What’s Going on with Netflix Streaming Performance?
I noticed about 3 weeks ago my streaming video performance from Netflix has become unbearably slow. I’m on a 7 mbps Qwest DSL line in Tucson, AZ and my previous experience with Netflix “Watch Instantly” service had generally been excellent, almost never showing the buffering screen for a movie on either my PC or Xbox 360 and playing at the highest quality.
On the Xbox 360 for the last few weeks I can get playback to start quickly but everything I’ve tried to watch will stop 10 seconds into the playback and “adjust the quality” for about 5 mins, before resuming playback in the absolutely lowest quality setting — the quality approximately looks like a 320×200 resolution image is being upscaled on my 65″ TV — it’s so muddy every scene almost looks like it’s shot with a fuzzy “Dream” filter or something.
The odd part is that if I stop the playback on the Xbox 360, go to my computer and try and play the same media, I get presented with a “Your connection is not fast enough to start playback immediately…” notice and usually a wait time of 1hr or more. The overall slow down combined with the huge discrepency between the two experiences (Netflix-enabled device and my PC) made me decide to start Googling and see if I could figure out what was going on — I smelled shenanigans…
Detecting if Netflix is Throttling Streaming Video
I immediately ran into this post from another person who has a Qwest DSL line and piss-poor performance from Netflix and their streaming service. The original poster mentions:
I have been on the phone with netflix tech support only to be told they are aware there is a problem and their engineering department in California is looking into it. The problem is some people like myself who have high speed dsl (avg 1.5 mbs) find out their download speed from netflix is about 60% slower for some reason.
This post was from February 12, a month ago; so whatever the Netflix “engineers” have been doing, isn’t working. One of the most interesting bits of information is the tip the poster gives on accessing the secret diagnostic menu on the Netflix streaming player by holding the SHIFT key and Right-clicking to bring it up.
From there you can select:
- Status window
- Media info MessageBox
- Show log info
Bringing up the Status window I noticed my download performance was a far cry from my 7 mbps speed, but rather a measly 0.48 mbps, about 1/14th the speed of my line:
I decided to pop open the “Show log file” screen to see if I could get more information about where my video stream was coming from to help determine if it was my connection (and my fault) or Netflix’s problem.
After opening the log file, 26 lines down I found the line:
CAxPlayerCtrl::SetMediaURL: “http://netflix-699.vo.llnwd.net/s/d3/699/393441699.wmv?e=1237204120&h=b493e799e62ec39856e36a667a1eb2d0“
So I did a tracert from my PC to the base llnwd.net URL to see what came up, here’s what I got:
Tracing route to netflix-699.vo.llnwd.net [68.142.79.69] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms home [192.168.1.1] 2 36 ms 34 ms 33 ms tcsn-dsl-gw13-205.tcsn.qwest.net [SNIP] 3 35 ms 33 ms 35 ms tcsn-agw1.inet.qwest.net [SNIP] 4 33 ms 35 ms 33 ms tcs-core-01.inet.qwest.net [SNIP] 5 * 47 ms 47 ms lap-brdr-03.inet.qwest.net [67.14.22.74] 6 45 ms 47 ms 45 ms 63.146.26.50 7 49 ms 51 ms 49 ms 64.213.78.254 8 48 ms 51 ms 48 ms ve6.fr3.lax.llnw.net [69.28.171.205] 9 46 ms 66 ms 45 ms cdn-68-142-79-69.lax.llnw.net [68.142.79.69] Trace complete.
With an average of a 50ms response time, I’m going to go ahead and say my 7 mbps Qwest DSL service is working as advertised, and there is something fishy going on with the Netflix service.
I then copy-pasted the URL from above into my browser and decided to literally try and download the WMV, surprisingly enough it started to download, at exactly the same speed I was seeing from the player:
My first thought was “maybe Netflix is throttling per-thread” like a lot of download sites do, so I popped open the Firefox “Download Them All” addon and re-started the download. This time, with 4 concurrent threads, I got 306 KB/sec, almost 6x the performance (roughly 2.5 mbps):
I figured I’d bump the threads up to 10 and see how far we get here, apparently Netflix isn’t running out of bandwidth, it’s just throttling me to hell and back.
After turning Download Them All up to the maximum of 10 threads and relaunching the download, I saw my speed spike over 700 KB/sec (roughly 5.6 mbps):
Now we have confirmed that Netflix is throttling instant streaming PC-users to a rediculous 50 or 60 KB/sec cap… I was about to make the qualification of “at peak times” but after seeing my ability to easily increase my download speed from the Netflix streaming server by a factor of 14, I have to imagine the servers have quite a bit of room to grow at the moment and could offer me better performance than this.
To further clarify, I think throttling is likely a valid strategy for Netflix to employee to stop servers from maxing out and crashing — the problem here is the 50-60 KB/sec cap that produces unusable results with a “Watch Instantly” service — you could easily drive down the street to a video store, take your time choosing, and have it back in your house before your video were done buffering with the Netflix Watch Instantly service — and view it at a higher resolution as well. This is the core of the problem, Netflix is throttling PC viewers (And likely others) so aggressively they aren’t delivering the service they advertise. And when we work around this trottle manually (with DTA) we see that the servers scale bandwidth (and potentially video streaming performance) without a problem — so what’s going on here?
OK, Netflix is Throttling Streaming, but Why?
Netflix already has a reputation for silently throttling their customers, but what would cause them to throttle performance so hard that the service is basically unusable for any customers that are either watching “too much” instantly streaming video from the Netflix service (as determined by Netflix of course) or just trying to watching movies at times of very heavy server loads?
