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Apple Is Blocking an App That Detects Net Neutrality Violations (vice.com)
dmoberhaus writes: Apple isn't allowing a new app developed by a university professor that detects when your internet is being throttled by ISPs from being listed on the app store. The company claimed the app contained "objectionable content" and "has no direct benefits to the user."
The reporter, who tested the app through the beta channel, writes: The app is designed to test download speeds from seven apps: YouTube, Amazon, NBCSports, Netflix, Skype, Spotify, and Vimeo. According to the app, my Verizon LTE service streamed YouTube to my iPhone at 6 Mbps, Amazon Prime video at 8 Mbps, and Netflix at 4 Mbps. It downloaded other data at speeds of up to 25 Mbps. UPDATE: Slashdot reader sl3xd has made us aware of an update to the story. "After this article was published, Apple told Dave Choffnes that his iPhone app, designed to detect net neutrality violations, will be allowed in the iTunes App Store," reports Motherboard. "According to Choffnes, Apple contacted him and explained that the company has to deal with many apps that don't do the things they claim to do. Apple asked Choffnes to provide a technical description of how his app is able to detect if wireless telecom providers throttle certain types of data, and 18 hours after he did, the app was approved." "The conversation was very pleasant, but did not provide any insight into the review process [that] led the app to be rejected in the first place," Choffnes told Motherboard in an email.
The reporter, who tested the app through the beta channel, writes: The app is designed to test download speeds from seven apps: YouTube, Amazon, NBCSports, Netflix, Skype, Spotify, and Vimeo. According to the app, my Verizon LTE service streamed YouTube to my iPhone at 6 Mbps, Amazon Prime video at 8 Mbps, and Netflix at 4 Mbps. It downloaded other data at speeds of up to 25 Mbps. UPDATE: Slashdot reader sl3xd has made us aware of an update to the story. "After this article was published, Apple told Dave Choffnes that his iPhone app, designed to detect net neutrality violations, will be allowed in the iTunes App Store," reports Motherboard. "According to Choffnes, Apple contacted him and explained that the company has to deal with many apps that don't do the things they claim to do. Apple asked Choffnes to provide a technical description of how his app is able to detect if wireless telecom providers throttle certain types of data, and 18 hours after he did, the app was approved." "The conversation was very pleasant, but did not provide any insight into the review process [that] led the app to be rejected in the first place," Choffnes told Motherboard in an email.
Never in short supply at Apple.
The app is designed to test download speeds from seven apps: YouTube, Amazon, NBCSports, Netflix, Skype, Spotify, and Vimeo. According to the app, my Verizon LTE service streamed YouTube to my iPhone at 6 Mbps, Amazon Prime video at 8 Mbps, and Netflix at 4 Mbps. It downloaded other data at speeds of up to 25 Mbps
I would have expected the big players paying oodles of money to the carriers will get preferential treatment, and the random internet startup will struggle to get its bits to you.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This kind of measurement tool is an awesome creation and we need more. I'd love to use an Android version of it to test my apps and see what AT&T does to shape my traffic. Unless there's some sort of hidden issue, there is absolutely no reason why Apple should withhold this from the store, considering all of the other useless crap that's out there.
Don't expect one company's walled garden to allow tools to help you detect other company's walled gardens. These walled gardens are becoming more like the hedge maze at the Overlook Hotel.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Silly developer, Apple has no interest in enabling people to climb or even notice garden walls!
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
I'm talking about Mussolini's definition of fascism, which is basically corporatism: The total control of society in to the hands of corporations, with the line between them and the governement being more symbolic than anything.
When you have an industry shill at the head of the FCC making decisions to profit solely this industry, that's fascism.
When you have the POTUS putting his corporate friends in charge of all major positions in the governement, that's fascism.
But as long as the sheeple are kept well fed and well entertained, they couldn't care less. Bread and circusses.
Humanity doesn't deserve democracy. It doesn't deserve freedom, equality and justice.
Ouch.
why is this -1 ?, I thought it was funny
apple supports internet throttling and phone throttling.
Read the fucking article, you worthless idiot.
What that app does is to connect the author's OWN server and send back the SAME data in the SAME way all the time. The only difference from one test to another is that it changes changes in the metadata to fool DPI into thinking it's dealing with video from this or that service.
