 EGThe wings of lovePremium
join:2006-11-18
Union, NJ
kudos:9 | reply to MM in Denver
Re: Comcast throttling Netflix's Instant Watch? Answer: No said by MM in Denver :
I was also suspecting that Comcast throttled Netflix, because Netflix would say something like 45 minutes to start a movie,
Even If CC was "throttling" Netflix, how would Netflix even know that CC would decide to open up the pipe in 45 minutes ? |
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| said by EG:said by MM in Denver :
I was also suspecting that Comcast throttled Netflix, because Netflix would say something like 45 minutes to start a movie,
Even If CC was "throttling" Netflix, how would Netflix even know that CC would decide to open up the pipe in 45 minutes ? Netflix wouldn't know that. Netflix is just calculating how long to wait to start the movie based on current conditions.
Here's a corny analogy. Suppose Sue wants to drink 12-ounces of water from a glass through a straw (and at a constant rate), while Bob is pouring the water into the glass. If Sue drinks slower than Bob pours, then she can start drinking almost as soon as he starts pouring, and will be able to drink the full amount without stopping. If Sue drinks faster than Bob pours, then she will need to wait until Bob has filled the glass to a certain level before starting to drink, otherwise she'll run out of water to drink while Bob is still pouring.
In this case, the Netflix server (due to lack of bandwidth from Comcast) can't "pour" the data down as fast as the Netflix player needs to "drink" it in order to watch the video from start to finish at a constant rate without interruption. So the Netflix player calculates how long it's necessary wait before starting to "drink".
Somewhere on Netflix site it says that "high" quality is 1.5 megabits/sec. So if it's calculating that it will take 45 minutes (for example) before the player can start "drinking", then the rate of "pouring" must be significantly lower than 1.5 Mb/sec. Thus, when speedtest was reporting 4.5 Mb/sec to other locations, I assumed that Comcast was somehow slowing down my Netflix connection.
Now here's an update. I was on with Netflix tech support last night, and the rep had me try to start a movie (so she could see which server I connected to), and then had me do a tracert to that server. Turns out the server I was connecting to was somewhere in Dallas, but Comcast was routing from Denver to Los Angeles, then to Phoenix, and then finally to Dallas. Why would Comcast choose this route when there's plenty of direct bandwidth between Denver and Dallas? Most likely it's because they have a peering agreement that makes that route more economical for them. So while they might not be specifically throttling Netflix connections, they very well could be routing them through their own more congested network rather than jumping off to other less congested peers. |
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EGThe wings of lovePremium
join:2006-11-18
Union, NJ
kudos:9
3 edits | I don't believe that the Netflix servers/system can determine how much traffic is being routed through/to a single ISP's subscribers.. |
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| said by EG:I don't believe that the Netflix servers/system can determine how much traffic is being routed through/to a single ISP's subscribers.. Netflix servers can't, but the Netflix player can. It's the player on my computer that calculates the start delay, not the server. The player can open up the connection, start downloading, and calculate how fast it's able to download. It then uses that value, the movie bitrate, and the length of the movie to calculate the appropriate start delay.
I forgot to mention that the Netflix rep taught me that if you Shift+Right-Click on the Netflix player, a menu pops up that includes some statistics. Maybe everyone else already knew that or it's buried somewhere on the Netflix website, but it was news to me! |
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EGThe wings of lovePremium
join:2006-11-18
Union, NJ
kudos:9 | said by MM in Denver :
Netflix servers can't, but the Netflix player can. It's the player on my computer that calculates the start delay, not the server. The player can open up the connection, start downloading, and calculate how fast it's able to download. It then uses that value, the movie bitrate, and the length of the movie to calculate the appropriate start delay.
Well now that's a horse of another color !  |
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 EpikosSurpass The Usual Or OrdinaryPremium
join:2003-07-27
Portland, OR | reply to MM in Denver
It's not on the Netflix website. It's just something we use when we need to debug the player. No real secret.
You can also view or change your bitrate in the NF player.
Single left click in the black area outside the movie. It won't do anything other than change focus to outside the player and onto the webpage.
Once you have clicked, hold shift and press B.
You'll get a bitrate dropdown menu. Each bitrate is its own downloadable file, so sometimes there's an audio issue or other misc problem with a bitrate and you can change to one that is unaffected.
This would also help you play a movie that would otherwise rebuffer on the higher stream.
Personally, I don't see much of a difference between the 1600 and 2200 kbps streams, so maybe playing at 1600 would work for you and still look acceptable.
Hope this helps.
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I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person! |
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| reply to inferno
I also thought CC was throttling Netflix. I'm in Reston and have always experienced slow Netfli loading speeds, especially on Friday & Saturday nights. |
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| reply to inferno
Hello, I am having the exact same problem as inferno and I am located in Tallahassee, FL. I usually get around 130kbps when connecting to Netflix Watch Instantly even though I have a 6Mb connection. I tried doing a tracert to the IP 68.142.118.4 and get this:
Tracing route to cdn-68-142-118-4.atl1.llnw.net [68.142.118.4]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 General failure.
Trace complete.
