Major U.S. Internet Providers Accused of Deliberately Slowing Traffic

[John Connor]

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/major-u-s-internet-providers-accused-of-deliberately-84924844214.html

The situation recalls recent claims by Netflix that Comcast is intentionally throttling traffic with intermediaries like Level 3 and Cogent, a problem that Netflix says ultimately led it to start signing direct traffic deals — Comcast and Verizon have been paid so far, with more likely to come. Since the Comcast deal, Netflix says its streaming speeds on Comcast have increased 65 percent. But despite the performance improvement, Netflix doesn’t appear happy about the arrangement. “While in the short term Netflix will in cases reluctantly pay large ISPs to ensure a high quality member experience,” CEO Reed Hastings said back in March, “we will continue to fight for the internet the world needs and deserves.”

Greedy fucking bastards!

 

[ThinClient]

Net neutrality dead and you're surprised this is happening?

Our government sucks.

 

[postmortemIA]

5 unnamed are the 5 largest cable companies. that's obvious, they hate streamers and have the most to lose from streaming (diverting from their cable revenues). It would be great for them if we the end users would consider that unlimited data means unlimited to emails send and received, and causal web browsing.

 

[dmcowen674]

Major U.S. Internet Providers Accused of Deliberately Slowing Traffic

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/major-u-s-internet-providers-accused-of-deliberately-84924844214.html


Greedy fucking bastards!

Told you guys over 10 years ago only way to get unfettered Internet is to leave the U.S.

 

[Jeff7]

5 unnamed are the 5 largest cable companies. that's obvious, they hate streamers and have the most to lose from streaming (diverting from their cable revenues). It would be great for them if we the end users would consider that unlimited data means unlimited to emails send and received, and causal web browsing.

Music industry: "Oh no, player pianos/records/radio/downloadable music will be the death of us!!!!.......Oh wait, we can sell this stuff to people and make tons of money."


Movie industry: "VCRs will mean the end of movies forever! They need to be made illegal!!!
....Hm, or, we can sell people theater tickets and sell them VHS tapes.
...And now we can sell them the movie again on DVD. And a special edition on DVD. And a Blu-Ray version."


Cable providers: "You can't stream your TV shows over the Internet! That might mean that you'll top....oh, right, we also sell Internet service."


"No!!! Please make the cash flow stop! We can't stand being this profitable!!"

I'm sure they'll survive just fine, but in the meantime, they'll be throwing a tantrum like an enormous spoiled toddler.

 

[sdifox]

I still don't understand how you guys fucked up net neutrality. Next up, Trans Pacific Partnership.

 

[allisolm]

Told you guys over 10 years ago only way to get unfettered Internet is to leave the U.S.

I take it you didn't read the article. Looks like that won't work so well either.

First line: "Five major internet service providers in the US and one in Europe have been accused of abusing their market share to interfere with the flow of the internet for end users.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

I still don't understand how you guys fucked up net neutrality. Next up, Trans Pacific Partnership.

The idiots we put in congress (and didn't take out) got lobbied (money thrown at them) by the ISPs to pass certain laws, then some past CEOs and such from the ISPs got "chosen" to "work" in our lawmaking areas. Same happened with food production; past high level employees at places like Tyson now work in the USDA. :|

 

[Markbnj]

The only function congress performs at this point is to provide an access point between big money and the bureaucracies in which the power actually resides.

Net neutrality wouldn't be necessary as a principle if the last-mile monopolies didn't exist, or the governments that granted those last-mile monopolies did their jobs and protected the public interest.

So, bottom line, we need alternatives in the last mile and this problem will disappear.

 

[mmntech]

I still don't understand how you guys fucked up net neutrality. Next up, Trans Pacific Partnership.

Political patronage. They pay off the government in order to get power. In this case, an ex-cable boss was appointed to run the FCC. Which is putting the wolf in the hen house. That's the fault of the American public for not getting angry and demanding strict limits on campaign and lobbying contributions, with an independent oversight committee to oversee them.

Cable companies claim they need money to upgrade their networks to support growing demand for bandwidth. So they need to start charging the big bandwidth hogs. Though in the process, you're letting them become the gatekeepers of information. It allows big companies who can pay to get fast tracked while smaller online players get pushed to the sidelines. Make no mistake, it's not good for the likes of Google, Facebook, Netflix, or Amazon either. Sure, it will stall potential competition. However, it's a new massive expense that will negatively impact their bottom lines. So the only people who win are the big ISPs.