My guess is that Netflix didn’t have the infrastructure to support the rollout of the Xbox 360 Netflix streaming dashboard update that went out a few months ago. I’d also further a guess that due to contractual obligations with Microsoft, Netflix had to guarantee a certain level of service to the Xbox 360 users above and beyond what the PC-streaming viewers got, making the Xbox 360 a prioritized device when it came to throttling instant video streaming requests from one of the Netflix servers.
I would also further a guess that we won’t see this situation fixed for users of the Netflix “Watch Instantly” service until Q4 this year as Netflix tries to find the balance between spending themselves into bankrupcy and signing additional device deals with Sony (for the PS3), TiVo and possible some of the cable providers which will all require basic QoS conditions for those customers.
I would predict that my 2010, if Netflix signs 1 or 2 more significant partnerships, Friday and Saturday nights PC-based users of the streaming video service will barely be able to watch something without an hour of buffering at the lowest level.
Conspiracy Theory
… for those that like taking thoughts to the logical extreme — I could also see Netflix trying to degrade the PC-based streaming experience to drive people towards more “official” Netflix-enabled devices, like the Xbox 360, Roku box, hybrid Blu-ray media players and I’m sure 10 more devices that will hit the market this year.
You know the real shit of it all? I can absolutely see how this is probably better for Netflix’s bottom line, both in the sense that it improves relationships with exclusive contractee’s (Microsoft, Samsung, etc.) and drives consumers to look around for alternative solutions to their streaming problems which are very clearly outlined on the Watch Instantly web page in your browser.
Updates
Update #1: I’m going to go ahead and assume that this post got passed around Netflix HQ (as one of their engineers already posted to the story with a random suggestion of upgrading to the much-maligned Silverlight-based player) and I’m now feeling the wrath of their angry fingers:
Incase the image doesn’t display or you aren’t clear on what I’m getting at, during the original authoring of this article, my buffer time for media on my PC was around 1.5hrs. Now when I try and play something on my PC (2 days after this was written) my buffering time just hangs at 6hrs and 59 mins… that’s right, 7 hours of buffering time.
</sarcasm>That’s definitely a technical glitch and not Netflix leveling the hammer of streaming-justice against me as retribution for the article… god knows they are above that</sarcasm>
My previous run-in with Netflix “customer service” was when I had the 5-at-a-time account, and had what I think was Transporter 2 (Blu-ray) sitting at the top of my queue for 7 weeks. I got everything else in my queue as it bubbled to the top, but Transporter 2 stayed right at the top with “Long Wait”. I finally lost it and sent an admitedly rude (and typical internet-venting) email to the Customer Service team at Netflix. 3hrs later the wait had changed to “Unknown” or some other dubious hint at Netflix giving me the “Fuck you guy, go climb up a tree and die”.
After I cooled down (1 day later) I sent an appology… guess what? Just guess… yea… you know where this is going… I got a shipment notification for the movie a few hours later and it was on it’s way to my house.
Naturally Netflix claimed that the Customer Service reps have no access to individual customers Queues or the abilities to change them. I’ll go out on a limb here and declare shenanigans all over this like a warm pile of turtle-shit.
This company is an odd duck… it delivers an awesome service that would be so easy to sing the praises of if they just delivered it as advertised. But they don’t… and they’ll zing you if you call them on it, so you get left with this meloncholy feeling of trying to decide if you like their service or not, cause you know your aren’t getting the service they advertise… but you sorta-kind are.
If you don’t agree, cut your subscription back to “2-at-a-time unlimited” and try and rent-and-return 1 movie every other day, $1 says after you get to 6 rentals for a month, you’ll start seeing major lag in the turn around time on your movies.
Update #2: From the screenshot above where you see the 7hr buffer time now that I’m getting on my PC from Netflix for anything streaming, the odd part is that when I bring the debug menu back up and show the status window, it’s still capped at the same 50 KB/sec or so.
To clarify, the day I wrote this article, my transfer was capped at 50 KB/sec, and buffer time was 1-2hrs as reported by the player.
Now 2 days after this story went up, my transfer speed is still 50 KB/sec, but now my buffer time is 7hrs… odd.
Loading ...
15. March 2009 at 12:15 am
It’s very likely that it is your ISP and not NetFlix throttling your network.
Can you provide any evidence against this?
15. March 2009 at 12:16 am
Funny, I’m streaming Netflix to my PC no problem, looks great.
Anyway, the way to look for network bottlenecks is to put the path under load by downloading/watching a movie while running tracert. This gives you a better indication of bandwidth issues at each node than a ping under no load.
15. March 2009 at 12:50 am
Use a network sniffer and see what the netflix 360 puts in it’s packets to ID it’s self.
Use a wrapper around your pc software that puts out the same ID. And eats anything else.
You should then get the same bandwidth.
Sorry, I’m no longer programming these days.
Bruce
15. March 2009 at 12:55 am
Dufus – it’s not netflix (or limewire), but your own ISP, or your own network. latency has no impact on bandwidth. A traceroute isn’t going to tell you jack about your path, otyher than it’s route, and if it’s intact. Please understand how all of this works BEFORE you go slandering folks. Oh, btw – pick a real ISP instead of RBOC crap.
15. March 2009 at 1:16 am
Corwin, his demonstration with DownThemAll pretty clearly shows it’s not the ISP. I’m even willing to bet he’s getting his full bandwidth when he downloads from other sites.
I performed the same tests as Riyad, and got the same results from a different network (AT&T Uverse), about 48kbit/sec per stream.
It’s unfortunately Netflix doing the throttling.
15. March 2009 at 1:23 am
You need a tracert containing _EVERY_ hop for _EVERY_ download thread before you can prove anything. Your entire post was a troll. Enjoy the ad-revenue.
