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Netflix Releases ISP Streaming Rankings for August

Netflix has released the company's monthly ISP streaming performance rankings for August. According to the full breakdown, Verizon FiOS remains in the top spot among all large ISPs at an average rate of 3.62 Mbps, while Grande Communicatiosn takes top honors at 3.71 Mbps when you expand the list to include smaller ISPs like Google Fiber. All told, little has changed from the previous month's rankings here in the States, but the Netflix blog details some of the jockeying going on in ISP rankings around the world.

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Netflix notes the only real change here in the States was a slight gain in CenturyLink's historically poor last place showing.

"In the U.S., CenturyLink saw the biggest speed gains, rising to 1.88 Mbps in August from an average monthly speed of 1.69 Mbps in July, but remains in last place," notes Netflix.

Note that by and large end consumers won't notice much of an actual difference between the top five broadband providers on the list, where a fraction of a megabit per second can separate companies. Performance can also vary depending on whether an ISP has joined Netflix's Open Connect Content Delivery Network, or if they've struck a direct interconnection deal with Netflix.

And obviously customer experience can also be impacted by usage caps, which aren't factored in to the ratings, even though Netflix this week criticized the practice in a filing with the FCC.

Full Netflix streaming rankings for each country can be found here.
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Anoneea96
@ofsoptics.com

1 recommendation

Anoneea96

Anon

Netflix's Fast speedtest shows 100 mbps on Comcast

Netflix's Fast speedtest shows me getting 100 mbps on Comcast from Netflix servers. The speeds in chart are based more on what is being streamed and depends more on whether show is SD or HD than on what is possible. Maybe Netflix should start posting the results from the runs people do using their FAST speedtest.
atigerman
join:2002-01-19
Tigerton, WI

atigerman

Member

Say what?

So let me get this straight, with a Verizon FiOS connection you can only do 3.62 download speed for video!

Shouldn't that be more like a 20 meg download speed for video?
Rain
join:2008-12-12
USA

1 recommendation

Rain

Member

Re: Say what?

No, that's why these results are silly marketing hype and are pretty much meaningless.

The average bitrate of media consumed from Netflix by Verizon FiOS customers is 3.62Mbps. If you have the 500/500 FiOS tier, but only watch 720p videos, Netflix only sees you using 2Mbps*, not 500Mbps.

* Or w/e the average bitrate for content on Netflix is in 720p

aaronwt
Premium Member
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
Asus RT-AX89

1 recommendation

aaronwt

Premium Member

Re: Say what?

said by Rain:

No, that's why these results are silly marketing hype and are pretty much meaningless.

The average bitrate of media consumed from Netflix by Verizon FiOS customers is 3.62Mbps. If you have the 500/500 FiOS tier, but only watch 720p videos, Netflix only sees you using 2Mbps*, not 500Mbps.

* Or w/e the average bitrate for content on Netflix is in 720p

Why would netflix post about what the max bitrate a consumer can get? From their perspective it makes no difference. They are posting what really matters to them. The average bitrate of streaming. Of course the more people that watch UHD streams, the higher the average bitrate will be.
Rain
join:2008-12-12
USA

2 edits

1 recommendation

Rain

Member

Re: Say what?

But, maybe more people with FiOS watch UHD than people on Suddenlink. Should Suddenlink (#10 on the list, currently) be ranked lower than FiOS simply because more of their users have the old 720p Apple TV instead when that is completely out of Suddenlink's control? Netflix doesn't publish this (AFAIK, not on a ISP-basis), so the numbers as shown tell us nothing as there are way too many factors influencing them (devices being used to stream, crappy WiFi, chosen resolution, (peering links, congestion)).

Netflix doesn't do a good enough job explaining these figures to anyone, resulting is a lot of confusion and a lot of finger pointing.
said by aaronwt:

Why would netflix post about what the max bitrate a consumer can get? From their perspective it makes no difference.

Nowhere did I say they should post that. They should simply be much clearer on what the numbers they spew actually mean (or rather, don't mean).

Anon413ec
@rr.com

Anon413ec to Rain

Anon

to Rain
Don't forget that is if Netflix isn't busy throttling a connection like they were caught doing ready and lied about.

Anonc48e8
@charter.com

Anonc48e8 to atigerman

Anon

to atigerman
said by atigerman:

So let me get this straight, with a Verizon FiOS connection you can only do 3.62 download speed for video!

Shouldn't that be more like a 20 meg download speed for video?

You don't get how streaming works do you?

»techblog.netflix.com/201 ··· ion.html

Napsterbater
Meh
MVM
join:2002-12-28
Milledgeville, GA
(Software) OPNsense
Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-AC-PRO

1 recommendation

Napsterbater

MVM

Don't forget about the little guys.

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tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

tshirt

Premium Member

Not much of interset in the charts...

....but the world map view shows a pretty clear line were Netflix extends to, and even more interesting is Ukraine, Syria, and China are grayed out and don't even get popup names even though some tiny flyspeck sized ones do.
Does Netflix know or expect those fairly large countries to change names or cease to exist soon?
or expects never to serve, or maybe to be on the next map version?
tshirt

1 edit

tshirt

Premium Member

Re: Not much of interest in the charts...

also, what happened to the "rank change" position numbers? (which means little at the top) but could show a company making a serious effort (or totally giving up) to improve QoS for streamers.

Maybe the summer Mapping intern relized he wasn't getting a paid position after all, and took a vacation.

Anona66da
@charter.com

Anona66da

Anon

Pointless

Not only not much of a difference in the top 10 but speed are more of a function on the devices it's on and/or user settings than ISP speed.

DocDrew
How can I help?
Premium Member
join:2009-01-28
SoCal
Ubee E31U2V1
Technicolor TC4400
Linksys EA6900

1 recommendation

DocDrew

Premium Member

Overall graph shows Netflix causes more change then ISPs

Click for full size
The overall graph of multiple ISPs seems to indicate Netflix has a bigger influence on average bitrate then the individual ISPs usually do.
biggah
join:2014-09-09

1 edit

biggah

Member

countries streaming ranking

Could someone post the streaming rankings for each country ?