Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Verizon's Accidental Mea Culpa

Posted by Soulskill on from the information-wants-to-be-hamstrung dept.

Barryke writes: Verizon has blamed Netflix for the streaming slowdowns their customers have been seeing. It seems the Verizon blog post defending this accusation has backfired in a spectacular way: The chief has clearly admitted that Verizon has capacity to spare, and is deliberately constraining throughput from network providers. Level3, a major ISP that interconnects with Verizon's networks, responded by showing a diagram that visualizes the underpowered interconnect problem and explaining why Verizon's own post indicates how it restricts data flow. Level3 also offered to pay for the necessary upgrades to Verizon hardware: "... these cards are very cheap, a few thousand dollars for each 10 Gbps card which could support 5,000 streams or more. If that's the case, we'll buy one for them. Maybe they can't afford the small piece of cable between our two ports. If that's the case, we'll provide it. Heck, we'll even install it." I'm curious to see Verizon's response to this straightforward accusation of throttling paying users (which tech-savvy readers were quick to confirm).

3 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Connect with a VPN by LinuxFreakus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just connect to a VPN first and then use Netflix. You'll be able to clearly see how much Verizon is throttling. I've been using this as a workaround for a while now. I'm not sure why more people don't think of pointing this out when Verizon's tech support people claim there is no throttling.

    1. Re:Connect with a VPN by i.am.delf · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You can also escape this bottleneck using an IPv6 tunnel to he.net.

  2. Re:But scarcity! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    [...] Level3 and Cogent aren't last-mile providers; they're Tier 1 backbone providers. Tier 1 providers have things like peering agreements -- last mile providers do not. [...]

    Except that Verizon Enterprise (formerly Verizon Business) is also a Tier 1 backbone provider. Different part of the company, but the behavior does appear to be a conflict of interest, of exploiting the Verizon's ISP (last-mile) business actions (failing to resolve congestion to L3) to make a competitor (L3) to Verizon Enterprise (formerly UUnet, AS 701 / 702 / 703) less desirable to Level 3 customers, namely Netflix.

    Arguably, Verizon is abusing its ISP customers as pawns in making a competitor to one its Enterprise IP business less desirable, in a very anti-competitive fashion.