Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
geschinger1
Enthusiast - Level 3
This is more **bleep** from Verizon. The unbalanced peering is because VZ sets it up that way. Look at the discrepancy between what VZ provides down an up. The question I wish VZ had the courage to address is why if such a large number of customers paying a lot of money for services are requesting traffic that routes from Cogent why that does t justify VZ upgrading those ports. It is galling that VZ artificially limits what it's customers can access by refusing to upgrade where ports are congested while at the same time trying to get customers to upgrade speeds.

It is clear that Verizon is the bad actor in this dispute.
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Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
mike_in_nyc
Newbie

I have two residences, one in NYC area and one in Northeast PA.  

My FiOS plan is 75 Mbps Download and 35 Mbps upload

My Blue Ridge Cable (BRC) plan is 10 Mbps Download and 800 kbps upload.

I take the same Macbook Pro laptop (mid-2012 Core i5 with 16GB ram and 512 GB SSD) and AppleTV (latest model) back and forth.

I connect to the FiOS using ethernet, and connect to BRC using wifi.   

Verizon FiOS:  Device: AppleTV

I notice a lot of lag and buffering when streaming from Netflix, and plenty of issues with Crunchyroll app.  I can not stream three consecutive episodes on Crunchyroll without the stream failing.  

BRC:  Device:  AppleTV

Streaming is perfectly fine with Netflix, and zero issues with Crunchyroll.  On Crunchyroll, I was able to stream 50 HD episodes continuiously for about 20 hours via wireless without having to restart and without any failures.  During this time, I had two laptops connected to the wifi, and also a Roku that was connected as well.  I was able to do this on a 10 Mbps internet package, with only a maximum of 800 Kbps upload speed.

Verizon FiOS:  Devices: Macbook Pro and iPhone

When streaming wirelessly on Youtube, there seems to be issues when loading videos, and videos load slowly, and stop to buffer many times.  

BRC:  Devices: Macbook Pro and iPhone

When streaming wirelessly on Youtube, there are no noticible issues with streaming.   

These are the same devices uses on both carriers.  It's outragous that Verizon FiOS is charging us all this money for services that they block and throttle speeds even for users on their high end packages.  On some backwater cable internet carrier offering a significantly slower plan, I can stream continiously in HD for 20 hours without any buffering or fails.  

I used to love Verizon FiOS back in 2006, but now 8 years later, it's morphed into something awful.  I honestly believe that what Verizon is doing is illegal, and I am hoping some hot shot lawyer takes the company to court over it.  

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Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
ThatBrian
Enthusiast - Level 2

Verizon has really **bleep** me off on this one. My Netflix has been getting slower and slower. All the speed tests show 75mbps for my connections, so its not my equipment.

Netflix, 350px, maybe 512 sometimes. Every once in a while it wakes up and gets to 640x480. What a pile of crap.

If they don't fix this soon, they will lose a lot of customers. Why would I pay for a fast connection if I can't use it on the actual services I care about having the high speed connection for?

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Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
justdigi
Contributor - Level 1

I'd like to thank Verizon for catching up with Amazon Prime on Monday here in Tampa.  I love my service even more now that I can't stream HD from Prime anymore.  I was really upset that I could watch Prime even when Netflix was so slow.  Traffic Shaping and pay for play are definately the way of the future!

/sarcasam.

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Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
roaddogg1
Specialist - Level 1

@justdigi wrote:

I'd like to thank Verizon for catching up with Amazon Prime on Monday here in Tampa.  I love my service even more now that I can't stream HD from Prime anymore.  I was really upset that I could watch Prime even when Netflix was so slow.  Traffic Shaping and pay for play are definately the way of the future!

/sarcasam.


I live just outside of Tampa and have 0 issues streaming amazon prime. I didnt have issues with Netflix during the free trial I used either.

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Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
db909
Contributor - Level 3

"Who will win?"

At this rate Comcast/TWC!

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Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
TennisFreak
Enthusiast - Level 3

So I am going to start a youtube campain with proof Verizon is throttling Netflix specifically.