Just because Youtube is not using all the available bandwidth does not mean it is being throttled by the ISP. I also imagine that YouTube itself has some bandwidth management built in to prevent one customer from negatively affecting the rest.
Yes, but the app is downloading all video from the researchers university servers directly and through a vpn tunnel. He's simulating various providers by replaying sample data and metadata:
For example, when an encrypted connection is established between Netflix’s servers and T-Mobile’s servers (known as a TLS handshake), certain plaintext information is exchanged (host names and server names). In Netflix’s case, one of these servers is called “nflxvideo.net.”
What he found is that by changing the metadata of the video’s header—but not the video itself—it could be downloaded at much higher speeds. If he changed the metadata of other types of data (photos, for instance) to have the Netflix metadata, that data would be throttled by the telecom company when it was downloaded.
“We realized that they’re looking for certain text in the network traffic, and if we changed that text—replaced nflxvideo.net with northeasternvideo.com—when we send that traffic over the network, it doesn’t get throttled,” Choffnes said. “This means it’s keyword related and not server or even content related.”
http://david.choffnes.com/pubs/imc095-molavi-kakhkiA.pdf
How can we know if you are correct or not, if we are barred from using such tools?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
It isn't Apple's job to determine if the data is valid or not. That's the user's job.
Did you read the article suggested in here ? It tells you exactly how the app works. For example, it tells you how T-Mobile intercept data packets and analyses them. If its from xyz source with a certain information in the packet, it throttles it. Read it, I'm sure you'll change your mind.
Youtube, Amazon Prime, and Netflix send you content at the rate that it can be consumed by the device. If they sent you 1000Mbps upon opening video that you may drop after 10 seconds they would waste their resources and your data plan.
You already have proof since people are reporting throttling and ISPs blocking sites since the vote took place nevermind that nothing has changed.
"seems to indicate ISP throttling, but can happen for many reasons."
And therein lies the chicken and egg problem. Unless you have the data about download rates and latency you can't even begin to find out WHY your speeds are slower to certain services. And to some extent that shouldn't be on the customer to even care about. The ISPs are advertising certain download speeds and with services from large providers that can afford adequate infrastructure to meet demand there really should be no excuses for regularly not meeting demand for those services. The ISPs and content providers are presumably already getting paid by their customers and the ISPs will know which services are popular so they should both have an incentive to work it out. If the market is healthy and working for people then there is no reason that ISPs and content providers can't invest time and money in making the overall service better.
Technically I agree though, unless the data is being centrally collected and analyzed to spot patterns and then used by consumer groups to ask the ISPs and content providers what the issue is then it could also just be a temporary issue that is more understandable.
Would be best if the FTC could do this kind of analysis systematically and see if ISPs are really providing the services and speeds they are advertising and apply some pressure to improve service up to those advertised standards. If it is a one time slow down due to a particularly popular cat video then that is one thing, but if customers are never getting advertised download speeds from some popular services then that means the ISPs and service providers need to up the peering bandwidth and provide for peering closer to the customers to reduce latency.
But as an individual (unlike just feeling like an app is slow) you could at least with some hard numbers, perhaps taken multiple times at different times of day, then go to your ISP and ask what the problem was accessing certain services and then yourself go to the FTC to file a complaint for false advertising and the BBB and the state consumer protection agency to get it all on record that companies aren't providing the advertised services.
The Android version is available on the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/...
So because the results of this test could be ambiguous, misinterpreted or lead to false conclusions one should block the usage of this tool entirely? That is a very questionable approach. Let's prevent users to measure the performance of their connection, or hardware, or car, or any product they use...because the results could stir up anger.
Easy solution: Gather data, and look for patterns.
If Youtube works at 6 Mpbs always, regardless of ISP, it's probably youtube. If Youtube works at 6 Mbps on Verizon LTE, but at line speed elsewhere, then that is quite suspicious.
"has no direct benefits to the user."
Except knowledge, and we wouldn't want that.
As for the other comment, yes speed depends on more than just network speed, but if the guy next to me on Verizon streams Netflix at 4 Mbps and I stream on Sprint at 20 Mbps then we can safely theorize that Verizon is throttling him. We don't know for sure, but we can build a case.
Without that knowledge we have nothing to go on.
I refuse to sign
Found the idiot that utterly failed to read the fucking article.