As the internet has become the primary method of telecommunications for most of the developed world, we need to treat it like a utility, which is what Mozilla has proposed. It's certainly not unreasonable. It just legally entrenches the status quo that we've operated on for the last 20 years.

 

[Newell Steamer]

It's OK - its self regulation.

You wanted the gubnament out of businesses' business,.. well, enjoy it!!

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally Posted by dmcowen674
Told you guys over 10 years ago only way to get unfettered Internet is to leave the U.S.

I take it you didn't read the article. Looks like that won't work so well either.

First line: "Five major internet service providers in the US and one in Europe have been accused of abusing their market share to interfere with the flow of the internet for end users.

Since you are apparently an expert in this area, what Country is not safe to go to for unfettered Internet outside the U.S.?

People planning to leave the U.S. need to know.

Thanks

 

[drinkmorejava]

The article says nothing.

There's a difference between not adding capacity because the peer is not playing nice with your network and intentional throttling the pipe because you want to punish them.

Of course speeds went up when netflix started paying. They paid for more capacity. And of course Level 3 says they were throttled when it very well could have been a capacity issue. I don't think we're ever going to get a straight answer out of anyone.

 

[Markbnj]

The article says nothing.

There's a difference between not adding capacity because the peer is not playing nice with your network and intentional throttling the pipe because you want to punish them.

Of course speeds went up when netflix started paying. They paid for more capacity. And of course Level 3 says they were throttled when it very well could have been a capacity issue. I don't think we're ever going to get a straight answer out of anyone.

It takes a very creative reading of the article to arrive at that conclusion. You're saying the fact that the only peers that want Level3 to pay to increase interconnection bandwidth are the last-mile monopoly ISPs is a coincidence?

 

[Zee]

5 unnamed are the 5 largest cable companies. that's obvious, they hate streamers and have the most to lose from streaming (diverting from their cable revenues). It would be great for them if we the end users would consider that unlimited data means unlimited to emails send and received, and causal web browsing.

Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Verizon FIOS, Charter

Welcome to like 98% of USA

You need to go down to smaller cable companies like Optimum Cablevision (which is mostly Fios area anyway), or all the way down to Suddenlink to get a less evil companies.

 

[Jeff7]

I still don't understand how you guys fucked up net neutrality. Next up, Trans Pacific Partnership.

The idiots we put in congress (and didn't take out) got lobbied (money thrown at them) by the ISPs to pass certain laws, then some past CEOs and such from the ISPs got "chosen" to "work" in our lawmaking areas. Same happened with food production; past high level employees at places like Tyson now work in the USDA. :|

And the other way around, from regulation to industry. Or three stages: Industry to regulator to industry.
Soften up the regulators after you've been in industry, make friendly connections, and then get back into industry and enjoy the financial benefits of corrupt conflicts of interest.

Always remember, it's not "bribery." It's "lobbying."

The only function congress performs at this point is to provide an access point between big money and the bureaucracies in which the power actually resides.

Net neutrality wouldn't be necessary as a principle if the last-mile monopolies didn't exist, or the governments that granted those last-mile monopolies did their jobs and protected the public interest.

So, bottom line, we need alternatives in the last mile and this problem will disappear.

Yup. Our species in general cannot handle power. We corrupt easily. The US government was set up to try to counter this.

Problem is, when you have people outside the system amassing extreme amounts of wealth, they become a fourth branch of government which was not elected to govern. Everyone has their price. Some people may have a very high price, but they still have one. It's not always a monetary price, but money usually gets the job done.
(Hence some people's wariness of greasing the path to becoming extremely wealthy in the first place. You end up with a toddler who's in charge of a 2-ton pile of cookies and expecting something other than a cookie massacre. Adults just cause much more damage when they are given the same kind of opportunity, such as global recessions and corruption of governments.)

 

[Fritzo]

Net neutrality dead and you're surprised this is happening?

Our government sucks.

This is what I was saying earlier- the government is full of old men that have no idea how technology works. They have to see something bad happen before they act on it.

"Net neutrality? Not sure what that means so it's not important. Do what ever you want."

