Is Netflix too much traffic for your ISP?

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JohnButt

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#171601 24-Apr-2015 15:43

TrueNet published the March Broadband comparison and it looks likely that OTT video has caused congestion.

March data shows a significant slowdown for many ISPs, suggesting the impact of Netflix on traffic is bigger than expected. TV3 asked if the same had occurred on the startup of Lightbox, while we didn't realise at the time, it clearly did, Spark performance dropped in August and then took a couple of months to recover.

see our report here:
https://www.truenet.co.nz/articles/march-2015-broadband-report

The key chart that shows the drop is with ADSL:

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#1290901 24-Apr-2015 15:44

I am sure usage will drop after first free month of Netflix ends

Talkiet

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#1290908 24-Apr-2015 16:01

There's some pretty broad strokes being painted here and some bigger than average assumptions being made. It's so tempting to take temporally correlated events and infer causality and we all do it from time to time - however we ALL need to keep in mind when reading this sort of material that it's an assumption, based on a correlation.

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lxsw20

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#1290909 24-Apr-2015 16:05

Out of interest does anyone know if any of the ISPs have Netflix Open Connect Appliances in NZ?

eXDee

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#1290968 24-Apr-2015 16:33

lxsw20: Out of interest does anyone know if any of the ISPs have Netflix Open Connect Appliances in NZ?

The only one i've seen discussed is Snap, but just happened to see a passing comment rather than searching about it.

Regs

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Snowflake

#1290985 24-Apr-2015 16:56

how do we know this is due to Netflix, and not to torrenting GoT, or streaming The Bachelor, for example?

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garvani

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#1290989 24-Apr-2015 17:02

It probably all had an effect on usage throughout the month (except the bachelor, who actually watches that rubbish let alone would stream it). Its a well known fact that netflix uses aproximatly 1/3 of US bandwidth during peak hours so its fair to say it would have an effect here, how much is hard to gauge exactly at this point.

I for one am keen on seeing some Open Connect Devices installed nationally, it can't hurt for all the major ISP's to have one. On a side note just finishing the first episode of Daredevil and i have rather enjoyed it so will be contributing to there usage tonight ;)

BigPipeNZ

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#1290990 24-Apr-2015 17:04

eXDee:
lxsw20: Out of interest does anyone know if any of the ISPs have Netflix Open Connect Appliances in NZ?
The only one i've seen discussed is Snap, but just happened to see a passing comment rather than searching about it.

Pretty sure FullFlavour have said they have one.

Glad to see Bigpipe still performing solidly.

We (Bigpipe) haven't seen any material increase in traffic per customer since Netflix launch, but that might be because our customers fit a different profile to 'typical' ISPs. They already used masses of traffic before anyway, and IMHO likely already have Netflix via one of the independant services - like Unotelly.

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BigPipeNZ

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BigPipe

#1290994 24-Apr-2015 17:10

Regs: how do we know this is due to Netflix, and not to torrenting GoT, or streaming The Bachelor, for example?

shouldn't be too hard to tell from the timing and volume of the traffic.

Torrenting GoT would likely have shown up as a peak on or around the day it launches, before tailing off - and would only be a couple of GB per week (and not necessarily at peak times either ) Netflix traffic would be reasonably consistent every evening, and be consistenly streaming 5-7Mbps (where the connection can handle it)

Having said that, Netflix didn't launch until 24th March so I'd be surprised if it had enough impact in just one week to make a noticable difference.. (this data is for the month of March)

The iiNet CEO recently claimed that Netflix has gone from being 3% of his traffic before launch, to being 25% of all his traffic within 3 weeks since launch. to do it that quickly seems unusual, so I'm a little sceptical of that tbh, but a lot of iiNet customers have been (anecdotally) reporting significant slowdowns in the same period on forums like whirlpool.com.au

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pchs

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#1291000 24-Apr-2015 17:23

So it seems that the degraded performance is only happening on DSL, not on Fibre - so I would not say its an overall "ISP backhaul/network capacity" issue".

Chorus have also had known issues on parts of their DSL network across the metro networks in the past month, so I'd guess this is much more likely to be the cause of the slow down rather than ISP based congestion, especially seeing that its reported across all of the major carriers.

Brumfondl

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#1291003 24-Apr-2015 17:41

Regs: how do we know this is due to Netflix, and not to torrenting GoT, or streaming The Bachelor, for example?

Oh dear God please don't let The Bachelor be remotely popular enough to be causing issues...

Oh, and I am betting that GoT torrents are a lot more than just a "few gigs" but I doubt they are the problem either.

BigPipeNZ

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#1291007 24-Apr-2015 17:53

Brumfondl:
Regs: how do we know this is due to Netflix, and not to torrenting GoT, or streaming The Bachelor, for example?

Oh dear God please don't let The Bachelor be remotely popular enough to be causing issues...

Oh, and I am betting that GoT torrents are a lot more than just a "few gigs" but I doubt they are the problem either.

the blu-rays aren't out yet, so people will mostly be downloading the web-rip versions, which will only be a couple of GB in size each episode.

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Sideface

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#1291073 24-Apr-2015 19:35

pchs: So it seems that the degraded performance is only happening on DSL, not on Fibre - so I would not say its an overall "ISP backhaul/network capacity" issue"...

Performance degradation is not limited to xDSL - look at these TrueNet stats for Wellington cable over the last week:

Note the severe speed dip at 9pm.

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pchs

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#1291086 24-Apr-2015 20:01

Sideface:
pchs: So it seems that the degraded performance is only happening on DSL, not on Fibre - so I would not say its an overall "ISP backhaul/network capacity" issue"...

Performance degradation is not limited to xDSL - look at these TrueNet stats for Wellington cable over the last week:

Note the severe speed dip at 9pm.

Agreed, but its reasonaby widely known that the cable network suffers from peak time congestion. However It does not appear on Fibre, which strongy points to last mile (I.E Chorus, and yes Vodafone Cable) congestion.

The other thing is that if this is the case it wont be consistant, it will affect different areas, but you can't easily tell that from Truenet.

its interesting on the otherhand to see the Google Video quality report where in most cases ISP's have actually improved.

tieke

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#1291130 24-Apr-2015 21:23

BigPipeNZ:
... a lot of iiNet customers have been (anecdotally) reporting significant slowdowns in the same period on forums like whirlpool.com.au

By the sounds of this reddit post, some Aussie ISPs have definitely felt the need to address capacity.

sbiddle

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#1291210 25-Apr-2015 08:06

tieke:
BigPipeNZ:
... a lot of iiNet customers have been (anecdotally) reporting significant slowdowns in the same period on forums like whirlpool.com.au

By the sounds of this reddit post, some Aussie ISPs have definitely felt the need to address capacity.

Australia's problem is also it's wholesale network. They have terrible DSL speeds, horrible wholesale product dimensioning, and horrible wholesale network architecture compared to NZ.

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