HardOCP News
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The Netflix ISP Speed Index for January 2014 is now out. If you are on Google Fiber (duh), Cablevision or Cox, things are good. If you are on AT&T, Mediacom or Clearwire, I have bad news for you.
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Netflix's ISP Speed Index For January 2014
- Thread starter HardOCP News
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Not sure I understand what is going on with the Fios and Frontier (same thing) numbers.
Is it because they are factoring in all of their internet connections including DSL? Or are they shaping and limiting transfer speeds of Netflix?
And what difference would that make? You either have enough streaming bandwidth for a given resolution or you don't. Are they trying to say buffering is making up the difference? What about set top boxes that don't have large buffers?
Is it because they are factoring in all of their internet connections including DSL? Or are they shaping and limiting transfer speeds of Netflix?
And what difference would that make? You either have enough streaming bandwidth for a given resolution or you don't. Are they trying to say buffering is making up the difference? What about set top boxes that don't have large buffers?
GotNoRice
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The data seems a bit suspect. What exactly are they measuring? They have comcast rated very low, yet i've never heard of anyone with comcast who ever had problems with a relatively trivial internet task such as streaming netflix.
I'm on Comcast and I can max my 100Mbps connection 24 hours a day for weeks on end if I wanted to. In fact, I can't recall any time in the last 10 years when I couldn't max out my cable connection any time I wanted.
I'm on Comcast and I can max my 100Mbps connection 24 hours a day for weeks on end if I wanted to. In fact, I can't recall any time in the last 10 years when I couldn't max out my cable connection any time I wanted.
lilbabycat
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What magical fantasy land is this?
It's not about max connection speed. It's about quality of service to netflix's servers. Comcast has had a lot of issues lately with routing, and not using netflix's own desired routing and signing whatever agreements are in place to allow hd/super hd. I'll be honest I don't fully understand as I don't use netflix, but it's pretty common knowledge that if it isn't being throttled, there are other things impacting your ability to use netflix on comcast.
Netflix Super HD looks pretty much like Blu-Ray on supported devices and ISPs (I saw someone running it on a Windows 8 tablet using Google Fiber next to a Blu-Ray laptop - couldn't tell them apart).
Does Netflix Super HD look different from Blu-Ray quality to you?
You have Comcast to thank for that.
octoberasian
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... And, AT&T can have all of my hate.
Netflix has been spotty since January on Uverse-- sometimes the movies load, other times it stops at 99% preloading, and other times I get an error to try again after attempting to watch a movie.
cocheese256
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I am stuck in the middle with Centurylink. I guess I should not complain. Since we just got DSL here about nine years ago. Before that all we had here was dial up. I had just moved here and it was a bit difficult living with broadband and then coming to an area that I did not have it at home or at work.
I used to have a lot of issues with getting consistent speeds before Centurylink bought out Sprint. Now I have a 10Mbs connection and for the most part I am satisfied with my home service. However they charge way, way too much for a business account. I may have 10Mbs at home, but the most I am willing to pay for at work is 3Mbs.
I used to have a lot of issues with getting consistent speeds before Centurylink bought out Sprint. Now I have a 10Mbs connection and for the most part I am satisfied with my home service. However they charge way, way too much for a business account. I may have 10Mbs at home, but the most I am willing to pay for at work is 3Mbs.
Its pretty obvious isn't it?
TechLarry
RIP [H] Brother - June 1, 2022
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I have the same question!
TechLarry
RIP [H] Brother - June 1, 2022
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This is my FIOS connection. It has been extremely consistent since I got it a month ago. I can't see how this isn't enough to take whatever NetFlix could possibly throw at me:
TechLarry
RIP [H] Brother - June 1, 2022
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Sorry:
Wish they had a longer list of more ISPs so that you could see how the smaller guys do also. For the time being I am only on a 8Mbps connection, once it warms up and work can actually be done outside that will change and my dslam will be upgraded and I should be able to get myself about 40 - 50 Mbps. Right now I can stream super hd without any buffering. everything looks crystal clear.
agreed, watching stuff on Netflix compared to my Blu-ray movies or HD stations I don't see a difference in quality
They are complaining about the speed of the service itself, but at what speed people download from them on average. you could have 500Mbps but if your ISP throttles your speed or anything like that you could only be getting 2Mbps from them.
agreed, watching stuff on Netflix compared to my Blu-ray movies or HD stations I don't see a difference in quality
I don't know. AT&T seems to be doing okay for me.