"Wait---it's slowing down my movie watching???? LET'S MAKE LAWS!"

 

[MarkXIX]

I keep saying in all of these threads that these ISPs can choose to increase bandwidth to their customer base anytime they want. They have the resources and the profits to do so, but since they are regional monopolies, they have no real incentive. There's almost no competition in each municipality that they serve.

It's sad, but I have Cox and AT&T in my area and AT&T's is so woefully packaged that we have essentially one choice for internet service in town. There are too many laws and regulations to permit someone else from starting up a local ISP to compete.

Bottom line, the whole damn system is broke and I agree that it needs to all be regulated as a utility at this point.

 

[PokerGuy]

It's OK - its self regulation.

You wanted the gubnament out of businesses' business,.. well, enjoy it!!

Sigh. If gubnament was actually out of it, we'd have a much better chance at getting a better deal as a consumer because there would be competition. The problem is that gubnament gave isp's local monopolies in many areas, so there's no competition, and you're stuck with whatever your crappy isp wants to give you.

 

[JamesV]

Time Warner has definitely been throttling Netflix.

All of a sudden maybe a month ago, it started taking 10-30+ seconds for the login page to load, often cases of the loading stopping or taking a long time, and HD playback sometimes took forever to start, or went back to low def during streaming.

Every other site out of the 20+ I checked in other tabs worked fine, every single time Netflix was slow.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Time Warner has definitely been throttling Netflix.

All of a sudden maybe a month ago, it started taking 10-30+ seconds for the login page to load, often cases of the loading stopping or taking a long time, and HD playback sometimes took forever to start, or went back to low def during streaming.

Every other site out of the 20+ I checked in other tabs worked fine, every single time Netflix was slow.

While I support Net Neutrality, its posts like these that make me want bash my head against a table.

 

[MarkXIX]

While I support Net Neutrality, its posts like these that make me want bash my head against a table.

Why? Because of the speculation that the ISP is throttling the traffic?

See, here's my take, what the customer experiences is what matters. What many ISPs fail to consider is that they aren't the only ISP in many households, they just think they are.

When I can get on my smartphone and Netflix is faster through my 4G LTE connection than my landline ISP service provider, it's pretty damn simple to form a conclusion.

Sure, we could talk about "last mile" this and "peering" that but the bottom line is, ISPs are too damned arrogant to think that their customers aren't on to their games at this point.

Bottom line, if I pay for Netflix and I pay my ISP to provide that service to me, I'll be damned if it should be slow under all but the most rare of circumstances. Even then, the ISP better damn well figure out why one vendor's product is slower for me than someone else's riding the same damn infrastructure.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Why? Because of the speculation that the ISP is throttling the traffic?

See, here's my take, what the customer experiences is what matters. What many ISPs fail to consider is that they aren't the only ISP in many households, they just think they are.

When I can get on my smartphone and Netflix is faster through my 4G LTE connection than my landline ISP service provider, it's pretty damn simple to form a conclusion.

Sure, we could talk about "last mile" this and "peering" that but the bottom line is, ISPs are too damned arrogant to think that their customers aren't on to their games at this point.

Bottom line, if I pay for Netflix and I pay my ISP to provide that service to me, I'll be damned if it should be slow under all but the most rare of circumstances. Even then, the ISP better damn well figure out why one vendor's product is slower for me than someone else's riding the same damn infrastructure.

Because its baseless and confirmation bias at its worst.

You can speculate all you want, but when someone uses words like "definitely" or "pretty damn simple" with absolutely no evidence behind their position, its an automatic sign of idiocy.

You are not guaranteed that every server will always be able to provide you with 100% of the bandwith and speed all the time. You are also not guaranteed that the server will always process your requests properly. You are not guaranteed 15mbps throughouput at all times.

 

[spidey07]

Netflix wants to dump all that traffic on the ISPs without paying for it.

Fuck them. Notice when they pay for the traffic they are dumping (which during peak evening times can be as much as 45% of all ISP traffic) the speeds improved 65%, as would be expected. The future of the Internet is here, where streaming video is a high quality Internet experience.

 

[mugs]

It takes a very creative reading of the article to arrive at that conclusion. You're saying the fact that the only peers that want Level3 to pay to increase interconnection bandwidth are the last-mile monopoly ISPs is a coincidence?

Who said anything about a coincidence?