15. March 2009 at 1:38 am
Congratulations to [mostly] the elite sleuths above for your outstanding diagnostic skills. Clearly none of you know anything about computers or how they work.
The article is a valid and logical representation of the facts.
15. March 2009 at 1:41 am
curl -O “http://netflix-699.vo.llnwd.net/s/d3/699/39344169.wmv?e=1237204120&h=b493e799e62ec39856e36a667a1eb2d0″
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
12 331M 12 42.1M 0 0 1397k 0 0:04:03 0:00:30 0:03:33 1817k
Notice the 1817k that is MAXING out the 20 Mbit connection I have from Cox. Calculate the average out for yourself,
42.1 MB in 30 seconds.
Yeah, NetFlix is really throttling the paying customers!
15. March 2009 at 1:58 am
Create the problem, then the solution. It’s how the corporate mentality works.
It is too bad Blockbuster bought up http://www.MovieLink.com. You could start watching a movie in as little as 1 minute after starting the download. I have never had a movie stop due to buffering. I am willing to venture a guess that it’s service too, is as bad as Netflix now.
15. March 2009 at 1:58 am
Dude,
The internet was designed in the 60’s by DAPA. It was designed to survive and route around any wholes created by Atomic Bombs. Each packet from each session is dynamic routed and can take a different path from the one’s before or afterwards. But, as we all know there can be bottlenecks and a number of points where throttling and traffic-shaping can and sometime does happen.
There has been much talk and even a few law suites about these and other events like traffic-shaping….
But, as has been said before you need to be very careful about who and what you claim. Especially if you want help and need to work with others to solve your problems not ours.
Moreover, newbie’s will believe anything you say. Even when not based on proven facts. Do you really want to mislead others?
15. March 2009 at 1:59 am
“Congratulations to [mostly] the elite sleuths above for your outstanding diagnostic skills. Clearly none of you know anything about computers or how they work.”
This doesn’t prove that netflix is to blame. His ISP could be throttling the connection to netflix. All this means is that it requires greater investigation.
Alex obviously your have awe inspiring computer skills (lol) but your networking skills are severely lacking. Yes I do networking for a living: IE: I get paid professionally. You obviously don’t work in technology; perhaps scrubbing toilets is more in line with your skill set.
15. March 2009 at 2:08 am
Here is one tip:
Try using your friends netflix account at your house and take a look at the speed. See what happens. If netflix is throttling then his account should be fine; full speed ahead. If you’re experiencing the issue still; then you may have to look at other causes.
Just my unprofessional .02 cents worth.
15. March 2009 at 2:10 am
Nix you need to use the same restraint you use on your job. Employers are looking at more than just a resume these days. Even conversations like these get into search engines.
I’m retied for me it doesn’t matter.
15. March 2009 at 2:10 am
We need more sampling here. If you have NetFlix then repeat the experiment and let’s see the results. Preferably from thosecwho are on different ISP’s. Then you can find a common path/choke point where the throttling is taking place.
15. March 2009 at 2:13 am
You can also try your account at your friend’s house. And see what you get. Especially if he/she has a different ISP.
15. March 2009 at 2:34 am
What nix was suggesting was a binary search. Which is the right way to find your problem.
Are you running something else on your machine that’s slowing your connection.
Is it some of your Hardware?
Is it your drop to your house?
Is it your ISP?
Is it the Long Distance Carrier for your ISP?
Is it the same server at Netflix each time.
You get the picture.
15. March 2009 at 3:27 am
One common thing I have seen regarding this is QWEST. I too have Qwest dsl and have seen the same thing concerning my netflix on both XBOX 360 and PC. I streamed from a friends house who has Comcast and then from work on another isp with out any issues, I am thinking QWEST is the real issue.
15. March 2009 at 5:22 am
Coming to the conclusion that Netflix is the problem (or at least doing it on purpose) is nuts.
I’m a heavy Netflix Instant Play user — I don’t have cable, so I watch at least several hours of it every single day. I haven’t had these bottlenecks pop up.
The only time I’ve had problems is during some peak internet usage a week or two ago, and I’m pretty sure Netflix wasn’t doing it on purpose.
Your ISP could have been throttling Netflix — or, the Netflix server you were connecting to may have *had (or currently has) a problem*. Just because it was slow doesn’t mean it was on PURPOSE.
15. March 2009 at 6:07 am
The most interesting part of this article is that is shows how to permanently download any movie from the Netflix stream.
15. March 2009 at 6:27 am
“The overall slow down combined with the huge discrepency between the two experiences (Netflix-enabled device and my PC) made me decide to start Googling and see if I could figure out what was going on — I smelled shenanigans…”
What discrepancy? The service is sucking on both. Maybe the client software is written slightly different on each platform?
“Now we have confirmed that Netflix is throttling instant streaming PC-users to a rediculous 50 or 60 KB/sec cap…”
Uhh… yeah… no you didn’t. All you proved is there’s an issue somewhere between your computer and the netflix service. Where did you, at any point, prove it’s not Qwest putting in an artificial limit? Maybe it’s a peering problem somewhere on the route. Traceroute isn’t going to show you where the bad link is. Lets say Qwest is filtering the video service, well ping and traceroute wouldn’t show a damn difference compared to normal.
Personally I think this is a non-story as far as it’s written until further, better proof can be obtained. For now, this is someone who knows just enough to do basic network diagnostics and who jumps to conclusions, rather than taking a more “scientific approach” to solving the problem. Go around asking other people with Netflix streaming over other ISP’s who watch about as many movies a month as the writer if their service has crapped out, then maybe you’ll have more of an “Educated Guess” rather than your “just pointing a finger” answer.