They are complaining about the speed of the service itself, but at what speed people download from them on average. you could have 500Mbps but if your ISP throttles your speed or anything like that you could only be getting 2Mbps from them.
SixFootDuo
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Google Fiber representing .. Yeeeahhh Boooiiii /Flavor Flav voice
We had to call out a Google tech a few weeks ago to fix our face plate coming off the wall, we have stucco and it's apparently very hard to drill into so they dug in and used anchors this time around. Initially they used double sided Velcro and a short ass 3' cat5e cable that kept popping off and made it a pain in the ass to config the boxes with new hookups since it was buried behind one of the computers..
Our only complaint really.
We stressed the Google Fiber one day and was able to run 23+ You Tube videos windows which all started instantly. Yeeeeahhh Yeeeahhh /Ice Cube voice
We had to call out a Google tech a few weeks ago to fix our face plate coming off the wall, we have stucco and it's apparently very hard to drill into so they dug in and used anchors this time around. Initially they used double sided Velcro and a short ass 3' cat5e cable that kept popping off and made it a pain in the ass to config the boxes with new hookups since it was buried behind one of the computers..
Our only complaint really.
We stressed the Google Fiber one day and was able to run 23+ You Tube videos windows which all started instantly. Yeeeeahhh Yeeeahhh /Ice Cube voice
SixFootDuo
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There are actually a lot more sites than you think that can supply 1gbit speed, I would say about 25% of where I DL from.
So far, EA Origin gives me a constant 900+mbit ... BF4 installs, 24 - 26gig takes 4ish minutes
Ya this isn't a speed test of your connection, its a test of netflix's connection to you.
Probably because everyone there has a broadband connection.
Also, the neighborhood you live in also helps determine the quality of service you'll get, particularly with cable.
When I was living in a poorer neighborhood, even with 50 mbps cable, even simple tasks during peak hours felt slower than running on a 2400 baud modem. When I moved though to a wealthier neighborhood, even a 10 mpbs service exceeded the default speed, both upload and download (I was getting roughly 30/30).
defaultluser
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Sorry:
I have the exact same tier as you:
But I still have to wait for SD videos to buffer on Netflix, and in prime time (6 to 10 pm) I'm lucky if the stream is not a blurry mess!
This speedtest is only one pipeline out of many connecting you to other servers. If a pipeline is choked, there's only one potential way to improve service: pay for a VPN that will send your data through another path across the internet. If that path is less choked (think speedtest), then you're in business
Umm... I have Comcast 50 meg service and I can barely stream sd video from Netflix (I'm assuming it's the wireless on my modem or my entire modem is bad but moving soon so not going to switch it out) not everyone on Comcast gets great service though. I couldn't even stream twitch.tv streams on my 20/4 Comcast and time warners 15/1 did just fine.
mzs_biteme
[H]ard|Gawd
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Wanna bet if ATT owned Netflix, somehow, "magically" ATT would be on top of this list...??? Yeah...... Greedy a$$, evil mother@*&^s...
Considering their "SuperHD" is detail free 7mbps "1080p" I don't see why the "average" for any of these services matters.
I assume this "average" is due to wide consumption of Netflix nodef SD crap video.
IE: this is a meaningless stat that just shows that Netflix video fidelity sucks ass.
I assume this "average" is due to wide consumption of Netflix nodef SD crap video.
IE: this is a meaningless stat that just shows that Netflix video fidelity sucks ass.
well, even most of their shit content is still in HD or SuperHD, so doesn't matter what you are watching you should be attempting to stream in one of those two and not just SD unless you just have a really slow connection. If you have more than 2 Mbps whatever you are watching on there shouldn't be SD unless you are finding some really obscure vides. but for anything new, any tv shows, all that should be in HD or SuperHD.
WBurchnall
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Well, most devices start by pre-buffering a good 30 seconds of video at the highest quality possible as supported by the device *and* video being played. One aspect of it might be people watching poor quality videos from the 80s only available in lossy 320p VCR quality. For legitimate movies with hd releases available ala RoboCop from the 80s, we should see much faster sending rates.
