innobra faleene parrie
Gwenda Gronert
Netflix agreed to temporarily reduce bandwidth used by its streaming service in Europe, saying it will cut video bit rates for the next 30 days at the behest of the European Union to ease the load on internet networks in the region.
The move came after EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, in discussions with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings over the last two days, urged the company the company switch to standard-definition video to ease congestion on networks during the coronavirus pandemic. The concern is that HD streaming video would swamp broadband networks as millions of quarantined people are working remotely.
According to the company, streaming TV shows or movies on its service uses about 1 gigabyte of data per hour for each stream of standard-definition video, compared with up to 3 GB per hour for each stream of HD video.
Can someone confirm if Roku is capping bandwidth? I have 6 Roku's connected (2 ethernet / 4 wifi) and I was always able to hit around 200 mbps ethernet and up to 120 mbps wifi now all of a sudden at best I only get 50 mbps max on all of my roku devices. Is it the Roku test site that's not testing accurately or are they actually limiting bandwidth? I have Xfinity's 1200 meg package and my desktop that's hardwired reaches those speeds anytime throughout the day, my PS5 speeds are in the 800's and my mobile devices hit in the 400-500's. Everything connected to my network is always stable except for my Roku devices.
Roku devices with an Ethernet jack are Fast Ethernet. This is 100 Mbps, with real world speeds around 92 Mbps. The WiFi radios/chips they use are not particularly high speed either. The highest WiFi speed I've recorded on any of my Roku devices is my Ultra 4800, which I've seen reach about 210 Mbps. You were never seeing 200 Mbps on a wired connection. If that was the reported number, it was inaccurate.
But you need to remember what Roku has designed these devices for: streaming from an Internet source. At the present time, there's no online provider that streams at more than 25 Mbps, so there's no demand for higher speeds. Yes, those of us that stream from local media servers would like higher speeds for our UHD rips. But I've also tested my 4800 using the USB port, so no network bottleneck. Even the most powerful processor in the 4800 can't process video bitrates above about 160 Mbps. Even that speed I saw some video stuttering, so not a smooth playback. For this use, a Roku simply isn't the best device. But for any currently available online source, their network connections are more than adequate.
One last comment about the network speeds reported by the Roku device. Virtually all of my devices older than the 4800 have never reported the speeds I measured on the 4800. I don't know if the networks were that much slower on them, or if they were finally reported more accurately in the newest Roku devices. But regardless of the reported connection speed, I still never had any issues with online streaming sources. Only with my local media, and even then only with UHD movie rips.
Hardwired with my 4k 2021 Roku Express (2) I was easily ranging between 180-220. Once I positioned my router my Roku wifi sticks easily were in the 100-120 range. These were my readings every time I would test the connection up until I'd say about 3 weeks ago. Seems to me after the latest update speed slowed down dramatically but I don't know how accurate the Roku connection test really is. I wish they had a speed test app
Sorry, those weren't accurate numbers. Fast Ethernet is rated at 100 Mbps, and with packet overhead real world bitrate is around 92 Mbps. There's no way your wired connection was that fast. Again, I'm referring to Roku devices with an Ethernet jack built in, which currently is only the Ultra and most Roku TVs.
Now, let me clarify something. The Roku Express 4K doesn't come with a wired connection, so you must be using a 3rd party USB Ethernet adapter. It's entirely possible the USB adapter you are using is rated at Gigabit speeds, so that would explain the speeds you're seeing. But topping out at 220 Mbps would be in line with the best WiFi speeds I've been able to register, and as I mentioned the Roku itself isn't capable of displaying video at rates that high anyway. So you're losing nothing.
Netflix has a speed test built into their channel that is reasonably accurate, and as I mentioned the Roku network test reported speed is much more accurate with the latest models. Vudu also has a speed test, but I can't recall if it actually reports the value or simply rates the speed for supporting various resolution streaming.
Questions on Server Fault must be about managing information technology systems in a business environment. Home and end-user computing questions may be asked on Super User, and questions about development, testing and development tools may be asked on Stack Overflow.
In Poland, it is common for mobile ISPs to offer plans with limited amount of bandwidth per month, with exclusion of some popular apps. So for example all traffic from YouTube is not counted towards the data cap.