15. March 2009 at 7:01 am
@Everyone, a lot of excellent feedback so far, especially to the posters with additional diagnostic suggestions. I’ll pester some of my friends with NF accounts to see if we can do some A/B comparisons with their accounts at my house later today.
@broilr, interesting data point — the other post I linked as to where I learned how to find the diagnostic menu on the Windows media player was on Qwest DSL as well…
Is anyone else on Qwest that could lend an additional data point?
I was under the impression that if Qwest were shaping my connection, the Xbox and PC would behave exactly the same, as both connections are Netflix-bound, media connections — but they don’t, two devices on the same network, streaming the same content have different behaviors — that’s what lead me to believe it was *not* Qwest. If I can collect enough circumstantial evidence from other Qwest users that they experience the same thing, that is absolutely something valuable to look at.
15. March 2009 at 7:03 am
Hmmm…veiled threats against future employment, clear indications of inability to understand networking, strawman arguments against clear evidence, and ludicrous claims of “no, you.”
I deduce netflix technical support has found this post.
15. March 2009 at 7:48 am
I’ve had the same problem w/Netflix streaming over PC. Incidentally, I started having these problems right about the time that my ISP (Charter, St. Louis, MO) announced monthly bandwidth caps for broadband accounts that aren’t the top of the line. I get the feeling Charter is throttling Netflix so that Charter’s broadband users don’t run up against the monthly limit.
15. March 2009 at 8:04 am
Based on the screen capture you posted, it looks like you are using the old version of the Netflx movie player. Maybe you should try upgrading to the new version of the player, which is based on Microsoft Silverlight instead of Windows Media Player.
However, the issue likely lies with Qwest, which is to internet service what Cricket is to cell phones… pretty much a bottom feeder. Netflix isn’t going to be routing traffic… Qwest is.
15. March 2009 at 8:21 am
Hmm, yes, this artic doesn’t eliminate the ISP (Quest in this case) from being the culprit. Means, motive, opportunity. Netflix has no rational motive to throttle back (which would only piss off customers). Much more likely the ISP is the culprit as it has the motive to throttle back (bits throughput as backend cost plus system load balance), and, ISPs HAVE throttled traffic when they felt so compelled (torrent etc.).
15. March 2009 at 9:23 am
The link in the story is not to a Netflix server at all – “llnwd.net” is a Limelight server (Limelight is a CDN, similar to Akamai, but aimed at streaming media). In this guy’s case, he is being routed to a Los Angeles based Limelight server (according to his traceroute info).
Anyways, Netflix *cannot* throttle this link, as they do not control the server. I can’t think of any reason Limelight would need to throttle connections either – their entire infrastructure is based on the need for speed, so to speak.
It is possible that Limelight is the culprit if their edge server was having difficulty getting the source file from Netflix’s origin point, but that would only be the case if Netflix was using it’s own origin point instead of a Limelight origin point (the company I work for uses both types of origin, and we do occasionally see speed problems with files from our own origin point).
So, to summarize, it sounds like the problem might have been Limelight, which was a result of Netflix’s origin point having shitty speed (and it is possible that Netflix’s origin might have been throttled, as Limelight would not do that).
15. March 2009 at 9:54 am
@lowendpdx,
653 comments hating on the new Silverlight player, a front page post on Slashdot about how much trouble it’s caused viewers and blog posts across the web about people reformatting just to get rid of it would stop me from upgrading.
NOTE: I would encourage Netflix employees not to post here from work, you realize your post came from “netflix.com” right?
15. March 2009 at 9:56 am
@Robay,
Netflix absolutely has motivation to throttle *PC* based users, which is the point of the article. It encourages an improved user experience to official Netflix-enabled devices — a more locked down and vendor-controlled experience that they want to encourage and nurture.
I am not knocking the business of that decision — it’s a great policy, I’d push my devices harder as well and offer perks like “HD streaming” only on those devices to get people to buy them, it’s the “kicking PC streamers in the trash” part that I hate.
15. March 2009 at 9:59 am
@Rust,
As a CDN (service provider) it is my expectation that Limelight and any others would be fully capable of offering traffic controls to their customers like Netflix, Revision3, PC Mag and everyone else that uses networks like that.
After all, I have to imagine CDNs make their money by way of the bandwidth that is consumed, so providing bandwidth controls to customers to be able to give priority to certain types of customers, regions, packet header information, etc. absolutely would need to be part of a service like that.
– I’m not a CDN expert, I just have to imagine this is the case which means this is still entirely likely… no?
15. March 2009 at 11:54 am
I am downloading the same link at 800K Bytes/sec. Thus, I don’t think the problem is with the server.
15. March 2009 at 12:11 pm
You know what’s really hilarious?
The link he posted for directly downloading the WMV actually works for *anyone*.
15. March 2009 at 1:02 pm
Notice that the stream is actually coming from Limelight Networks, not directly from Netflix. Limelight has plenty of bandwidth, it’s their whole business model. Quest, being a RBOC, also has more bandwidth than god, but not necessarily everywhere.
It seems likely that Quest is throttling on a per-flow basis, perhaps particularly targeting Limelight. You should try doing the same sort of check on stuff from Revision3, for instance, since those streams should come from the same server farms as Netflix.
Then, complain to Quest.
15. March 2009 at 1:18 pm
OP’s got it right. I’ve been watching and measuring the same thing from my house. I have a cable based ISP that isn’t yet employing *ANY* throttling/traffic shaping to date. I know because I make my living knowing this sort of thing. The troubleshooting carried out in the original article is valid (the traceroute only shows that a particular router along the way isn’t overloaded/silently discarding)
I hope Netflix can get their act together… whether it’s their own server/network capacity, or whether it’s a CDN that’s unable to deliver the volume (doubtful) I want to watch my netflix uninterrupted.
