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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.
Cellular providers will sometimes throttle video, not to be jerks and violate net neutrality, but to save your data plan.
Streaming video providers will usually send you the maximum video quality that your connection can support. If 25mbps is available, they could be sending you full HD or even 4K at a high bitrate so the quality is really good. This isn't really of much benefit on a small mobile screen, so you're tearing through your data plan for no real reason.
AT&T calls this feature "streamsaver" and it's on by default; you have to turn it off if you don't want it. There's probably no shenanigans at work here, just trying to prevent customers complaining that watching one Netflix movie used their entire data plan.
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.
Your well-reasoned and thoughtful contribution offends my angry narrative, sir!
I have unlimited data and an MHL-HDMI interface so I can play videos on a large TV using my phone, you insensitive clod.
Cell providers are being jerks and violating net neutrality. If a user wants to limit bandwidth, the streaming app should give them controls to do so, that's not the bailiwick of the cell provider, quite the opposite. Regardless of the FCC's recent actions regarding net neutrality, Verizon is still bound by the open access terms under which it obtained new LTE bands, which prohibits them from limiting or restricting applications (that would include Netflix, etc.).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
And get more latency and slowdown either due to the VPN software itself or the limits at the VPN provider.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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
"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.
Cellular providers will sometimes throttle video, not to be jerks and violate net neutrality, but to save your data plan.
In other words: to coerce you to accept excessively a high per-Gigabyte cost and avoid what they view as "wasteful fidelity" they will tamper with your traffic to reduce your consumption.
"Save your overly restrictive data plan" is really REALLY not a good reason for throttling.
This isn't really of much benefit on a small mobile screen, so you're tearing through your data plan for no real reason.
You can very well be mirroring that mobile screen to something larger where you will feel that it matters.
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.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
TFA says that this app doesn't measure a video coming to you; it connects to the speed tests which each of the major video services now have and tries them. So you are absolutely correct, and your statement is also completely irrelevant. This measures peak performance to these sites, and if peak performance varies widely, well, look for the commonalities between the poorly performing sites. It all of them are direct video competitors with your ISP, I think we know what's going on.
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?
The VPN will let you see if there's throttling going on. If Netflix streams better through the VPN, then you carrier is throttling Netflix (and possibly more).