Protip: The throttling is happening by keywords in the metadata, not the content or provider itself. There, saved you the read since you seem too fucking lazy to do it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Just because an app has a good intent, doesn't make it a good app.
> the slow speeds seen were because the servers were only delivering data at that speed
The servers are the uni's servers, with metadata swapped to match netflix&c
The slow speeds seen were because certain traffic is being flagged by certain string searches. Science likes using identical-as-possible scenarios and changing only one X factor, lest time be wasted in these inconclusive whatabouts.
The servers were the uni's servers.
The servers were the uni's servers.
The servers were the uni's servers.
I was going to make a similar comment but then I cheated and read the article, to my utter amazement my assumptions about how it works were wrong.
As opposed to something like, say, Flappy Bird, which is obviously immensely beneficial to the user.
I'm talking about the developer tools in the desktop version of Chrome. You can use them by hitting Ctrl-Shift-I. They are public.
Yeah but that type of logic results in Trump, unfortunately.
We should all be able to go the speed limit at all times, everywhere. Who are these insensitive clods who are violating the speed limit laws?
Of course what the good professor is actually measuring is bandwidth and the carriers are only a part of that. Netflix may only be streaming at 4 mbps. Does the video play? Maybe they only provide that much bandwidth since you are only paying them $10 a month. People act like there is an unlimited amount of bandwidth but there are numerous bottlenecks between you and your favorite web site.
You need to read the article, your assumptions are incorrect. Small excerpt here, but you need to read all of it to understand what is going on and how it's being measured.
For example, when an encrypted connection is established between Netflix’s servers and T-Mobile’s servers (known as a TLS handshake), certain plaintext information is exchanged (host names and server names). In Netflix’s case, one of these servers is called “nflxvideo.net.” If T-Mobile detects this server name in the metadata, it will throttle download data for those packets.
Choffnes learned about this system by reverse engineering it; his team downloaded videos from various video services (including the TLS data and all metadata) and then recreated it on their own servers (called “replays”). What he found is that by changing the metadata of the video’s header—but not the video itself—it could be downloaded at much higher speeds. If he changed the metadata of other types of data (photos, for instance) to have the Netflix metadata, that data would be throttled by the telecom company when it was downloaded.
If the same stream with the same header streams at the same speed everytime, then this is sufficient. But if it varies due to other factors besides intentional throttling, the results can still be misleading.
and considering they are blocking this app it proves one thing, despite being gay Tim Cook is still corrupted by big money, i guess equality is only a fight for the poor & middle-class, once you're rich the rule is to shit on the rest of the world,
as long as i got mine, isnt that right Tim Cook
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It was funny the first dozen times. After 9000 times, it's doesn't even register as funny anymore.
#DeleteFacebook
That's like, a nega-Einstein* quote.
* https://www.urbandictionary.co...
#DeleteFacebook
Don't be such a negative covfefe.
#DeleteFacebook
Seems dumb for Apple to block the app.
That said, a difference in network speed does not imply evil intent, and that's part of the problem with the whole net neutrality thing.
Consider the side of a cellphone carrier. I know, I know, it's fun to say they're evil and all that, but just look at the technical problem they're trying to solve: you have some limited resources (your slice of the wireless spectrum, your capacity at your cell towers, your connections to the backbone) that you are trying to divide up among all of your customers wanting to use them. On top of that, you're competing against other companies who want to get your same customers, so you have to balance a nearly limitless demand for network capacity against the costs of building out and maintaining your network and how that translates into the price you set for your services. You have to balance the downsides of any wasted, idle capacity against the ability to handle huge spikes when there is a surge in demand. And on top of all this you are expected to provide value/profits to your owners.
Now, with that as the context, you are obviously constantly on the lookout for ways to optimize and improve. What if, as one specific example, you come across a technology that lets you dynamically re-encode some video chunks on the fly with little or no drop in perceived quality? Would you make use of that technology? Of course you would - it could be a huge win, not just for you and your shareholders, but it could legitimately be good for your users too (a higher number of concurrent users could be watching video without buffering).
This sort of thing happens all the time - carriers, ISPs, etc. are constantly looking for ways to optimize things because they are faced with this very real dilemma of competing objectives. And anyone in tech is familiar with optimizations and how important they can be. But the problem with apps like the one in TFA is that they cannot tell the full story (and yes, I did read the article, especially the part about them using their own servers to help know for sure that differences in speeds are happening).