To the poster above that cites the origin/design features of the Internet, thanks for the history lesson. But you’ve got it quite wrong. While any given packet *COULD* traverse any number of paths from source to destination, the reality is routes are tightly controlled thru BGP4 (look it up) and TCP is a connection-based point-point method for reliable segment delivery. Packets traversing multiple paths to reach their destination would throw off TCP’s ability to deliver in *REAL TIME* and would jack up the re-transmit and out-of-order packet counters available to you with a netstat -s.
15. March 2009 at 1:28 pm
Not that they couldn’t be doing this, but it seems unlikely to me. I’m a heavy user of Netflix Instant Watch. I have a Roku. I easily watch at least 2 hours a day of Netflix content and more on the weekends. I’ve never once had any problems since I started using it regularly in August. It seems like someone who is watching 2-3hrs on week days and more on weekends would be a prime target for throttling, but it hasn’t happened to me.
15. March 2009 at 3:05 pm
I don’t think Netflix is throttling downloads. I think that they just don’t have enough servers to handle the load. More and more people are starting to stream movies every day and Netflix is just not keeping up with the load. YouTube has the same problem. Their servers have been almost non-existent lately since they introduced a lot of HD.
I have never had a consistent situation with Netflix. I can watch one movie that streams perfectly and then the next one has to be stopped every few minutes to buffer. It just depends on the load on the system. I have a 25Mbps connection and can get every bit of it. The best I’ve ever seen from Netflix is 6.5Mbps and then that will drop to .5Mbps which is not fast enough to stream decent video.
15. March 2009 at 3:13 pm
@Harrison Hopper
Who is your ISP? I have 20mbps from FIOS and always get highest quality. Every time.
15. March 2009 at 3:31 pm
I’m not convinced by your experiment. I’d like to see you try downloading with a different Netflix subscription to see if your problem is related to your account or your internet connection.
15. March 2009 at 3:50 pm
I intermittently get the same throttling problem. At first I blamed Comcast, but this experiment makes me think it is in fact Netflix. Unfortunately, Watch Instantly is the only reason I subscribe to Netflix, and I will cancel my service if they don’t fix it soon. Hulu has most of what I want anyway, and it’s free.
15. March 2009 at 4:56 pm
>>when we work around this trottle manually (with DTA) we see that the servers scale bandwidth (and potentially video streaming performance) without a problem
Maybe for 1 person, but I don’t think that your multi-threading test proves that Netflix has all the bandwidth they need to serve *everybody* necessarily. If everyone dialed up 10 threads, their stuff might go down.
It’s their bad either way. They should have the capacity to serve you. I’m just saying you can conclude they do but are mysteriously holding out on you just from this experience.
15. March 2009 at 5:04 pm
I’m with Brighthouse and always get great throughput as long as the sending server can push it. I sometimes see speed bursts in the high 30s.
15. March 2009 at 5:30 pm
Here is a way that you override Netflix’s defaults to only offer you the higher quality streams.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cje3gM0FIuk
15. March 2009 at 5:32 pm
Can you get YouTube videos at the moment? I can’t get YouTube videos at all. It looks to me like their servers are down.
15. March 2009 at 6:04 pm
Where is this logfile located?
Windows 7 beta with IE8 DOES NOT seem have the Shift-Rt-Click menu and I cannot access the “view log” function on IE8 or Firefox 3. All I see with that is “Silverlight” which clicking on just shows the basic silverlight “About” info.
XP MCE 2005 with IE6 also DOES NOT seem to have this feature either. Has it already been patched by netflix?
PS: I got up to 3MB (big “B”, so 24mbits/sec) when clicking the URL above withOUT using Download Them All so my speeds are fine. I just hate the silverlight/browser player. I want to be able to use my MCE box remote to pause, fastforward, rewind my Watch Now videos.
M
15. March 2009 at 6:05 pm
@Davis Freeberg
I viewed your youtube video and that is yet another thing that I cannot get to work – how recent is that video and does it still work for anybody? Tested on WIndows 7 Beta IE8 and Firefox 3, as well as MCE 2005 IE6.
M
15. March 2009 at 6:06 pm
I finally got the YouTube video to load. I have a newer Netflix viewer and that trick doesn’t work with it. They’re using a SilverLight viewer now.
15. March 2009 at 6:34 pm
Well as a professional network engineer, I will just put in my two cents of simple testing. I am an At&t Uverse user in the San Diego area. I am watching a movie right now on my PC and am getting a constant 9Mbps connection from Netflix for my movies. I am getting my stats from the “secret” debug menu. I have watched two movies so far today. I did a test off my Verizon Business DS3 at my office, same result 9Mbps. I tested from an east coast office with a 3Mbps MLPP connection and different ISP. Hit the 3Mbps mark with no problem streaming from Netflix. Not sure what you people are seeing, but I can not reproduce it. It could be a configuration issue on the server or servers from LimeLight.
15. March 2009 at 7:50 pm
I guess I should say that I’m watching Netflix through my computer streaming to a PS3 using the Playon server. I think the problem is the Playon server as I’m getting a steady 15Mbps from Netflix and a 10Mbps transfer across my local net. The image is freezing every few seconds or so. I don’t see how this can be an amount of data problem as the speeds are way higher than necessary.
An interesting thing though… when I just watch on my PC, I only get about 2.5Mbps down and not 15Mbps.
