Netflix ISP Leaderboard Rankings for August 2016

[HardOCP News]

The Netflix ISP Speed Index has posted leaderboard rankings for August 2016. It looks like speeds have increased ever so slightly month over month but overall the top ten ISPs are all within .5Mbps of each other. Here's a chart of the top ten ISPs.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Pretty much as expected.

Ever since Netflix paid up, as well as put their server's inside ISP's networks, this issue has mostly gone away. Still, sub 4MBPS seems kind of crappy, but I have no idea at what typical bitrate Netflix streams max out at, and what resolutions customers typically watch at, especially these days when they optimize the per title based on noise ratio (SNR?)


It's interesting that in the top 10 ISP's there are 4 I've never heard of, including # 2 and 3 (Bright House, Optimum, Mediacom and Suddenlink)

 

[-PK-]

I hope that chart was meant to be in MBps, unless people are really watching movies at 240p.

 

[ravx25]

Pretty much as expected.

Ever since Netflix paid up, as well as put their server's inside ISP's networks, this issue has mostly gone away. Still, sub 4MBPS seems kind of crappy, but I have no idea at what typical bitrate Netflix streams max out at, and what resolutions customers typically watch at, especially these days when they optimize the per title based on noise ratio (SNR?)


It's interesting that in the top 10 ISP's there are 4 I've never heard of, including # 2 and 3 (Bright House, Optimum, Mediacom and Suddenlink)

Suddenlink the main cable carrier out in West Texas. My relatives in San Angelo have it. It's actually pretty stable, but they pull the same crap some other providers do in putting in data caps, which should be a no no.

 

[defaultluser]

I hope that chart was meant to be in MBps, unless people are really watching movies at 240p.

Chart says 3.6 Mbps. That's enough for a Netflix 720p stream, or 1080p if you're running a device that supports HEVC.

The modern x264 encoder has about 4-5x better compression efficiency than the legacy MPEG2 used in broadcast (19Mbps for 720p).

 

[jedimasterben]

I hope that chart was meant to be in MBps, unless people are really watching movies at 240p.

Nope, that is megabits per second. Check out the link that Zarathustra[H] posted, most streams, even 1080p, are less than 5Mbps.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Nope, that is megabits per second. Check out the link that Zarathustra[H] posted, most streams, even 1080p, are less than 5Mbps.

Yeah, when I back up blurays (which is rare these days) I tend to target ~20Mbit for 24hz 1080p total between audio and video. This tends to result in approximately a 16GB file for your average 1:45 runtime film. I know this is pretty much overkill placebo territory, but I ahve plenty of storage space.

With modern codecs you really don't need as much as many people suggest to get really good quality.

 

[defaultluser]

Yeah, when I back up blurays (which is rare these days) I tend to target ~20Mbit for 24hz 1080p total between audio and video. This tends to result in approximately a 16GB file for your average 1:45 runtime film. I know this is pretty much overkill placebo territory, but I ahve plenty of storage space.

With modern codecs you really don't need as much as many people suggest to get really good quality.

Yeah., if you use x264 Constant Quality Factor, you usually get around 8Mbps for a 1080p stream at 20 quality factor. That takes all the guesswork out of things, and saves you space.

I can't tell the difference between CQF 19 and the original Blu-Ray media, and that's just 10Mbps in most titles.

This is the reason Netflix can offer you 1080p at just 7Mbps. No, it's not Blu-Ray quality, but it's close.

 

[Wolf_Tech]

Man that some slow speeds. My cable here in canada is 300 mbps down and 150 mbps up. Thats for a medium plan the Top of the line for 200 a month is 950 mbps down and 450 mbps up.

Wow usa has some slow speeds.

 

[jedimasterben]

Man that some slow speeds. My cable here in canada is 300 mbps down and 150 mbps up. Thats for a medium plan the Top of the line for 200 a month is 950 mbps down and 450 mbps up.

Wow usa has some slow speeds.

Most parts of the country are limited to sub-10mbps DSL lines, but this is not measuring internet speeds, it is measuring Netflix average throughput. A chart for Canada probably wouldn't look that much different since they still use the same bandwidth per stream.

 

[defaultluser]

Man that some slow speeds. My cable here in canada is 300 mbps down and 150 mbps up. Thats for a medium plan the Top of the line for 200 a month is 950 mbps down and 450 mbps up.

Wow usa has some slow speeds.

This is video bandwidth. The meter tops-out at 25Mbps per-stream at 4k for Netflix, and the vast majority stream 1080p or lower. So it's going to be significantly lower than that.

That's also sustained average bandwidth for all customers, for a service that gets incredibly loaded-down during prime-time. I think that's a pretty good showing that we can all stream whatever the hell we want at 720p now at any time of the day, since that wasn't the case a few years ago

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Man that some slow speeds. My cable here in canada is 300 mbps down and 150 mbps up. Thats for a medium plan the Top of the line for 200 a month is 950 mbps down and 450 mbps up.

Wow usa has some slow speeds.

This is video bandwidth. The meter tops-out at 25Mbps per-stream at 4k for Netflix, and the vast majority stream 1080p or lower. So it's going to be significantly lower than that.

That's also sustained average bandwidth for all customers, for a service that gets incredibly loaded-down during prime-time. I think that's a pretty good showing that we can all stream whatever the hell we want at 720p now at any time of the day, since that wasn't the case a few years ago

Yeah, you have to consider what they are measuring and what they are not measuring.