With video content specifically, from the earliest days of the net we've known that users *strongly* prefer uninterrupted playback at lower quality versus super high quality that buffers constantly - this concept is fundamentally understood by everyone in the media space. Awesome HD w/o interruptions is the goal, but if you've got to choose one or the other, lowering quality is nearly always the better option.
And few things chew through a data plan like video, so when T-mobile says, "hey, any video you watch from these services will only be at TV quality, but it won't count towards your high speed data allotment" well, to me, that's a feature that makes me want to do business with them.
Are there some bad actors in all of this? Oh, for sure. But not every example of a difference in speeds is an indication of this. And even when you prove that throttling is going on, it's not necessarily a smoking gun showing ill intent. A lot of times it's just an example of people trying to find a practical solution to a complex technical problem - they're just trying to make it all work.
Someone who isn't you, decides what programs you get to run on your computer. Ha ha, your computer sucks. Some particularly-assholish people might infer that means you suck, but I think it's unfair to jump to hasty conclusions. So... got an alternative explanation?
I'd love to run the app on my device. Where's the repo or a zip of the source?
And therein lies the chicken and egg problem. Unless you have the data about download rates and latency you can't even begin to find out WHY your speeds are slower
Because of the way the app works; consider it an investigative tool.
If the App's test shows throttling is occurring, then it is basically definitive proof that the service is being throttled by your ISP or an intermediary. On the other hand, if the app's test doesn't show throttling, but you experience different speeds to those services,
then it could be either throttling or something else, since you can't give a definitive answer that there is no throttling for sure (If your observed rates of throughput are different -- and not in a manner consistent with the network distance and hopXhop latency).
The summary is very misleading:
designed to test download speeds from seven apps
This wording implies that it tests the apps themselves, presumably using the apps servers, summary does not mention it is simulating data downloads with spoofed headers all from the same research server.
Who reads articles around here, I mean consider where you are.
Tmobile openly states that they throttle video. It is part of a deal if the video streaming counts against your monthly data allotment. If you opt in, with specific content partners, they throttle so the video gracefully downgrades and you can stream as much video as you want without it counting against your data allotment. I believe they throttle with the goal of providing 480p quality to your phone. If you opt out the video streaming counts against your allotment. I believe by default they do the throttling, you can shut it off by sending a specific text message to a specific number.
That looks like information that would be essential to the summery. The first thing I thought was : "Obviously YouTube will be slower. No need for them to be fast as and deliver the whole content to you in 3 seconds if you only watch 3 seconds and go to the next video."
The summery and this give a total different view and therefore perception on the situation. Also a nice example how "Fake News" works and here they are even telling the truth.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Countries with liberal pro-consumer trade commissions* should investigate Apple and other vendors that force users to use "their walled garden" when those same companies keep things out of their garden without a good reason (e.g. keeping malware or deceptive apps out is pro-consumer and is okay).
Google-phone vendors that allow 3rd party stores would be fine, as would the Apple Mac, since you aren't "locked in" to the App Store.
*Not the USA at this time, sadly
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It is impossible to tell if ISP throttling is going on just from the download speed. For example this statement "YouTube to my iPhone at 6 Mbps, Amazon Prime video at 8 Mbps, and Netflix at 4 Mbps. It downloaded other data at speeds of up to 25 Mbps." seems to indicate ISP throttling, but can happen for many reasons
This is like when police find a body in the woods which is tied up, shot, stabbed in the back, and fell off of a high cliff. Any one of those could be a suicide or accident, maybe two of them, but when you get all of them you start suspecting that someone may have involuntarily helped them along.
Low performance with one of those video sites which directly compete with your ISP may be the fault of the site. When ALL of the direct competitors have crappy performance through your ISP, well...
http://dd.meddle.mobi/ is down with server errors .. I wanted to see if there was an Android version :)
And he was modded "Informative"
Apple and Google ball riders seem to be in full force
Of course it stands to reason that this application already knows the speed the internet service provider, say Netflix, is serving up content to your provider, so it can provide an accurate analysis of the slowdown/throttling (if any) your carrier is doing to your traffic. Otherwise it would be like extrapolating the speed of highway traffic by carefully monitoring the speed of traffic on the side roads. /sarcasm
How does this app know the speed Netflix is serving up content? It doesn't, so what it the purpose of the app? To provide meaningless statistics and numbers to fuel a net neutrality debate?