16. March 2009 at 12:06 am
“This post was from February 12, a month ago”
The link is over a year old. Anything is possible, but you must start troubleshooting by trying a different connection/isp.
“Anyone else having this netflix streaming video problem?
Posted by tim turks on February 12, 2008 at 8:21pm in Instant Watching
View Discussions”
16. March 2009 at 12:20 am
Why are you people calling them “threads”? “Concurrent connections” would be a more appropriate term.
FTR, I’m getting 750KB/sec with a single connection. I think it’s your ISP.
16. March 2009 at 2:20 am
The problem looks to be your ISP throttling tcp connections. Most likely they don’t like their customers downloading 100GB+ a month on their highly contended links.
Move to a non-cheapo isp.
16. March 2009 at 6:49 am
I hope a bunch of Netflix users quit for this reason and Netflix sues the shit out of you.
You make a bunch false accusations, run your own diagnostic without any control-environment or comparison to anyone else, and you do all this accusing without contacting Netflix or your ISP.
“My guess”… STFU. This article has zero merit or credibility.
16. March 2009 at 7:03 am
My Netflix connection is amazing on both Xbox and the PC… i have Cox cable even.. and i HATE cox.. but netflix is still amazing and buffers in less then 5 seconds…
-_-
16. March 2009 at 7:53 am
Interestingly enough, I just got an email survey from netflix asking how I would rate the video/audio quality of my most recent “Watch Instantly” movie (which I watched on my PC). I’ve never seen one of these before; maybe they’re trying to get some statistics to figure out where their problem is so they can fix it? Not every corporation is intrinsically evil after all…
16. March 2009 at 11:42 am
Your ping statement on the tracert comment shows you really don’t have the networking background to speculate about who’s fault it is. Bandwidth and latency are not related as you think they are.
16. March 2009 at 12:08 pm
Bubby,
I should have clarified in the original post that it isn’t the tracert, ping, downloads or behavior on their own that point the finger of blame at Netflix, it’s the combination of all 3 that do.
tracert: Clear path to host, no obvious network problems that would indicate some other problem like a busted route.
multi-thread downloads scaling linearly in performance: Suggests that the host is not maxed out on bandwidth and incapable of hosting faster speeds for streaming.
differing behavior of two netflix-devices on the same network: Shows that with the same network conditions, same route to host, same account and the only difference being a sanctioned Netflix-enabled device (Xbox 360) and the other being PC player, I get two very-very different results.
I just added an update today, I have to assume this is retaliation for this post — my buffering times on my PC are now up from 1.5 hrs to 7hrs for any media in the entire streaming library.
Brilliant…
16. March 2009 at 12:13 pm
Hmmmm
7 hours for you , less then 5 seconds for me. Yeah sounds like they are out to get you !!
Or it could be the more obvious choice . Get a new ISP.
16. March 2009 at 12:23 pm
To address the “get another ISP” commentary, we’ve had folks in this thread already confirm similar behavior on Comcast and AT&T. On another forum I’ve seen people confirm this on Cox and Qwest as well.
I’d also point out… again (and again and again) that the two Netflix devices on the same network bear different behaviors. It’s not a catch-all “Netflix is slow, I’m going to bitch like a banshee on the internet” story — there is legit circumstantial evidence that points at some intentional throttling occurring in an environment where the only variable is the device streaming the media, all other variables are kept constant.
This is not much different than the disk throttling we saw with Netflix when that whole fiasco blew up either, not everyone is going to see it, but it exists, it’s not advertised and for the folks that *are* throttled, you get a completely unusable service. That was always the problem, not that they did it, but that it is not part of the service agreement and is not communicated to customers anywhere that it will occur.
7hr buffering time? Hardly “watch instantly”.
16. March 2009 at 12:34 pm
Ok so what makes me more special then you then ?
I watch tons of vids on xbox and pc and my buffer times are less then 5 seconds
16. March 2009 at 3:11 pm
Thanks for the interesting article. I would like to share my experience though.
I have been using Netflix streaming through my XBOX and can view HD content almost instantly. It checks my connection to determine quality, then it begins.
I have 16Mbps (Comcast) connection, but it also worked the same when I had 6Mbps. Now on this same connection my ISP filters the P2P and I get low bandwith.
I would try and find a friend using a different ISP, and stream and debug using your account. This may help determine if it the ISP or Netflix.
As far as “2 at a Time” I can recieve movies on Mon, mail them early Tues and get two more on Wed. I am fortunate to have a Netflix processing center in my city (San Jose). Also Netflix constantly asks me me when I mailed some of these to improve their service.
16. March 2009 at 5:47 pm
We’ve noticed the same thing – and it has gotten worse in the last few weeks. Today it appears Netflix dropped the bar graph from their site that allows customers to guage video performance. It doesn’t matter what time of day we’re using it and it has nothing to do with our ISP or the route – which a few “experts” posting here suggested was the above author’s problem. While that can sometimes be the case, it’s almost never the reason for consistent slow download speeds from one site if you are using a major service provider.
We do not have hours of buffering time (usually less than a minute), but the video will often play at a reduced quality despite our fast cable connection speed from a leading provider.
I do believe Netflix is increasingly throttling our connection speed.
16. March 2009 at 7:06 pm
I’m using COX, stream quite a bit and have never had a buffer of over 5 seconds. I do have a business account so mine supposedly COX lets me do whatever I want over it (if you read the TermsandConditions for the home accounts they have pretty strict stipulations for what they consider ‘normal’ use.)