If pre-buffering takes too long, Netflix scales the video quality down during buffering, otherwise, it looks at the amount of data left in the buffer vs your internet connection's ability to maintain said buffer. If the buffer drops very low like 5s over a short period (30 seconds of video playing) for example, it will have to drop the quality of streaming again fast or that buffer is going to run dry and you'll get a dreaded 'Loading...' screen till the buffer refills. The quality has to be dropped to the buffer fill rate loosely approximates the rate at which the buffer is draining.
If the average streaming quality is very low in raw bandwidth and Netflix is TRYING to stream as strong as your chosen video and receiving device can support -- either there's a lot of very low standard definition quality players, crappy videos or the connection between NetFlix and AT&T customers performs so harshly, that the buffer situation described above is dropping down to around a crappy 0.88-1.00Mb/sec just to maintain the stream. The release of these statistics is to point the finger at ISPs over Netflix's video catalog quality. Personally, with new SuperHD packages and what-not on Netflix and just about every classic movie having blu-ray HD remasters or copies/feeds available -- I lean towards ISPs being the fault. Maximizing profit while minimizing investment in infrastructure resulting in them falling behind more and more every year compared to most countries excluding Canada(as they are even worse ISP-wise) and a few select third world countries
WBurchnall
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I don't know. AT&T seems to be doing okay for me.
You're not connecting to Netflix's servers when you visit SpeedTest.net. Netflix's servers have far more traffic and demand than SpeedTest.net. Really, SpeedTest.Net might be used at most 100,000 times a day -- mostly by computer enthusiasts or people on the phone with ISP support trying to solve connectivity issues. The average connection time being about 1 minute give or take.
Netflix by comparison has ... what 30,000,000 members? That might watch it more than once a day. The average connection time being potentially 30 minutes to a few hours. It's great that your connection to a rarely used, low traffic website is unclogged but that's not really relevant to your connection to NetFlix.
It's akin to say 'Hey guys. The report saying the freeway connecting my city to LA is clogged everyday between 3pm to 5pm is total bullshit. I look out my window at my local street and there's not a single car in my residential neighborhood for 2 blocks in either direction.'
To which I'm literately responding 'That's fantastic, but what does your local street traffic have to do with freeway congestion?' because SpeedTest.net is a residential street compared to Netflix which is closer to a freeway.
WBurchnall
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I think they are trying to say somewhere in the backbone between Netflix to Cablevision Optimum's customer's house on average, a greater throughput is achieved somewhere than Verizon FiOS's customer's house. Really, the limiting factor could be anywhere in between those two places. If you open a command prompt window and just "tracert www.netflix.com", you'll probably see your signal hits 8+ different systems along the way.
Here's my tracert for "www.netflix.com" from my home example:
tracert www.netflix.com
Tracing route to www.us-east-1.prodaa.netflix.com [54.235.138.140]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 19 ms 19 ms 6 ms 10.31.224.1
3 75 ms 75 ms 75 ms NYCMNY83CI01.bb.telus.com [75.154.223.250]
4 75 ms 75 ms 75 ms 72.21.221.172
5 81 ms 81 ms 81 ms 54.240.229.90
6 80 ms 80 ms 79 ms 54.240.228.204
7 80 ms 80 ms 79 ms 54.240.229.223
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 81 ms 82 ms 81 ms 72.21.220.106
10 98 ms 97 ms 85 ms 72.21.220.143
11 85 ms 85 ms 85 ms 72.21.222.85
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 89 ms 81 ms 84 ms 216.182.224.91
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.
Trace complete.
Obviously, if everyone has to go through the same bottleneck stop like a local ISP server farm such as "NYCMNY83CI01.bb.telus.com" to reach Netflix from my city and we have a lot of Netflix users, that might cause our connection to Netflix to be very slow if that's an old or outdated server farm. In which case, it might be very beneficial to users end-experience to increase the size of said server farm or do something else increase the potential throughput. Doing so would likely require money and infrastructure investment. Your cable company might care so little about investing in infrastructure in some areas they provide service, that when looking at all their customer's average stream rate, it is in fact slower than the other ISP you mentioned. If you server farm is not particularly crowded or has been recently updated, you might not experience what other customers on your same ISP experience.
