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Verizon Tells Customer He Needs 75Mbps For Smoother Netflix Video
An anonymous reader writes: Verizon recently told a customer that upgrading his 50Mbps service to 75Mbps would result in smoother streaming of Netflix video. Of course, that's not true — Netflix streams at a rate of about 3.5 Mbps on average for Verizon's fiber service, so there's more than enough headroom either way. But this customer was an analyst for the online video industry, so he did some testing and snapped some screenshots for evidence. He fired up 10 concurrent streams of a Game of Thrones episode and found only 29Mbps of connection being used. This guy was savvy enough to see through Verizon's BS, but I'm sure there are millions of customers who wouldn't bat an eye at the statements they were making. The analyst "believes that the sales pitch he received is not just an isolated incident, since he got the same pitch from three sales reps over the phone and one online."
Yea, they will happily sell you more bandwidth than you will likely ever use outside of running a speed test, but they will sell you *anything* to make more cash from you.
It's worse too if you are an established customer with them. All those advertised prices you see? GARBAGE... They DON'T apply to you as an established customer. The ad price for the services I get is $75/month and the actual price I pay is $130! How's that? Well, let's see, there is a bunch of things NOT in the advertised price. Equipment Rental $25 for a DVR set Top box, and I have two, $10 for the router, then there is the regional sports fee (because I pay for ESPN non the less) for $7, add in tax and FCC mandated fees and it's $130 or so. It's a racket, but I'm sure Verizon isn't the only provider that does this kind of thing. TWC does similar stuff too.
Then, you know what happens after your contract term is up, they do away with the service you used to pay for. I had just internet with them for years, starting at 10mbs, that plan went away eventually and I got automatically bumped up. Over time I went from $50/month to nearly double that with not nearly a double in speed. We where at $100/moth for 25/25 by the end of 6 years. However, you call them and they are all about "we don't raise your rates like the other guys!". I told one of their sales people that it as a boldfaced lie to say they don't raise rates, I'd been a customer for YEARS and they surely did raise my rates during that time, multiple times.
But what really frosted me was the "Oh the advertised rates are for NEW customers only!" line. Come on Verizon, I've been your customer for 6 years, never a late bill payment, no changes in my service, not even a technician visit to my home to fix something. You are going to give the guy up the street you don't know is really going to pay you a better deal then me? You people are NUTS..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I've found routinely that video streaming tv shows from a network's website, which ordinarily runs fine will still start to choke if somebody else in my house is watching a moderately long youtube video in HD, for example.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I understand your idea, but I think this is not true with TCP/IP. Latency IS affecting throughput considerably.
a) There is a limit of un-acked bytes which can be pushed, so there is guaranteed limit depending on distance (and with 5 seconds it is going to be very visible)
b) With any kind of packet loss, which is to be expected, window size will reset, slowing it even more
Only info I was able to find about that was quite old and metioning various workarounds which will be implemented for that in 2010 or so ;) Does anybody know how it looks like these days on majority of internet? What will be expected maximum throughput over TCP/IP with 5s ping, with 0% packet loss, 0.1% packet loss and 1% packet loss?