Is there some net neutrality funny business going on?

[David Weaver]

I've noticed over the last few days, since the net neutrality business came back up in the news and comcast says they need "fast lanes" for certain sites (it really amounts to that comcast is greedy and they want to have another revenue stream - I say that as I am a comcast internet customer).

So I have whatever internet is like 50 megabits or some ridiculous number, at least on the download, and in the last week all of the sudden, I have some trouble with youtube. The videos are somewhat interrupted now and again, something that has never happened when watching youtube.

I get the sense that comcast might be screwing around with access to popular sites to make people think that they need to have agreements to get access to certain popular sites (like netfix streaming, prime video, youtube, ...).

[Lee Schierer]

My son noticed that at certain times of the day, like when the kids get home from school until dinner and right after dinner time his cable speeds slow down. The same is true on weekends.

[Frederick Skelly]

My son noticed that at certain times of the day, like when the kids get home from school until dinner and right after dinner time his cable speeds slow down. The same is true on weekends.

I dont doubt for a moment that telecom companies would rig the game to drive us to pay more. Especially if the law is unclear on the matter - big business can take the view of "better to beg forgiveness than ask permission". But in this particular case, I wonder if its possible that the slowdown is real - demand spikes during those times.

(Of course, if I were going to rig the game Id use the same signature.)

[Myk Rian]

We had to buy a new DOCSIS 3 modem for Comcast Inet. Supposed to be faster. Who knows.

[David Weaver]

Many years ago, we'd have some pipeline issues, but comcast has had that solved here for YEARS, and it's not like netflix streaming got popular last week.

I noticed with youtube that the video struggles for about a minute or two and if I let it go, then all of the sudden the gray status bar shows the entire length of the video being downloaded very quickly. I don't think it's by coincident, because if I watch videos somewhere else, I don't have a problem.

I had the latest round of trouble this morning at 9 am, not a time when there is tons of web traffic in terms of streaming large data amounts. That doesn't really happen. Youtube will show you the time of day people in your area stream by volume, and it's generally late in the evening.

I wouldn't put it past comcast to spend a bunch of money figuring out how to make it look like there's a problem on popular sites, then spend a bunch to lobby for legislation guaranteeing them the right to charge both us and other websites so they can make money on two ends at one time. If they actually created the internet, I could see something like that being OK. But, they didn't.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Is it just YouTube, or does it seem to effect other large file serving?

You could try a different DNS server, like Google's 8.8.8.8, rather than your ISPs, or try a VPN to see if that makes a change, to give you an idea if there's something funny going on.

It doesn't have to be malfeasance, either, it could just be a temporary problem between the ISP and the CDN.

Some info about VPN/DNS changes from when there was funny business around Netflix earlier this year:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/netflix-slow-on-verizon-or-comcast-a-vpn-might-speed-up-that-video/

[Phil Thien]

Whenever it starts to get cold the cable Internet connections I monitor (dozens of them) start to deteriorate. I suspect it has to do with the conductors shrinking and making a poor connection. Once it is cold and stays cold, and the cable company has had a chance to find and reseat poor connections, things tend to improve.

This has not been a problem w/ twisted pair or fiber circuits, only coax. The coax really becomes a problem due to the topology of those networks, where one segment of coax that is dodgy can effect performance over a wide geographical area.

[Rich Engelhardt]

It might also be - - your browser.

I was using IE 10.

U-Verse has me on a 20Mb connection.
A whole lot of pages and sites began to hang up on me about three weeks ago.
Then I started to get all sorts of "long running script" messages.

I updated IE to V11 and things got worse.

Since I no longer support IE at work, I'm free to use whatever.
I switched over to Chrome and things improved a lot.

[David Weaver]

I'm using chrome.

I figured I'd check on here to see if anyone else was having issues. If it's only me on youtube, then it's probably a local issue.

[Rich Enders]

What about monitoring your download speeds with something like Speedtest.net? Wouldn't that tell you what is going on?

[Jim Matthews]

I'm getting LOTS of IRQL_Zero_sum_errors with Chrome, lately.

The suspicion I have is that the Codec for video is constantly being tweaked
to cram more data into ever smaller packets.

My processor isn't new, and it's struggling to keep up.

I don't have the same failures running JRiver - only video intensive processes seem to provoke this.

[Curt Harms]

I've noticed over the last few days, since the net neutrality business came back up in the news and comcast says they need "fast lanes" for certain sites (it really amounts to that comcast is greedy and they want to have another revenue stream - I say that as I am a comcast internet customer).

So I have whatever internet is like 50 megabits or some ridiculous number, at least on the download, and in the last week all of the sudden, I have some trouble with youtube. The videos are somewhat interrupted now and again, something that has never happened when watching youtube.

I get the sense that comcast might be screwing around with access to popular sites to make people think that they need to have agreements to get access to certain popular sites (like netfix streaming, prime video, youtube, ...).

It could also be Google (who owns YouTube). I'd read someplace - don't remember where - that Google may limit the bandwidth available to Youtube users. Laying the groundwork for a 'premium'/paid-for Youtube service without bandwidth limitations? In a way I wouldn't blame YouTube/Google. A person of 'leisure' could suck up quite a bit of bandwidth watching videos for several hours per day for free. When I want to check for 'net slowdown, I have a few University hosted linux mirrors bookmarked. They're .ISOs of 600+ MB. size and at least a couple mirrors can saturate my broadband connection (25 Mb.) If I see 3 MB./24Mb./sec I know it's not an ISP slowdown.