Also, when feeding a single video stream to your iPhone, how much bandwidth is needed to stream a movie? Seems to me the 4-8MB/sec is fine, and demanding that you get your streams faster is just wasteful.
Ken
I believe by default they do the throttling, you can shut it off by sending a specific text message to a specific number.
The feature is called BingeOn, and it can be enabled on a per-line basis for every phone on the account. The default is enabled.
It can be configured by the account owner on the TMobile web site, so the text/app toggles might not work for everyone.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Dude, it’s not downloading the whole video at once. It is sending you chunks of video as you watch. Streaming rates of ~5 mbps can look really good, so nobody wants to fill your pipe. It’s not company one blocking company two. It costs Netflix, and AT&T, and you money to ship more bits. This is a misleading app — Apple is totally right.
Why does slashdot comment rating cap at 5, clearly this comment deserves to be highest rated on this thread or even stickied to summary.
It's pretty clear which commenters bothered to click the link. All the complaints that "some services provide lower quality or slower streams so the fault could lie with Netflix or Hulu" would be valid if that's what this app did. But it doesn't.
In actuality it downloads the same data from a single developer controlled server, while changing the header and TLS information to see if the ISP modifies their handling of the SAME FILE.
Like mailing packages from the same place with the same contents, but marking the outside "fragile", "urgent", "bulk rate", or "live organ transplant" to see if it shows up in similar time and condition.
collusion between Apple, Verizon and probably others.
Things that should be considered:
- service's server's throughput
- the demand on the service's server
- the server being used at the time of the test (normally the services have farms of servers)
- service's network congestion
- the service's ISP
- the service's ISP throughput
- the service's ISP network congestion
- the number of other customers accessing the same cell towers as that customer running the test
- any programming in the device to regulate the data it receives
and possibly more I'm not thinking of
The app should also be tested against a cell connection and a wifi connection of the same service provider.
I would think that the tests should be ran multiple times, to account for these variables.
If it really is being throttled, then the results will be consistent.
My thoughts anyways.
So your contention is that the author is lying about how his own app works? How else could reading and understanding what the article says prove someone's gullibility?
I think that's the concept of this app. Let people test their own connections and assess the results. Just like with any speed test, results will vary. But if your speeds on one provider are consistently low there's probably some ISP filtering.
One of the insidious things about nefarious ISP network management is that it is so hard for consumers to identify. Without tools like this, we have no chance.
So because the results of this test could be ambiguous, misinterpreted or lead to false conclusions one should block the usage of this tool entirely?
You ignored the "Objectionable Content" issue Apple raised also.
Ken
Because Slashdot is a horrible platform from a technical perspective.
Fuck you, Apple.
I suspect you didn't read TFA.
How come data plans in the US are so shitty?
My best guess is that there are too few nationwide cellular carriers to trigger a price war for both wholesale (to MVNOs) and retail cellular service, yet there are enough carriers not to trigger either anti-cartel provisions of competition law or federal regulation of prices.
Are you implying that "It's over 9000!"?
All the data came from the same server... fake news much?
Read? I dont come to this forum to read... I am here for the dank memes.
covfefe (KUV-rij)
It isn't Apple's job to determine if the data is valid or not. That's the user's job.
that type of logic results in Trump, unfortunately.
Don't be such a negative covfefe.
Google defines covfefe as "the treatment of an issue by the media." Thus negative news gets negative covfefe, and positive news gets positive covfefe. When an undereducated electorate chooses a President that makes the sorts of policy decisions that have in the past produced undesirable results for a country, you bet there will be negative covfefe from reputable journalistic outlets.
And just as an undereducated electorate can misinterpret information presented by the media about a candidate's attitude during an election, undereducated users can misinterpret data presented by an application on a device. Both can have harmful side effects.
Your country is a joke.
Please read the article. He's using his own server/VPN as a proxy for the same video streams for comparison.
How's that walled garden working out for you Apple fanbois? Pretty cool, huh, blocking a simple network health monitor App because it's "objectionable content." Who knew Truth was objectionable content?
For my chosen approach to life, Apple's walled garden has no direct benefit, either (despite some terrible long term implications).