Just because opening additional connections to NETFLIX increases your bandwidth doesn’t mean that its Netflix and not your ISP throttling the connection. Perhaps your ISP is shaping each TCP connection to netflix, and not the aggregate of each outbound connection. That would make more sense to me. I’m sure that Netflix may have problems from time to time, but such a consistent problem sounds like it has nothing to do with them when so many users aren’t having problems.
Also about the XBOX, that is interesting. Have you verified that its getting the video from the same source, taking the same path, or even downloading the video at the same bitrate? It may not even be using port 80 or TCP for that matter and doesn’t fit the (suspected) shaping rules that the ISP has in place. Of course all of that is speculation as I don’t have the time to pull out my network sniffer and play around with Netflix over Live however it seems as though there is the room for many variables which were untouched in your test that make comparing the xbox to pc streaming apples to oranges. (I do know for a fact that the XBOX version is using Silverlight technology and not Windows Media)
22. March 2009 at 7:09 pm
I just upgraded to silverlight becasue I was having problems with the older palyer not buffering and speeds to slow.
I noticed that some movies are not playing well while other are.
Anyone can test this next time they have problems try another Genre or other movies I have noticed the sometimes other movies will play fine after I get pissed off that I can’t watch what I want. I noticed that the movies are being streamed from SOMESERVER-NUMBER.vo.llnwd.net . Depending on what server I attach to will vary my buffering speeds. I am thinking that limelight networks is either running out of bandwidth or the administrators are not maintinaing the servers correctly.
netflix-938.vo.llnwd.net (Don’t remeber Movie) Painful slow /gave up..
netflix-405.vo.llnwd.net (Porkchop hill.) Painful slow, re-buffering
netflix-405.vo.llnwd.net (Killro) Slow but took about 4 Min to buffer.
netflix-221.vo.llnwd.net (Fire down below)SLow but took about 3 Min to buffer.
netflix-616.vo.llnwd.net (Starship troopers) Buffer in 1 minnute and played right away.
I used firefox to allow me to look at the server the data was being transfered from on the bottom left.
This isn’t a scientific study it is just something I noticed. I was curious if anyone else noticed this as well.
18. April 2009 at 8:07 pm
I watch ABC HD and Fox HD streams on a 2.6 mBps DSL Qwest connection. The video is close to broadcast quality. The Netflix Silverlite player is sub-par. Blotchy, noisy picture, and the server feed stops very often. I have to reload the browser to resume play back. I would say that Netflix has network/server capacity issues. They just signed-up too many people to please their stockholders.
2. May 2009 at 3:58 pm
My Netflix account is a few years old. I logged on using a new account less than a month old on the same computer and guess what?
The new account had a higher download speed. So one could strongly suggest that it was not my ISP but that it is Netflix that is throttling it’s instant streaming.
Also, the new account had movies available for immediate rental that my years old account displayed a short to long wait for.
For the nay-sayers who blame their ISP’s, I would suggest considering that there may be other overlapping problems in your particular cases in addition to Netflix throttling their streaming. I use Netflix and feel it’s the best out there for what it does (so far), but their business practices and openness do need improvement.
10. May 2009 at 11:14 am
Retribution? Are you serious?
Guy, Netflix has bigger fish to fry than some no-name blogger in an internet chock full of no-name bloggers. They’re not going to waste their time or energy setting up some kind of punishment system for people who complain about their service. If they gave a damn enough about your article to take any personalized action whatsoever, they’d make sure your service was superior so you’d quit bitching and maybe retract some of your statements.
Really, just… wow.
And I think maybe you should point the finger at your ISP– the same one the other guy had problems with. I had Qwest in Phoenix, and even on my 360 I had major problems with Netflix. I know this doesn’t add up to the cool conspiracy you were hoping for, but life is actually pretty boring. I have Cox now, and I have no problems whatsoever.
Bottom line: You’re paranoid, Qwest sucks, and Netflix is just an entertainment company that doesn’t give a damn about your blog.
11. May 2009 at 1:39 pm
Daniel,
I’m not sure which part of the article you’re referring to — I made no claim that Netflix is punishing me for the blog/article/etc. If you mean the sentence from Update #2, *you* came to that conclusion. I only reported what I saw.
11. May 2009 at 3:14 pm
Actually, under update #1:
“That’s definitely a technical glitch and not Netflix leveling the hammer of streaming-justice against me as retribution for the article… god knows they are above that”
Unless I’m failing to understand your definition of sarcasm, you were at the very least playfully suggesting that Netflix was exacting vengeance against you.
Way to censor your blog, btw. Someone might’ve actually been able to get some use out of that Qwest correlation and my shitty performance even on the 360 which cleared up after an ISP change, and now they’ll miss it because the comments were removed. *claps* bravo at least your theory is left unchallenged.
11. May 2009 at 3:16 pm
Oh, hell. Now I’ve gone and made a complete ass out of myself.
Just ignore all that stuff at the bottom of my last post. It’s not important. *winks*
30. May 2009 at 5:39 pm
I haven’t read all the comments but would like to tell you how I’ve solved this particular problem. When the Netflix player tells me my connection speed is too slow, and I’ll have to wait for many hours, I restart my computer and return to the movie. After that, I have no problem. I’m not a computer expert, so I don’t know if this will work for you. It’s worth a shot. At least it gets you your movie.
23. September 2009 at 7:20 pm
This is quite an old post, but I found it while searching for something tangentially related.
It’s kind of funny that no one pointed out the obvious fact that the route trace you pasted in shows packet loss. That’s what the asterisk in place of a ping time means. Dropped packets can easily kill throughput.
In any case, I never had any streaming problems with 5Mbps DSL, or my current 30MBps cable, either on my PC or on my Roku.
There’s more than a tad of irrational paranoia being displayed here about nasty, mean, sinister Netflix.