[glenn bradley]

Cox blatantly traffic shapes and denies it. You can run "speed tests" all day that show great numbers but, run some specific protocol sockets and the truth shows up. Despite best intentions from many providers there are large players who are not in the communications business, they are in the making money business and are moving to maximize their success. Another example of not making a product, simply making money . . . did I say that out loud? Sorry ;-)

[Phil Thien]

Cox blatantly traffic shapes and denies it. You can run "speed tests" all day that show great numbers but, run some specific protocol sockets and the truth shows up. Despite best intentions from many providers there are large players who are not in the communications business, they are in the making money business and are moving to maximize their success. Another example of not making a product, simply making money . . . did I say that out loud? Sorry ;-)

I don't think anyone denies employing traffic shaping. Traffic shaping is employed to prevent congestion.

What Cox and other others do, though, is oversell bandwidth. They will sell 100 10-mbps connections and serve them all with a single 100-mbps pipe (I'm exaggerating). Some are worse than others, but they all oversell.

[John Sanford]

I don't think anyone denies employing traffic shaping. Traffic shaping is employed to prevent congestion.

What Cox and other others do, though, is oversell bandwidth. They will sell 100 10-mbps connections and serve them all with a single 100-mbps pipe (I'm exaggerating). Some are worse than others, but they all oversell.
That's what every business that sells a variable demand mass product does. Until they run into full utilization of their product, everything is hunky dory. Telephone/cell phone companies do it, water companies do it, electric companies do it, landscape and pool service companies do it. When they hit the wall, they have to shed customers, throttle customers down, improve efficiency and/or add capacity, or most likely some combination of the above.

[Jason Roehl]

That's what every business that sells a variable demand mass product does. Until they run into full utilization of their product, everything is hunky dory. Telephone/cell phone companies do it, water companies do it, electric companies do it, landscape and pool service companies do it. When they hit the wall, they have to shed customers, throttle customers down, improve efficiency and/or add capacity, or most likely some combination of the above.

cough, cough, BANKS, cough...

[Brian Elfert]

The entire Internet, business and home, is oversold. There is no way the Internet could sustain the traffic if the millions of Internet connections were one day to all be used to 100% of rated capacity at the same time. The issue is how close to the end user is the bandwidth oversold? If you live in a neighborhood and there are 20 homes on a 100 megabit connection you're more likely to see an issue than if your cable company doesn't have a big enough pipe to the Internet to support the tens of thousands of users they have. The likelihood of tens of thousands of users all using a large portion of their bandwidth at the same time is far less.

[Curt Harms]

Cox blatantly traffic shapes and denies it. You can run "speed tests" all day that show great numbers but, run some specific protocol sockets and the truth shows up. Despite best intentions from many providers there are large players who are not in the communications business, they are in the making money business and are moving to maximize their success. Another example of not making a product, simply making money . . . did I say that out loud? Sorry ;-)

I suspect Verizon FiOS throttles certain connection types. I'd noticed when running torrents (legal content only) the uploads were pretty slow regardless of the time of day. Verizon started advertising that uploads are now the same speed as downloads. Torrents now seem to be faster, like 10X faster. Coincidence? Maybe.

[Mark Bolton]

Here was an interesting listen I caught recently. Not necessarily about net neutrality but very pertinent...

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/sciencefriday/scifri201411071.mp3

[David Weaver]

I suspect Verizon FiOS throttles certain connection types. I'd noticed when running torrents (legal content only) the uploads were pretty slow regardless of the time of day. Verizon started advertising that uploads are now the same speed as downloads. Torrents now seem to be faster, like 10X faster. Coincidence? Maybe.

That parity issue is a competitive thing with comcast. Comcast will give you 50 megabits of potential downstream speed, and give you something like 1 or 2 megabits of upstream to go with it. People who like to trade media or upload large videos to youtube will find out quickly that even with a 15 minute video, comcast's upload is eye-bleedingly slow. Whatever limits them over coax doesn't seem to be the same issue for DSL or fiber or whatever you call those connection types.

[Jason Roehl]

That parity issue is a competitive thing with comcast. Comcast will give you 50 megabits of potential downstream speed, and give you something like 1 or 2 megabits of upstream to go with it. People who like to trade media or upload large videos to youtube will find out quickly that even with a 15 minute video, comcast's upload is eye-bleedingly slow. Whatever limits them over coax doesn't seem to be the same issue for DSL or fiber or whatever you call those connection types.

I don't know what my "contract" speed with Comcast is, but my tested speed just this morning (speedtest.net, on my iPhone) was 33 Mbps down (I've been getting 33-39 regularly) and 12 Mbps up. The download speed is up about 4 Mbps from just a few months ago (I never saw more than 29 Mbps previously), and the upload speed has gone up from a max of about 5.7 Mbps. This with no price increase or action on my part. Our church has the business class service, and the upload speed is much closer to the download speed, though both are lower, I suspect because of location (only 3 or so customers down that leg of cable), and because there is probably less disparity between available bandwidth and sold bandwidth on that node.

Jason