Whatever happened to informed choice?
I don't think the app should have been blocked, but I question the use of it.
You run the app, and because the internet is what it is different sources yield different speeds. Now what?
You can't say for sure it's your ISP slowing down anything. But the app sure is implying that is the case. So this app would basically get a lot of people riled up where there may not be any reason to do so.
If it were billed as a "check your speed for your favorite streaming provider" it may have even gone through, I think its the message the app is sending that has Apple not letting it in. But another possibility is this - all this app does is cause a data load on other services. That seems a bit wrong somehow, like writing a DDOS app and then complaining Apple will not approve it... I would think speed test apps from individual services (like a Netflix spreed test app) would easily be approved because they are inducing data loads on servers that the company expects.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You may have an XY problem here. You say want to stream in HD, but you probably just want to watch in HD. One workaround is to install a BD player in your camper or bring one with you to your hotel room. Another is to use a video service that allows downloading in advance for later play while offline and do so while connected to fiber, cable, or DSL. Or what makes those impractical for the use cases you describe?
I only watch TV about 2 hours a day, on average [...] If one service is getting 25mpbs, I expect all other services to be comparable.
Being able to peak at 25 Mbps for 30 seconds to download a 75 MB file doesn't put the same (amortized) load on cell towers as sustaining 25 Mbps for two hours. If you choose to live where fiber, cable, and DSL are unavailable, you can stream SD or rent BD.
Maybe the guy tied himself up on the edge of the cliff when his gun accidentally discharged, causing him to fall over backward onto a knife. :-)
In this case though, we know that the data came from the Professors OWN server.
Read that carefully:
The Professor streamed ALL the files from the same place. He spoofed the metadata to make it appear to come from the various services, but his own computer actually provided the bits.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Except there was only one server involved. The Professor's.
He spoofed the metadata to make the ISP think it was from the various services. If this ain't a hand in the cookie jar, I don't know what is.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The only variable is a text string in the content, linked to the services - the tool is serving the same data the same way all the time, no matter which service it is tricking the ISP to believe it is. No data is streamed from the actual services during the test.
OK, after reading the article I see that the app is not accessing data from the other companies, just mimicking that data...
However this is wrong (speaking about traffic shaping):
Such âoeprioritizationâ or data discrimination violates one of the core tenets of net neutrality,
That is totally false. It is only when you are discriminated by origin, not type, that you are violating network neutrality. Can all of the technical users on Slashdot agree that traffic shaping is useful and valid for all networks?
Why DOES it make any sense for streaming video to be fed to you way faster than it takes to actually play? All it would do is advance the buffer faster, but probably at the expense of other traffic that was more immediate, like web page data, or for a cellular network means other users of a tower have reduced bandwidth.
I still disagree that this app is showing the user anything useful, because most people cannot understand the nuances of traffic shaping, and when it helps or hurts them....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Streisand effect in 3... 2... never mind, I'm too late already.
That's why it's not even registering as funny anymore.
#DeleteFacebook
and now the Ghost of Admiral Grace Hopper should strangle you with a Microsecond for wasting our time
Consume almost all the internet traffic, they really should be throttled to have better QOS for customers. It's all junk on there anyway.
I can use my phone to stream recently recorded shows from my TiVo for viewing.
Can't you transfer episodes that you had recorded on your DVR from your DVR to your phone over your WLAN before you leave the house?
What he found is that by changing the metadata of the video's header -- but not the video itself -- it could be downloaded at much higher speeds. If he changed the metadata of other types of data (photos, for instance) to have the Netflix metadata, that data would be throttled by the telecom company when it was downloaded.
It's called "Binge On", and it is an open program run by T-Mobile to allow users to get zero-rated streaming data by allowing the speeds to be throttled for any participating source. Netflix participates. If you have Netflix metadata, T-Mobile will treat it like Netflix data and zero-rate it. If you change the data source to someone who doesn't participate, you'll get it at full speed -- and every byte counts.
Binge On is not a big dark secret.
"This means itâ(TM)s keyword related and not server or even content related."
Congratulations, he's just cracked the way that T-Mobile detects Binge On data. He hasn't proven a net neutrality violation.
What I'm wondering about, why is nobody concerned that his app is spying on user activity and sending data about what you are doing back to him? Because he promises that it is all "anonymized"? Really?