They are not measuring total bandwidth. They are measuring the bandwidth used by a single Netflix stream. As mr default above points out, it will never exceed 25mbps, as that is the max Netflix uses for 4k, and most people don't watch in 4k. Most watch in either 1080p (which tops out at 5.8Mbps) or 720p (which tops out at 2.3Mbps)

During peak times this bandwidth is also more likely to be bottle-necked on the Netflix side, not on the ISP's sides.

It is not an overall measure of ISP performance, but rather an - are they providing enough bandwidth to reliably use Netflix - test. it was instituted after Comcast and Verizon started throttling Netflix, but that has since been solved by a combination of Netflix paying up and installing servers local to the ISP's networks.

I still don't understand why Netflix hasn't embraced a P2P model for stream distribution. It would make the whole thing so much more efficient if instead of streaming the content directly from Netflix servers every time, you automatically streamed it from 10 nearby users who recently watched the same thing. Much less data would cross peering points between networks. It almost seems like a no-brainer.

 

[EvilSpock]

Bright House is now know as Charter. Bright House largest region is Florida Orlando / Tampa prior to the merger. Behind the curtain BHN had a good bandwidth management group that was very proactive in staying ahead.

 

[TechLarry]

I'm very happy with my FIOS service, but I fear every day the cap hammer will fall. It hasn't yet, but it seems to be the in-thing amongst ISP's these days.

If it ever happens, Crashplan will have to go, that's for damn sure.

 

[breal1]

Pretty much as expected.

Ever since Netflix paid up, as well as put their server's inside ISP's networks, this issue has mostly gone away. Still, sub 4MBPS seems kind of crappy, but I have no idea at what typical bitrate Netflix streams max out at, and what resolutions customers typically watch at, especially these days when they optimize the per title based on noise ratio (SNR?)


It's interesting that in the top 10 ISP's there are 4 I've never heard of, including # 2 and 3 (Bright House, Optimum, Mediacom and Suddenlink)

BrightHouse was in Tampa/Orlando. The data seemed reliable but the TV experience was a little strange compared to my Cox service I have at home.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I'm very happy with my FIOS service, but I fear every day the cap hammer will fall. It hasn't yet, but it seems to be the in-thing amongst ISP's these days.

If it ever happens, Crashplan will have to go, that's for damn sure.

Ditto. I've noticed that they are measuring my data usage internally, they just aren't reporting it to me.

When I log on the FiOS webpage to pay my bill, I often see a message stating that I am among their top data users, and that I could benefit from a faster plan. Upgrade today! So they are measuring it, and I fear it s only a matter of time until they implement caps using it.

I just renewed my two year plan though, so at least the terms won't change until 2018.

On a side note, as a FiOS user, have you noticed any throttling lately? I used to be able to max my up and downstream 24/7, but lately, when I start a massive download that can max my bandwidth, like a large new game, I've noticed it maxes out for the first 5-10 minutes, and then drops down to about a third of my bandwidth. I ahvent done enough testing to know for sure yet, but it is concerning me.

 

[-PK-]

Nope, that is megabits per second. Check out the link that Zarathustra[H] posted, most streams, even 1080p, are less than 5Mbps.

Yeah, I guess it isn't quite as bad as I thought. 3.6Mbps (450KB/s) is still about 3.2GB for a 120 minute movie. That is more than enough for 720p and around the low end of 1080p.

 

[Deleted member 88301]

What do you guys/girls think the "sweet spot" Mbps for smooth streaming is?

 

[GotNoRice]

Seems odd that certain ISPs get two entries while some are all lumped into one. AT&T for example, has a separate category for "U-Verse" and "DSL" but they are usually part of the same offerings when they try to sell you service. It must be nice to have the U-Verse numbers pumped up because all of the slow customers get their own "DSL" category. Meanwhile even budget Comcast customers on their very slowest plans count toward the "Comcast" average.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

What do you guys/girls think the "sweet spot" Mbps for smooth streaming is?

Video quality is about as subjective as anything gets, and as this article from Netflix I poste above states, they optimize the bitrate per title based on noise, so it makes it even more difficult to assess.

There will always be people who cling to their blurays and bad mouth anyone who thinks anything else is good enough, just like there are those who just don't care and are happy watching shitty cams.

To get an idea of what you need for Netflix - however - it is highly resolution dependent, but just take a look at the table in their writeup, it should give you an idea.

 

[defaultluser]

Seems odd that certain ISPs get two entries while some are all lumped into one. AT&T for example, has a separate category for "U-Verse" and "DSL" but they are usually part of the same offerings when they try to sell you service. It must be nice to have the U-Verse numbers pumped up because all of the slow customers get their own "DSL" category. Meanwhile even budget Comcast customers on their very slowest plans count toward the "Comcast" average.

It's important to note because a large number of those slow DSL customers are out in the boonies and are not likely top be upgraded to Uverse anytime soon. There's a huge difference in bandwidth between the two.

Or would you assert that Verizon FIOS and Verizon DSL should be under the same section as well, since they're owned by the same company? But you and I both know the availability area for FIOS is vastly smaller than Verizon DSL.

When you don't have to compete, you give your customers the finger.