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Comment by tinbad | Hacker News Reader

I have Comcast home internet in the bay area (Speedtest is around 30mbit down/8 mbit up) and every time I try to watch anything on Netflix it buffers for a minute and the resolution usually stays unacceptably low (320p?!) while usually having to buffer again every 2-5 minutes, sometimes for the whole run time of the show. Meanwhile, Comcast's own XFINITY streaming service delivers instantly (no buffering) at full HD resolution.

I actually never understood what the whole net neutrality discussion is about, as it's very obvious that we're already getting screwed over by ISPs.

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Contrariwise, I have Sonic's "Fusion" bonded ADSL in SF. My modem and Speedtest.net report around 12/2 Mbits down/up, and both Netflix and Amazon Prime consistently stream flawless HD for me.

poking around, it seems Sonic is part of Open Connect. I would expect that to explain a lot.

For Netflix yes, but I doubt that explains Amazon Prime.

I've had the exact same experience in Houston with Comcast + Netflix at slightly faster speeds. Eventually I dropped Netflix because it was unusable everywhere except my phone. Oddly I don't have the same issues with Amazon Prime, YouTube, or MLB/MiLB streaming. Given that Prime is also a direct competitor to Comcast streaming I'm not entirely convinced this experience with Netflix is the result of some deliberate plot on the part of Comcast versus some other bizarre issue.

That isn't to say I disagree with network neutrality - I think it's vital. I'm just not going to attribute to malice what is quite possibly the result of incompetence.

You'd be wrong. About 2 years ago, Netflix switched to using Level3 as their primary ISP. The peering between Comcast and Level3 became saturated, and Comcast declined to increase bandwidth at the peering point without being paid, and also declined to install netflix's CDN boxes somewhere on their network without being paid. The question of "who pays who" is kinda complicated between ISPs, payments are rather high, and comcast managed to reverse it's position/relationships in that space, because they have a monopoly on the users in their territory. They also hate competition from netflix more than from the others you mention, it's a more complete replacement for their video offerings.

They also hate competition from netflix more than from the others you mention, it's a more complete replacement for their video offerings.

So they've never actually browsed Netflix's offering then, huh? Because it's hardly stellar or offers much in the way big-ticket items that compete with anything Comcast shows in their on-demand or via cable channels.

This list of things telco monopolies see as competition is nicely summarized by the blue part of this picture :

http://toddbell.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Earthrise.jpg

And they're getting really suspicious about the grey parts in the bottom too. Better safe than sorry, right ?

I live in San Francisco and I have exactly the same issue, it started happening more recently. Speedtest is 35mbit down/10mbit up

I wonder if some form of traffic obfuscation would help in your endeavor? For instance, setup OpenVPN on a VPS or something, and tunnel to connect to Netflix. It would be a shame if you end up with better quality.

I've had streaming issues with both Netflix and Youtube while using Verizon FiOS in the past. I then connected to my University's VPN and instantly enjoyed smooth-as-butter streaming on both sites.

There's a good chance you'll have the same experience with a VPS, depending on what networks the VPS's traffic routes through.

The problem is that traffic from you to Netflix travels through several networks, and at each link between networks it will face varying amounts of congestion depending on the size of that link. There is a link somewhere between $BAD_ISP and Netflix that, due to political/business reasons[0], hasn't been upgraded to accommodate more traffic.

By connecting through a VPN, you may be able to circumvent this as long as the route from you-->VPN-->netflix doesn't travel across the problematic peering point.

[0] Screwing you over; Promoting the ISP's own competing services (TV, for example); Attempting to extract payment from Netflix since its "their traffic"[1], despite the fact that you are already paying them for this connection.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=comcast+level3

Doesn't even need to be as complicated as OpenVPN. SSH has an option to expose a tunnel as a SOCKS proxy.

In the bay area, do look at sonic.net; there are real limitations to their last mile connectivity (ADSL line shared including in Remote Terminals, or ADSL2 from Central Offices, and a couple small Fiber installs), but they have very good connectivity once you get in.

I could rant about network neutrality... Comcast may not be (and probably isn't) doing anything to degrade Netflix's ability to stream to you; but they're probably also not making as many upgrades to peering or transit capacity as they could for that traffic.

I had similar issues with Verizon, others have reported similar issues with Time Warner and YouTube, but had some success by blocking one of the IPs in midroute: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/196170/how_to_st...

It's hard to tell how often this is getting messed up by content delivery partners in the middle, versus intentional traffic shaping, but it sucks either way.

I have Verizon Fios. When I go to watch a Youtube video on my Android, I often notice the video won't load. I then turn WiFi off, and the video streams flawlessly over 4G. I don't know when Net Neutrality died, but it did.

I'm in exactly the same boat. I'm >14000 wire feet from the xo, so dsl barely works, either. Net neutrality is needed as long as consumers don't have real, competitive choices.

VPN?

I have a similar issue using Brighthouse in Florida. For the longest time I was able to stream HD quality from netflix through my roku, until recently. I always suspect that my ISP is somehow the cause, the only problem is I can't imagine how I would prove it, or what I could do even if I could prove it.

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