are effectively a CDN.

  7. How long before I have to buy Internet "channels"? by Gordo_1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The Premium package gives you access to all your streaming favorites like YouTube, Hulu Plus, Netflix along with dozens of foreign movie sites you've never heard of.
    The Friends & Family package gives you access to the people you want to keep in touch with, when you want to keep in touch with them, over your favorite NSA-sponsored proprietary social networking site: FacePalmSpace.
    Our Adults-Only package allows you to stream all your favorite German Scheiße porn tube sites!"

    Don't think so? Bookmark me, wait a couple years, then come back and mod me "Insightful".

  8. Re: Because it is. by Scowler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That is an over broad definition, one that would preclude common sense QoS during times when ISP is approaching capacity limits. Common sense QoS would include, for example, putting torrents or FTP on low priority tier, voice communication on high tier, etc. What is bad is discriminating between two similar types of traffic, like Netflix vs YouTube.

  9. Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi by benjfowler · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess "Slashdot Beta Tourette's" is the winter bug going around this year...

  10. Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi by OakDragon · · Score: 5, Funny

    We made one, but the data being returned kept dropping out for some reason.

  11. Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi by Petron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, they are confused by an unclear description of "net neutrality".

    I've seen some places (non-fox news) describe "net neutrality" as "Enforcing traffic to be at equal speeds"... which is not the case. People using that description would be against it because they believe it would mean all web traffic would be slower, to match the speed of the slowest server... That reeks of "All must be fair, so we must race to the bottom" and "Everybody gets a trophy" that many people disapprove of.

    If you inform them that Net Neutrality is against throttling speeds, and having customers get what they paid for... then most of those against, turn sides.

    I see it as we either need to enforce Net Neutrality, or enable a free market, where we have more than one or two choices for broadband (or any other utility).... If we had 10+ ISP's to choose from, this wouldn't be an issue, one would not throttle, and that would force the others to compete. But we don't have a free market... and too many of those in power (both in government, and the big TelComs) would lose money to allow a free market.

    --
    if (it != oneThing) it = another;
  12. Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi by anagama · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I see it as we either need to enforce Net Neutrality, or enable a free market, where we have more than one or two choices for broadband (or any other utility).... If we had 10+ ISP's to choose from, this wouldn't be an issue, one would not throttle, and that would force the others to compete.

    Why is this not yet ranked +5 insightful.

    I recently moved to a place where I can't get Comcast (thankfully). Even though I'm out in the country instead of in town -- everything is so much better. Youtube and Netflix don't buffer like they did with Comcast, they just play. My internet bill went from $75/mo to $50. So better and cheaper. Of course it could have been different as there is only one provider here too, but I got lucky this time and my provider isn't such an ass as Comcast. But that's just the luck of the draw.

    You simply can't treat a monopoly like a free market -- these terms are antonyms and reality demands different treatment. Believe me, if there had been competition, I would dropped Comcast faster than a fetid turd, but there wasn't and so I bitterly paid my bill and sucked it up.

    --
    What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
  13. Re:Your task: explain how Net Neutrality stops thi by anagama · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many banksters went to jail for tilting the entire fucking world economy over a cliff?

    Oh yeah, zero.

    You can even launder money for terrorists and drug cartels and be punished with nothing but a partial deferral of your annual bonus.

    As Matt Taibi put it:

    Wow. So the executives who spent a decade laundering billions of dollars will have to partially defer their bonuses during the five-year deferred prosecution agreement? Are you fucking kidding me? That's the punishment? The government's negotiators couldn't hold firm on forcing HSBC officials to completely wait to receive their ill-gotten bonuses? They had to settle on making them "partially" wait? Every honest prosecutor in America has to be puking his guts out at such bargaining tactics. What was the Justice Department's opening offer -- asking executives to restrict their Caribbean vacation time to nine weeks a year?

    http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

    --
    What changed under Obama? Nothing Good