PS. I also never had Netflix throttle my discs, and easily got below $2 per rental in many months.
26. October 2009 at 9:32 pm
It is not NETFLIX that is the cause of your problems, rather it is the ISP. ISPs are oversubscribed on bandwidth per customer. In other words, if every customer attempted to take advantage of their allotted bandwidth then everything would come to a screeching halt. Based upon an ISPs customer base and new multimedia services such as Netflix, along with all the others like YouTube, downloads, flash video in general, radio, etc. The ISP cannot sustain the demands. Since most ISPs generally speaking cannot instantly add more bandwidth due to their infrastructure or inherent costs, they have to sometimes shape the traffic to conserve what bandwidth they have. One can shape the bandwidth based upon a number of factors, but overall a shaping rule is applied per flow or rather conversation. That is why you could add more bandwidth with simultaneous downloads, because it was not based upon who you were but rather where each conversation was going to and type of download. Obviously as you have already stated, there was no bandwidth restriction. I have worked with bandwidth shaping devices, and your streaming results and other download tests have this type of signature written all over it. Cannot tell you what the next move should be, but your efforts may be better served in another direction. Best of luck!
22. November 2009 at 10:52 am
I have had issues with Netflix. However, mine are related to receiving them through the mail. The attitude concerning customer service is similar though. Netflix has a goal to do away with DVDs and go streaming only. Read CEO Reed Hastings press releases. They absolutely are herding streaming media viewers toward controllable players. It’s all about control. They therefore will discourage using any system (PC) they can’t control. I refuse to download any site’s players for that reason. Why would anyone require you to download their specific player to watch online media? It’s called snooping. But what are they snooping for? Some answers are obvious. Others are not. Remember the SONY BMG CD copy protection debacle? If they decide to plant something into their approved players, how would you ever know.
22. November 2009 at 11:04 am
Also, I forgot to say that DAPA didn’t develop the internet. It was DARPA. Using tracert isn’t a very accurate way to measure a data packets path. It only show what path that specific packet took at that particular time. The best path at that time could change quickly depending on system outages and use. You could draw some conclusions if you performed a tracert several times a day over a period of time to get an average. But it’s just that – an average. I, however, do believe you are being throttled. It’s not clear by whom. Your ISP does not necessarily have a clear path between you and Netlix. They have to traverse other ISP’s networks. Chances are they are giving preference to their own customers traffic. And, Netflix probably doesn’t have the capacity to serve everyone. If companies delivered what was technically available verses what they are willing to spend, we wouldn’t be writing these blogs in the first place.
22. November 2009 at 2:08 pm
I don’t understand anything about threads or any other technical jargon you folks are using. Here is what is happening on my computer/internet connection. I stream movies fairly frequently from NetFlix and the buffering time varies WIDELY. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes and I have frequent interruptions during the streaming. Sometimes it takes 30 seconds. I have a 1.5 mbps DSL line. So explain that. The buffering time has increased considerably in the last 2-3 months so it might be that Netflix has decided to slow me down because I’m watching “too many” movies. But I still get fast buffering at times – and it seems to correspond to what are probably not peak hours for the NetFlix servers.
2. January 2010 at 9:27 pm
Slander is what I read into this. Kalla also totally missed the point of packet size. A traceroute packet is a small amount of data compared to a massive movie. I have comcast and for the most part have never had any issue, of course, I don’t have a crappy DSL service either. The only issue I have had is with my new samsung blu-ray player having some connection issues but when it is working, boy it works great. I have never had problems with streamin on my xbox or PC either. Maybe his pc is setup wrong but most likely he does eat up massive bandwith and so his ISP is throttling him for it. It is NOT netflix doing it as is obviously the case based on most peoples experiance. Personally, the uneducated should not be writing tech articles and should be working for McDonalds flipping burgers instead.
31. January 2010 at 11:37 am
how do you turn up download threads then where is that located? sorry I’m new to all of this but I am having the same crappy experience with them telling me my internet connection has slowed and I have dsl
5. February 2010 at 1:55 pm
Danielle, as far as I know you cannot control the speed of streaming on the PC or any of the Netflix-enabled devices. If you try and stream at different times of the day OR different movies/shows do the performance characteristics change for you?
7. February 2010 at 2:54 pm
I use to have NetFlix and it streamed just fine. When I moved I cancelled it. I just recently signed back up and was happy to learn that I would get unlimited movie streaming instead of the limited amount of hours I use to get. Only one problem. IT DOES NOT WORK! I have DSL and have no problem streaming YouTube, Google, Megavideo, you name it. But NetFlix takes five or ten minutes just to buffer and then when it plays it is horrible quality, like it is only playing every third frame or something, constantly freezing up. It is totally worthless. I have tried it at different times of the day and it is always the same. It is completely unwatchable. I would rather have five hours per month that I can actually watch than unlimited streaming that is completely worthless. And I see by this article that the problem has been going on for over a year? Netflix should fix the problem already or it should stop participating in false advertising by claiming that you will get streaming movies on your PC. I can’t stream anything from NetFlix. It would take five hours to watch a two hour movie because it keeps freezing and trying to re-buffer.
7. February 2010 at 4:29 pm
Most of have no problems streaming Netflix. I stream Netflix nearly daily for the last 18 months or so with no problems. I get 4-dot and HD streams consistently.
I am not convinced this is a Netflix issue that you’re having. You said you don’t have problems with YouTube or Google, but neither are generally as high quality as Netflix. Netflix’s 4-dot requires about a 2mb/down connection minimum.
There can also be issues with your ISP. You might be getting high latency or having issues with your connection to Netflix’s nearest CDN.