Last night I tried a "proof of concept" test to see what would happen and it went exactly as I planned.  This week I will produce and post a full video of this to try and prove Verizon is throttling Netflix intentionally.


Here is what I did last night.  Also I performed this test twice once over my in house wi-fi and then again over my hard wired gigabit network with identical results.

1. Open netflix on xbox one and try to watch How I met your mother and then World War Z.

2. Experience approiximately 5 minutes of buffering for video to load.  Video begins to play for approximately 20 seconds then stops and buffers again.  

3. After 5 mintues of attempted buffering I give up and shut down the xbox.

4. Load Netflix on my Lumia 1520 phone connected to wifi.  Experience same issues as xbox one.

5. Open coputer internet browser and test speed on speedtest.net.  Recieve full 15 down 5 up speeds.

6. Watch youtube on my internet browser in full HD with no buffering.

7. Turn xbox one on and load youtube. 

8. Open youtube app and load video, experience about 15 secods and then commence to watch full HD stream of video.

9. Re-open Netflix on xbox one and try to play How I met your mother.

10. Experience about 3 minutes of buffering then stream loads in extremely low quality and plays.  Picture is pixelated and blocky.

11. After about 3 minutes of watching How I met your mother stream improves to what I would consider standard definition quality.

12. Disconnect my Lumia 1520 from wifi and have it running exclusively on LTE.

13. Open netflix and play exact same episode of How I met your mother simultaneously as the xbox one.

14. Experience approximately 10 seconds of buffering and stream commences to play in HD quality with no further buffering while the xbox one is barely maintaining a standard definition quality stream.

15. Re-connect my Lumia 1520 to local wifi

16. Open speedtest.net app and run test.  Confirm getting full 15 down 5 upload speeds.

17. Open netflix and try to resume How I met your mother episode. 

18. Experience almost 1 mintue of buffering before stream starts in a very low quality (almost below standard definition).

I know my test is no silver bullet pinning Verizon to the wall but I feel that it is more than adequate in showing that something is going on WITH VERIZON and not Netflix.  When you can watch Netflix perfectly on a mobile phone LTE connection but barely get it to play on a local gigabit hard wired network SOMETHING IS WRONG.

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Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
Hubrisnxs
Legend

I am sorry, I just wanted to point out that your test shows the opposite. It shows that Youtube and Google have an appropriate amount of bandwidth where netflix doesn't?

it doesn't show that verizon is doing anything to netflix's traffic.

That same test you just performed, if you removed netflix from the picture, and substituted ME instead, would prove that I might have a DSL line or a really cheapy slow FiOS connection, not that Verizon was throttling ME.

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Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
TennisFreak
Enthusiast - Level 3

Wrong I know you are trying to back Verizon here but it clearly shows that through one ISP (ATT LTE) I get full HD picture with no buffering while simultaneously through another ISP (Verizon FIOS) I get minutes of buffering, low picture quality, and a terrible experience.  Then using the same ISP (Verizon FIOS) I can instantly move to a different service and get a perfectly fine experience.


The test (while not conclusive) clearly shows Netflix over Verizon is severly comprised while at the same time through another ISP it works perfectly.  At the same time it also shows Verizon service running at the maximum advertised speed and serving other services (Youtube) perfectly.

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Re: War between Netflix and Verizon FIOS? Who will win?
Hubrisnxs
Legend

I wish that it showed that, I do. but truthfully it shows the opposite.  It shows that Netflix hasn't not choosen the appropriate amount of bandwidth across that particular CDN going to you. 

If you were able to do traceroutes for BOTH LTE and FiOS and then post those so we could compare and contrast, then that MIGHT be something, but the non empirical test that you did only supports that Netflix doesn't have the appropriate bandwidth to the provider, and evidenced by the fact that their apple tv subscribers on FiOS have no such issue, shows that they are in complete control of this situation and choose to not click their mouse buttons a few more times to route you across a simliarly less congested link like their Apple TV subscribers.

That personally would enfuriate me, and I would call them if that were my problem, but that's me.

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