Hijacking first top comment to say the app is up and running again... from reddits story is an edit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7r9kk9/apple_is_blocking_an_app_that_detects_net/ )
UPDATE:
"Thanks to everyone for their support! I'm happy to report that @apple has approved our Wehe app, and you can now download it from the App Store. Please note that our servers for running net neutrality tests are overloaded at the moment and we are working to address the issue."
Source: https://twitter.com/proffnes/status/954048717627318272
After all that's been said, there's an update:
Update: After this article was published, Apple told Dave Choffnes that his iPhone app, designed to detect net neutrality violations, will be allowed in the iTunes App Store. According to Choffnes, Apple contacted him and explained that the company has to deal with many apps that don't do the things they claim to do. Apple asked Choffnes to provide a technical description of how his app is able to detect if wireless telecom providers throttle certain types of data, and 18 hours after he did, the app was approved.
"The conversation was very pleasant, but did not provide any insight into the review process [that] led the app to be rejected in the first place," Choffnes told us in an email.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
but it's still more entertaining than the Muslim guy from earlier this week, or APK
Were doomed.
Wall street is not "the economy"; it's a casino for the 1%. The fortunes of regular Americans are even worse now than they were last year, and once the full consequences of Trump's trickle-down, golden shower policies take effect, he'll be the one out of a job (assuming he's not in jail first).
ISps throttle bandwidth all the time for both good and bad reasons. If you need an app to detect if you're being throttled then that implies that your User experience Is not really affected by it... Which implies that there's not really a problem. Why is everyone so concerned all of a sudden about the bandwith that they aren't using any way?
Even 1.5 Mbps is enough for a decent standard-definition stream. To put 1.5 Mbps in perspective: For a long time, the warez scene transcoded DVD movies to 1 CD, which for a 90-minute movie means (700 * 8) / (90 * 60) = 1 Mbps, and that was with Xvid, an MPEG-4 ASP encoder. Nowadays we have AVC and VP8, which provide greater picture quality per bit than ASP.
If you require both high definition and large selection, consider it next time you move.
The site he is testing may itself be throttling the data it sends out so as not to saturate their limited upload bandwidth.
Often videos will contain text intended for the viewer to read that does not resolve at 480p also
Which videos are those? The most text-heavy videos I watch are tech support scam baiting videos by Lewis's Tech and Each&Everything, and I can make those out comfortably even at 480p. Besides, I thought text needed to be sized for 480p even if only to be readable by a viewer on the sofa across the living room from the TV.
If Network X says streaming video only gets a pipe so wide and that's even across their network then that's fine, but make it transparent and don't complain if someone else does. But when Verizon says Netflix gets a pipe of 4Mbps and Verizon streaming video gets a pipe of 12Mbps then Net Neutrality is being violated.
I don't see that as being any kind of violation, it makes SENSE that content hosted locally on a network should be able to stream faster than content out of network. If you can't do that, the whole internet goes to hell or you artificially limit the quality of local content which is insane.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So when a stream transmits from a Verizon subsidiary at full unthrottled speed and from Netflix at an arbitratry 4Mbps when letting it go unthrottled would happily flow at 24Mbps.
Sorry to have to repeat what seems like an incredibly obvious fact, but the throttling is not because of "punishing" anyone it's because it costs Verizon a lot more to stream the content from a server they have to connect to via a peer than it does to simply stream content from Verizon's own network at whatever speed they can support with the hardware. Furthermore the pipe out to the internet at large is vastly more constrained in total bandwitdh per second, so allowing about as much bandwidth as the streaming will take means more people get to stream at full, not reduced, speed. If you demand they support streaming at the same speed as internal networks some people may get that speed while others get almost nothing....
All external connections are naturally throttled, it's not that external connections are punished, it's that all INTERNAL connections are rewarded with essentially free bandwidth because all amount of bandwidth used is the same to Verizon. Now what happens if you mandate all connections must be the same speed? It doesn't mean you will connect at 24Mbps everywhere, it means they will throttle all internal content down to 4Mbps, so everyone loses, most of all the customer that might have had some on-network 4K streaming possible at much higher quality...
Punishing customers is to me against the spirit of Network Neutrality.
I'll have to leave the discussion there, I have better things to do that explain network topology to people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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