Netflix Denies Throttling Rumors, Passes Buck to ISPs
Posted 03/23/09 at 08:05:51 PM by Pulkit Chandna
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Some users of Netflix’s streaming service have groused about dwindling performance in recent times. The dip in performance has not only nettled users but also engendered speculation as to its cause. The most plausible conjecture is that video streams are being deliberately throttled by Netflix.
But Netflix’s chief product officer Neil Hunt has dismissed such misgivings and passed the buck to the ISPs. He even claimed, on the company’s official blog, Netflix can’t resort to throttling even if it wants to because it relies on third-party Content Delivery Network (CDN) services.
“Also, routing to different ISPs in the same region may be quite different, thus performance may also be quite different, even for neighbors, if they are connected to different ISPs. Moreover, congesting points can rise and fall with ISP configuration changes and other conditions,” Hunt wrote.
Probably the ISP
Submitted by jz on Sat, 04/04/2009 - 5:03am
I had verizon fios broadband(the cheapest one and the middle one) and watched tons of tv and movies. Probably once out of 50 times i might get a pause with a lowered quality picture.
Now I moved and have comcast(the cheapest one, still expensive) and i get a quality that looks worse than standard def about 50% of the time.
Submitted by evanwalls on Thu, 03/26/2009 - 3:24am
I always get full bars and stream perfectly smoothly, 2 hd's on 2 360's at a time is perfect... xbox360/comcast 22Mbps down / 4Mbps up
Quality
Submitted by Asevening on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 9:50am
I stream all of my content over a wireless connection and I manage three if not all four bars on every video quality test meaning I have HD on every HD video and top quality on everything else. The only time I ever notice any issues is when all of my roommates decide to play Live at the same time while I'm watching a video and I get that awesome pause telling me my connection slowed. Usually that only happens though if more than one other person starts using the network. And I definitely don't consider myself a "Hogger" probably only stream like 2 movies in a week.
On another note, I took my 360 home to my parents one weekend for our family thanksgiving and they have a 1.5 down 384 up connection at which I never got higher than 2 bars (even wired) and never got to see anything in HD. So far the only issues I've seen is that Netflix, on any platform, is only as good as the internet connection.
Lincoln, NE - Time Warner Cable Business Class - 12m down 1.5m up, $23/month.
Why would they intentionally
Submitted by quickone on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 6:11am
Why would they intentionally make their own service slow? It is probably comcast throttling it back because they don't like to invest in their network despite charging outrageous prices and offering shotty service
Think about it... If you
Submitted by I Jedi on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 7:23am
Think about it... If you have a high-usage customer eating up all of your bandwidth and helping to slow down the network whilst not giving other customers a great experience because of a few bandwidth hoggers... Then yes, you're going to want to slow them down. I don't agree with the practice at all. Netflix does this with their DVD subscriptions for high-usage customers... However, they claim they have no control over who gets what type of a good video stream over their network. In other words, they claim it's not their fault that some customers experience shitty performance... Whilst a customer down the road gets excellent performance.
See: http://blog.netflix.com/2009/03/netflix-trying-for-consistent.html for full report
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