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US Telcos Are Slowing Internet Traffic To and From Popular OTT Apps Like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video, New Research Finds (bloomberg.com)
The largest U.S. telecom companies are slowing internet traffic to and from popular apps like YouTube and Netflix, according to new research from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Bloomberg: The researchers used a smartphone app called Wehe, downloaded by about 100,000 consumers, to monitor which mobile services are being throttled when and by whom, in what likely is the single largest running study of its kind. Among U.S. wireless carriers, YouTube is the No. 1 target of throttling, where data speeds are slowed, according to the data. Netflix's video streaming service, Amazon.com's Prime Video and the NBC Sports app have been degraded in similar ways, according to David Choffnes, one of the study's authors who developed the Wehe app. From January through early May, the app detected "differentiation" by Verizon Communications Inc. more than 11,100 times, according to the study. This is when a type of traffic on a network is treated differently than other types of traffic. Most of this activity is throttling. AT&T Inc. did this 8,398 times and it was spotted almost 3,900 times on the network of T-Mobile US and 339 times on Sprint's network, the study found.
Especially if you can point out that they are not throttling their own services such as the Direct TV app.
The reason for Net Neutrality was at the time all the Media Companies were forming ISP's before that ISP were separate entities.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And they had no plans for paid prioritization.
I'm so glad that the ISPs and the Administration didn't lie to us. And I'm glad that this all benefits me, the consumer, and allows me to get my money's worth.
After all, paying $50 a month for 1.5 Mbps down/.25 up at AT&T and having people in Third World shithole countries laugh at my connection let's me know that America and our Capitalist system is the best in the World!
I can just vote with my dollars and have no internet connection. Because of our free markets, I have the same number of choices as a communist country - and the privilege of paying more for less service.
Trump! Making America Great Again!
Interesting that when the summary says "U.S. telecom companies", it assumes that we will all think wireless, rather than terrestrial. I wonder how the throttling compares on the two media....
(I do the bulk of my surfing on a terrestrial circuit.)
FCC should be regulating to make sure that the telecoms are providing enough bandwidth and interconnection to meet the demand. Those are technical issues.
FTC should be regulating the business practices to make sure that telecoms which have regional monopoly power are not using that power to extend their monopolies or colluding to restrain trade in violation of the law.
No.
The correct approach is to divide bandwidth rationally. If you've bought N% of the total downstream pipe, you are guaranteed to be able to use up to N% of the upstream pipe. What you don't use should be made available to those with extra demand. Apply at each router/switch. It's not an expensive algorithm.
No throttling, just a fair division of resources.
Throttling means providing a site with less than that N%. Throttling when popular means seeking to make a site unpopular. That's why you would do this. It does not mean sharing, it means confining. What I described would be sharing, but it isn't throttling. Even if you added RED.
In the case of video sharing sites, I have no sympathy at all with ISPs or with MPAA. They created this mess by blocking multicast and web caching to the home because they couldn't bill it. If multicast had been widely available then multiple people streaming the same thing at more or less the same time would not occupy any more of the net than one. If caching had remained in place, the bulk of the Internet would have remained clear.
This is a self-inflicted problem and the ISPs should sit down with the MPAA to figure out how to undo their mistakes.
Unusually for them, the vendors are almost innocent.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Or, Pornhub.com isn't being throttled. Kind of a large gap in your reasoning there. Remember, YOU aren't being throttled. The web site is.
If I pay an ISP for 20Mb/s, where do they get off by limiting my connection to some services to 5Mb/s and not others?
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They created this mess by blocking multicast and web caching to the home because they couldn't bill it. If multicast had been widely available then multiple people streaming the same thing at more or less the same time would not occupy any more of the net than one.
Nobody blocks multicast. Multicast simply doesn't work like that: it doesn't mean that people can simultaneously stream Youtube or Netflix. That would only work if two or more subscribers would start the same video at the same quality at the same time.
Furthermore, multicast addresses are limited to 224.0.0.0/4, or 268,435,454 addresses. Not to mention that there is no global multicast infrastructure in place.
If caching had remained in place, the bulk of the Internet would have remained clear.
And who do you think is blocking caching? Hint: it's not the ISP. The ISP wants to cache, but in order to do so the content must be clear-text. Oh wait: everyone is moving to HTTPS, which cannot easily be broken.
Back in 2013 I was working for a large telecom equipment provider on a joint project with a large CDN provider to build a CDN/TIC solution. Youtube, Netflix and all major streaming sites were supported and cached. Until [b]they[/b] decided to break caching by switching to HTTPS.
Your ignorance in this matter cannot be understated.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
The ISPs already got the Supreme Court to agree that the FTC couldn't regulate NN, and that only the FCC did. Unsurprsingly, they took advantage of this to start fucking with sites, including blocking mobile payment systems they didn't own. Surprsiingly, a few months later, the FCC did put NN regulations in place. Note, this all happened several years ago.
See also, why all the "things weren't so bad pre-FCC NN" comments were bullshit. Because the FTC was allowed to regulate them for a while, and it trended hellish when neither agency did
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Nobody blocks multicast.
To be clear, every ISP blocks multicast transport between Internet AS's except in a very few special circumstances, and typically it is not routed within networks as well. It isn't that you can't bill for it, it is the inherent danger of multicast, and also multicast routing doesn't scale well.
Some end-user ISPs are considering using highly controlled multicast ABR to efficiently deliver live content to their own subscribers, but it is unlikely that multicast will ever be distributed across the Internet.
Multicast can be used to efficiently deliver popular non-live content as well (for example, see this paper).
[FWIW I was involved in a multicast ABR trial]
That's not at all what throttling means, which I suspect you already know full well and are intentionally misusing in an attempt to confuse the issue. To "throttle" is to "suppress" or to "reduce the speed of" or to "decrease the flow of". It's an imposition on something that is capable of more.
To use some car analogies, when I press a car's accelerator to the floor so that it can't go any faster, that isn't throttling. That's simply the fastest the car can go. Nothing more. When too many cars are on the road and we're forced to slow down, that isn't throttling. That's simply a bottleneck resulting from there being more traffic than the road can handle. Nothing more. When a Corolla loses to a Corvette in a drag race, that isn't throttling. That's simply different products performing to their different limits. Nothing more.
But when your car is capable of X and traffic conditions allow for X, yet you're intentionally using the accelerator to drive it at less than X, that's you throttling your car.
Likewise, when a site is serving content as fast as it can and can't go any faster, that isn't throttling. That's simply the fastest the site can go. Nothing more. When too much traffic hits a link along the route and the traffic can't be routed at full speed, that isn't throttling. That's simply a bottleneck resulting from there being more traffic than the link can handle. Nothing more. When a 50 Mbps plan is slower than a 1 Gbps plan in a speed test, that isn't throttling. That's simply different products performing to their different limits. Nothing more.
But when you and the site are capable of X and traffic conditions allow for X, yet an ISP is intentionally forwarding packets at less than X, that's the ISP throttling your connection.
All analogies break down at some point if you stretch them too far, so this is by no means an exhaustive list of the ways that ISPs may engage in throttling or other shady behavior (e.g. ISPs intentionally divert traffic for some sites to links that are constrained as a way to throttle those sites, which would be like a cop always diverting you back onto surface streets every time you tried to get on the highway; or ISPs may intentionally throttle certain types of traffic, which would be like manufacturers installing devices that limit your top speed based on the contents of your car when you started it), but they at least hit the high points.