I downloaded PingPlotter and it doesn't work either. It just says error sending packet. Other sites work fine. |
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 espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2
 ·Clear Wireless
| said by shawnmos :
Tracing route to cdn-68-142-118-4.atl1.llnw.net [68.142.118.4]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 General failure. Do you have an application firewall installed on that computer? Try disabling it and running that traceroute again. |
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1 edit | reply to inferno
I get a pretty awesome traceroute to that server....
traceroute to cdn-68-142-118-4.atl1.llnw.net (68.142.118.4), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.100 (192.168.1.100) 1.611 ms 1.456 ms 1.802 ms
2 edgerouter.faherty.sytes.net (192.168.1.102) 1.864 ms 2.203 ms 1.528 ms
3 c-3-0-ubr03.quincy.ma.boston.comcast.net (73.173.172.1) 6.977 ms 12.866 ms 7.515 ms
4 ge-1-39-ur01.quincy.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.154.81) 7.978 ms 8.083 ms 8.110 ms
5 te-9-1-ur02.quincy.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.145.26) 8.379 ms 12.285 ms 7.434 ms
6 te-9-2-ur01.weymouth.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.145.30) 8.236 ms 11.918 ms 7.630 ms
7 te-9-1-ur02.weymouth.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.145.58) 156.224 ms 57.459 ms 59.930 ms
8 te-8-1-ur01.scituate.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.145.45) 11.501 ms 14.594 ms 8.499 ms
9 te-9-4-ur02.brockton.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.144.45) 7.730 ms 8.614 ms 9.919 ms
10 po-20-ur01.brockton.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.144.33) 7.776 ms 11.322 ms 8.527 ms
11 po-22-ar02.needham.ma.boston.comcast.net (68.87.144.29) 9.544 ms 10.606 ms 9.288 ms
12 te-3-1-ar01.chartford.ct.hartford.comcast.net (68.86.90.58) 13.876 ms 14.881 ms 14.511 ms
13 pos-0-3-0-0-cr01.chicago.il.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.90.57) 17.108 ms 17.208 ms 17.182 ms
14 64.209.106.33 (64.209.106.33) 16.164 ms 16.680 ms 15.108 ms
15 ge2-6.fr1.lga.llnw.net (64.208.222.150) 16.493 ms 16.937 ms 18.049 ms
16 tge2-3.fr4.iad.llnw.net (69.28.171.153) 23.548 ms 35.221 ms 24.440 ms
17 tge1-2.fr4.atl1.llnw.net (69.28.172.33) 46.775 ms 37.888 ms 40.731 ms
18 ve5.fr3.atl1.llnw.net (68.142.119.193) 48.552 ms 42.265 ms 48.291 ms
19 cdn-68-142-118-4.atl1.llnw.net (68.142.118.4) 37.747 ms 38.053 ms 37.956
EDIT: I'm using Mac OS X, so there's no problem with IE8 here.... |
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| reply to inferno
For what it's worth, I'm having the same problems with Netflix. Someone on here called for users in the south, I'm in Springfield, Louisiana (near Baton Rouge) and can't seem to buffer anything over 1.5mbps, and that's on a good day. I'm currently streaming episodes of The Office at 0.72mbps, which is absolutely ridiculous. I'm a Charter Communications subscriber, with a 10 meg cable connection. Netflix and speedtest.net tests to Houston are the only slow apps on my connection, everything else works fine (Gametrailers HD, youtube, etc.). I'm going to attach a ping plotter image here in a sec... |
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| Here's my ping plotter. Good connection, so I don't understand why I buffer so slowly only on Netflix. |
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| said by Nathan97:Here's my ping plotter. Good connection, so I don't understand why I buffer so slowly only on Netflix. Yep, the pingplotter for me has gone down dramatically BUT the buffering takes hours... Seems that this will continue to happen until more customers complain about it... |
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 jlivingoodPremium,VIP
join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA
kudos:1 | reply to inferno
May be of interest to this thread.
»news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-101144···23_3-0-5
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JL
Comcast |
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 sortofageekNot TroublePremium,Mod
join:2001-08-19
There & Then
kudos:13
Comcast HSI
Comcast Cable TV
Team Helix
Distributed Comput..
Linksys
| Thank you, Jason. This has been a real puzzle to me when people were claiming Comcast throttling. Oddly, I had no problems before or after this fix and I use NetFlix Instant Watch regularly.