You must be lucky then,
http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Basic-Internet-Connectivity-And/Netflix-is-slow/td-p/1856575
http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Home-N...nnection-Netflix-streaming-video/td-p/1939581
http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Home-N...flix-streaming-video-unwatchable/td-p/1948625
I'm on comcast and I have the same probably many other comcast users have.
Streams are pretty much unwatchable for me, usually from around 4 EST - 10 est I can not watch HD quality netflix at all unless I want to deal with "Buffering" every few minutes.
Amazon on the other hand? Zero problems, I can run an HD movie and it works fine.
jkw
Gawd
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my Google Fiber smokes everything.
Yep that chart shows 1.5mbps for Comcast, and the last time Comcast was that slow where I live was around 2002. The baseline low-end Comcast around here is now 30mbps down, 5mbps up.
That definitely sounds like a wireless problem to me. I had similar problems with dropped packets and bad pings/speeds when I tried using wireless, because there are literally 20 wireless routers in range of me causing a ton of interference
I still don't see why there would be such huge differences between ISPs unless they are deliberately trying to slow down Netflix traffic as it enters the ISP's network. All of this makes me think Netflix should utilize the power of P2P though. I've never had any such problems with torrents, and can max out my bandwidth for hours and hours (unless it's a very poorly seeded torrent).
I think the rest of the world should have a charity drive to help the poor internet impoverished citizens of the US.
I can see the Red Cross advert now with people crying as they cant watch Breaking Bad without stuttering or get access to Reddit, people having to read books or do some gardening instead.
Oh the inhumanity of it all.
I can see the Red Cross advert now with people crying as they cant watch Breaking Bad without stuttering or get access to Reddit, people having to read books or do some gardening instead.
Oh the inhumanity of it all.
atp1916
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Me and my business partner are in the Richardson, Tx location and all our business can get thanks to the ILEC is ATT 1.5/1 mb up/down "Business-class High Speed Internet" for $45 a month.
ATT needs to be taken to court for false advertising.
ATT needs to be taken to court for false advertising.
CreepyUncleGoogle
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Threads that somehow involve bandwidth always turn into threads where a bunch of guys compare e-peen by posting bandwidth numbers or complain about how awful an ISP is in their area for the price they're paying. Thanks Netflix for giving them an excuse.
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if I understand correctly, Netflix has cache servers on some networks....those networks will obviously work better as the content is being served from a local box...
its outlined here
https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect
Correct, as an ISP as long as you have a 10 Gbps connection to the server you can get a cacheing server to host on your network
Threads that somehow involve bandwidth always turn into threads where a bunch of guys compare e-peen by posting bandwidth numbers or complain about how awful an ISP is in their area for the price they're paying. Thanks Netflix for giving them an excuse.
I myself just find it funny how stupid some of the people here are and don't understand that max bandwidth speeds don't mean that is how fast you will download all stuff. I would expect people on a computer forum to understand how the internet works a little better than that
Fios throttles Netflix I can attest to that..
I've got fios 75/35 and I consistently test at 80/40
I work from home and I've got four monitors, I usually run Netflix on a side monitor as just something playing really but I've noticed that throughout the day it's very fast, no waiting, no buffering etc. Then around 4:30pm it all slows down and just gets worse as the evening/night goes on
I've got fios 75/35 and I consistently test at 80/40
I work from home and I've got four monitors, I usually run Netflix on a side monitor as just something playing really but I've noticed that throughout the day it's very fast, no waiting, no buffering etc. Then around 4:30pm it all slows down and just gets worse as the evening/night goes on
TechLarry
RIP [H] Brother - June 1, 2022
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I have the exact same tier as you:
But I still have to wait for SD videos to buffer on Netflix, and in prime time (6 to 10 pm) I'm lucky if the stream is not a blurry mess!
This speedtest is only one pipeline out of many connecting you to other servers. If a pipeline is choked, there's only one potential way to improve service: pay for a VPN that will send your data through another path across the internet. If that path is less choked (think speedtest), then you're in business
If you have the 75/35 Tier as I do, you need to call Verizon