I know it could be done with just looking at the IP address, but YouTube has a ton of IPs, and I suspect they change all the time. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if some of YouTube's IPs are shared with other Google services, which are not uncapped by the ISPs...
ISP's have an IP database. For example YouTube's ASN is AS15169. On the server side they would make a grouping for each service. One of them is the default grouping and this is the billing group. When you make use of default group, that usage is recorded in the system.
Some ISPs use SNI for this. For example in Turkey this method is used for making specific internet packages like 5GB internet+4GB Spotify or 7GB internet with unlimited WhatsApp. Also they use SNI for banning websites. Some websites use the same IP addresses like wikimedia.com or wikipedia.org. If they try to block Wikipedia with an IP addresses they block all Wikimedia services.
HTTPS obscures the content of the traffic, but not the endpoints. So, for instance, my ISP does not know that I'm responding to this particular question, because I'm using HTTPS, but they do still know that I'm accessing content on serverfault.com port 443.
In specific cases such as the ISP/Neflix partnerships you describe, it's also common for Netflix to co-locate one of their endpoints in the ISP's data center, which then operates similarly to a CDN - when you connect to Netflix, you get the Netflix server on the ISP's own network, which makes it even easier for them to track it for purposes of the deal, since your traffic never leaves their own network. (The co-located server still needs to get the video streams from another Netflix server outside of the ISP's network, of course, but funneling everything through the co-located server allows them to cache data, use dedicated connections, aggregate streams, etc. to reduce their costs and/or pass some of those costs back to Netflix as part of the partnership deal.)
Even more simple - THEIR DNS will answer with specific IP addresses of local proxies. This may not even break HTTPS - they can port forward from there. But this allows you to have the free traffic on specific IP addresses and remove those from the accounting.
In addition to knowing IP addresses as explained in other answers, some CDNs offer their nodes to host at ISPs. For example: Edge nodes / Google Global Cache. Data served from those nodes never leaves ISP perimeter and never hits "outbound" traffic counter. This, incidentally, is also exactly why ISP are able to offer this traffic for free or at significantly cheaper price.
A small addition to the otherwise excellent answers so far. I'm aware that many ISPs, certainly all the ones I've dealt with anyway, handle this via Class of Service groups. Essentially traffic from and to specific ASNs are tagged with a specific CoS that is then considered unmetered by their stats engines. This makes the actual stat tracking easier on the infrastructure and billing easier. It also allows for throttling but not many use that today - though that might change when it comes to mobile tariffs in the future, and VBR will handle the playback flutucations this will cause.
While the lack of high-speed internet has wide-ranging consequences, one that is overlooked is the inability to stream video. It's not just missing out on your latest shows from the growing (and merging) number of services, either: Lacking fast enough internet to watch video cuts people off from livestreamed news, digital classrooms and more. Relying on cable TV or satellite, or in some areas a small number of over-the-air channels, can be extremely limiting and a less-than-ideal substitute.
According to a Pew Research Center report, "While most adults living in rural areas (73%) subscribe to high-speed internet at home, they are less likely to do so than their peers living in suburban areas (86%) and slightly less likely than those living in urban settings (77%)."
Getting those millions of Americans access to high speeds for video streaming, online education, telehealth services or running a business is largely a funding issue. In some cases it's needed to build out broadband infrastructure, in others it's a renewal of programs that help keep the costs of internet service down. Which is to say, the lack of broadband goes deeper than just an inability to watch the latest Marvel show, and finding a solution isn't as simple. Here's why.
Many people don't give much thought to internet speeds. Usually it just works, and there's no reason to question it. Pretty much every internet user experiences occasional speed-related issues, like pauses in videos, drops in resolution, stuttering and buffering, though they may be too infrequent to matter. Those who lack access to reliable and fast internet speeds have those issues and more.
It's easiest to think about internet bandwidth like a pipe full of water. For someone living in a well-served metro area like New York or LA with 1 gigabit per second fiber, it's a huge pipe. Anything in their home that requires some amount of that water (aka data from the internet) can tap into the flow without limiting other devices. So if the pipe is big enough for a household with a family, the daughter can download a new game on her gaming PC, dad can play a console game online with his friends and mom can watch Netflix, all at the same time with no slowdown or other issues.
90f70e40cf