--
Join Team Helix * I am praying for these friends . |
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@charter.com | reply to inferno
same problem here. S. oregon, charter, everything but netflix works, tried to watch the office, 20m to 5h wait. anyone have a solution yet? |
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| reply to sortofageek
I'm still sometimes getting one bar, then 5-10 seconds later will get 4 bars and "HD" quality on my xbox netflix viewer. I have verified numerous times that I am able to consistently download at the 16 Mbps tier I'm on. I think it's a bug in the netflix software or a connection problem on their end..... |
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| reply to inferno
FWIW
68.142.122.74 (cds134.dal.llnw.net)
1 73.151.228.1 (73.151.228.1) 5.860 ms 7.390 ms 6.794 ms 5.128 ms
2 ge-6-1-ur01.quarryville.pa.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.214.105) 7.005 ms 7.280 ms 7.613 ms 5.553 ms
3 te-2-2-ar01.coatesville.pa.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.208.249) 10.573 ms 12.575 ms 12.075 ms 12.028 ms
4 68.86.153.141 (68.86.153.141) 7.819 ms 7.818 ms 9.810 ms 8.975 ms
5 po-90-ur01.medford.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.210.209) 10.564 ms 8.405 ms 9.687 ms 11.425 ms
6 pos-0-5-0-0-cr01.philadelphia.pa.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.90.13) 11.020 ms 9.532 ms 9.784 ms 10.388 ms
7 pos-0-8-0-0-cr01.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.10) 15.458 ms 16.692 ms 17.897 ms 13.764 ms
8 tengigabitethernet1-4.ar5.NYC1.gblx.net (64.208.222.57) 14.027 ms 17.518 ms 13.819 ms 14.036 ms
9 te3-1-10G.ar6.NYC1.gblx.net (67.16.131.110) 14.266 ms 15.794 ms 15.249 ms 19.958 ms
10 LIMELIGHT-NETWORKS.TenGigabitEthernet1-3.ar6.NYC1.gblx.net (208.48.250.250) 21.358 ms 24.945 ms 25.156 ms 24.858 ms
11 ve2002.fr3.lga.llnw.net (69.28.171.201) 24.220 ms 24.936 ms 25.526 ms 24.161 ms
12 tge1-2.fr4.ord.llnw.net (69.28.171.193) 58.102 ms 49.623 ms 48.366 ms 47.700 ms
13 ve6.fr3.ord.llnw.net (69.28.172.41) 46.513 ms 46.518 ms 49.800 ms 50.009 ms
14 tge2-1.fr3.dal.llnw.net (69.28.171.197) 55.161 ms 55.516 ms 55.629 ms 62.979 ms
15 cds134.dal.llnw.net (68.142.122.74) 55.212 ms 55.437 ms 56.031 ms 55.639 ms
68.142.118.4 (cdn-68-142-118-4.atl1.llnw.net)
1 73.151.228.1 (73.151.228.1) 8.577 ms 5.140 ms 5.830 ms 5.974 ms
2 ge-6-1-ur01.quarryville.pa.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.214.105) 5.954 ms 5.338 ms 6.148 ms 8.586 ms
3 te-2-2-ar01.coatesville.pa.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.208.249) 7.947 ms 7.362 ms 7.613 ms 8.401 ms
4 68.86.153.149 (68.86.153.149) 9.561 ms 7.994 ms 8.045 ms 8.093 ms
5 po-90-ur01.medford.nj.panjde.comcast.net (68.86.210.209) 9.022 ms 9.524 ms 37.449 ms 10.246 ms
6 pos-0-2-0-0-cr01.philadelphia.pa.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.90.9) 10.195 ms 9.749 ms 20.859 ms 8.935 ms
7 pos-0-8-0-0-cr01.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.10) 15.099 ms 15.957 ms 15.421 ms 13.400 ms
8 tengigabitethernet2-3.ar5.NYC1.gblx.net (64.211.60.129) 23.920 ms 14.961 ms 13.455 ms 14.005 ms
9 te3-1-10G.ar6.NYC1.gblx.net (67.16.131.110) 15.433 ms 14.131 ms 14.132 ms 16.864 ms
10 LIMELIGHT-NETWORKS.TenGigabitEthernet1-3.ar6.NYC1.gblx.net (208.48.250.250) 15.129 ms 19.135 ms 21.569 ms 24.625 ms
11 tge2-3.fr4.iad.llnw.net (69.28.171.153) 28.325 ms 23.943 ms 24.832 ms 25.077 ms
12 tge1-2.fr4.atl1.llnw.net (69.28.172.33) 31.256 ms 30.401 ms 32.104 ms 37.957 ms
13 ve5.fr3.atl1.llnw.net (68.142.119.193) 30.569 ms 31.174 ms 33.316 ms 29.964 ms
14 cdn-68-142-118-4.atl1.llnw.net (68.142.118.4) 30.250 ms 30.923 ms 30.234 ms 29.975 ms
SE PA, TCP port 80 traceroute, not too shabby. |
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| reply to inferno
Forgot to mention I have multiple people doing Netflix instant watch on my 6MB cable modem, behind a transparent proxying Smoothwall, wired and wireless, appropriate ports opened outbound. No one here has any problems. For what it's worth. Your mileage may vary, etc.  |
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or
@charter.com | reply to inferno
Re: Comcast throttling Netflix's Instant Watch? Answer: No Still the same prob here today. I am wireless, thru charter, 100mbs modem, never had a problem before today, which happened to be the day that I finally set up my 32" LCD as an extened desktop to my laptop. Kinda frusterating. As said in previous posts, youtube, hd trailers, etc all work fine. Netflix says 2-5 min initially and then it starts, 30secs in or so the screen comes back and says anything from 30m-4hrs wait time. Kinda sucks. Are we sure it is netflix, and if so do they have any type of solution yet? Sorry I am a noob, so I don't really have any more info for ya, just questions. |
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