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After a few days of contemplation, I've come up with a few topics to cover that will hopefully make a worthy follow up to my last article. The response that I've gotten has been completely unprecedented. The article got over 30,000 hits, over 4,000 shares on Facebook, and I've received countless e-mails and messages over social media offering suggestions, support, and critique. I say unprecedented because this blog usually gets a trickle of a few hits a day. I was invited to speak on a radio station in San Francisco as well as a TV station in Seattle. It seems that people nationwide are quite serious about their Netflix.
Since tech support at Comcast is pretty much worthless, and consumers often don't have another viable ISP option in town, all I can do is raise awareness. That's what I plan to do in this article - examine in depth where our Netflix problem may lie and support it with some more evidence.
Given the high bitrate that Netflix HD requires, and the fact that streaming video is throttled by just about every ISP at some point as part of a quality of service scheme, I think it's totally plausible that Comcast throttles Netflix to some degree. This would especially be true in cases where a neighborhood line is oversubscribed. But I don't think that is the issue that is causing a 240Kbps bitrate on my 50Mbps connection, since many other services work fine. I think the big issue here is peering.
It's always interesting to watch the various "hops" that packets take as they make their way across the Internet. In this case, we can see that traffic goes north along the Comcast network before hitting the Level 3 fiber backbone, then going into the Netflix data center. Level 3 Communications is a Tier 1 Internet network - one of the major Internet backbone providers that own fiber optic cables criss-crossing the country. Almost all Internet traffic is routed along a Tier 1 network at some point. Additionally, Level 3 is a main provider in Netflix's content delivery network. They agree to host and serve Netflix's movie and TV collection at various points across the country, in exchange for a hefty sum of money from Netflix.
Essentially, ever since Level 3 inked a deal to be a part of Netflix's CDN, Comcast got a little salty with their old peering peer. Level 3 claims that "once Level 3 signed a contract to deliver video content for Netflix, Comcast jacked up charges for access to its subscribers." The dispute has been running for years, but I think it may have flared up once again.
If proof beyond a reasonable doubt is unachievable, then motive is our next best bet. And the motive can definitely be seen here. First of all, Comcast is saving money by skimping on their peering connection with Level 3. By letting traffic pile up at this bottleneck between Comcast customers and Netflix video being served at a node, they're putting pressure on Level 3 to negotiate a better peering price, while their customers suffer. Additionally, as a vertically integrated monopoly, Comcast has no incentive to fix this problem in a timely fashion, or at all. Since Comcast owns NBC-Universal, has incredible negotiating power with its cable content providers, and offers its own Xfinity streaming service, there's no reason why they would put any priority on improving the quality of a service that's only going to poach more of their cable customers over time. And like I said in my last article, since 3/4 of American households only have one choice for very fast broadband, their customers can't do much about it besides complain.
Without either regulation or the threat of more nimble competitors, Comcast and other ISPs run the risk of causing serious congestion problems on the Internet due to unresolved peering disputes. In this case, it may actually be beneficial to Comcast to let the traffic jam continue, especially when the cars stuck in the slow lane belong to a major content competitor. Our worst fears about Net Neutrality may soon come to pass, especially when January 2018 rolls around. As always, feel free to let me know your opinion on this issue via e-mail or Twitter.
I just plugged mine in for the second time and nothing. Doesn't work at all. The light is on but nothing shows up on the screen. Yes, I checked the HDMI connections, which works fine for my Roku; yes, I restarted it; yes, I did the test thing. But I guess I'm not gonna be able to use it, or Peacock.
Yes i agree. I guess they are giving it away because it does not work and they don't won't to offer support. There are a lof people here with the same problem and no response so i guess they don't monitor the forums. Perhaps some nice customer will figure this out and help us since comcast does not want seem to have the resources. I have the same problem.
I'd like to help resolve the Netfllix app launch issues you're experiencing. We'll start examining your account. Could you please send me a private message (including First Name, Last Name and Account Number) so I can connect with you as we trouble-shoot and may need to request/pass along account-specific information? Please also send along any other details on what you're seeing on-screen when this problem occurs. Thank you.
Can you describe here what you have a question about or what you're looking for information on? Once you share that, myself, or a fellow user or one of our Care colleagues can weigh in. As a general guideline, we like to keep the conversation in the public Community Forum -- unless a private exchange is needed (e.g., if account details might help investigate an issue), and in which case an Official Employee will let you know. Thank you!
I just got the Flex streaming box and set it up today only to discover that Netlix wouldn't load. It wouldn't even take me to the sign in screen, just closed after a few seconds and took me back to the Flex home screen. I used the chat option on the Xfinity mobile app and approximately an hour and a half later I am now watching Netflix. There is a solution, they just make you work for it. The reps name was Zoher, he was the 2nd person I spoke with but he was able to fix the issue.
Any transfer of data from this Cogent-backboned server to my Comcast Business site starts out at a normal transfer speed then rapidly drops off after a minute or two. For instance, right now it's estimating 3 hours to complete a 2 GB transfer.
We've spoken to Cogent about this and they told us that Comcast and Cogent are waging an ideological battle over Netflix (which also hosts on Cogent) and the tremendous amount of traffic Netflix generates. Thus, they allege, Cogent-to-Comcast traffic is shaped or otherwise limited after an initial burst.
I don't mind if you throttle Netflix (well, I do, but not as much) -- but is there some way we can whitelist a specific non-Netflix IP address to be full speed? Is there ANY way I can work around this? it is a huge inconvenience.
(Before you ask, yes, I have ruled out the possibility of a problem at the server side. Data going from the Cogent site to another colocation facility on Level 3 is blazingly fast. Additionally data transfers from non-Cogent sites to Comcast Business are fast. _Only_ transfers inbound from Cogent to my Comcast Business site are slow -- very, very slow.)
Welcome stevenf. We can verify that the appropriate level of service is applied to the account as well as interconnection between Comcast and Cogent. We have referred this to our Network Operations Team to investigate.
I'm seeing the same problem downloading files from my old ISP. Durning the day I get full speed (50Mb/s) but at night get 100KB/s. When doing I traceroute it is pretty obvious the problem is on this hop:
My ping go from 17ms to 70ms between those two hops. It only occurs after 5pm. During the day both hops ping at about 20ms. What was very interesting is that one night when I was testing things out Netflix had an outage. The moment they went down so did my pings and my download speeds went to maximum. Then Netflix came back online 30 minutes later and the pings went back up and downloads dropped. Comcast support is claiming it is a Cogent issue which is bogus because it is the pipe between the two hops that is overloaded. This pipe is shared so the problem is shared.
I've had some other Comcast users test things out and are seeing the same problem, so it isn't my equipment. My guess is the Netflix recently moved to Cogent and Comcast hasn't decided to bump up their pipes to deal with the new traffic routing.
IMO, Comcast should install a Open Netflix CDN and stop worrying about where the data is coming from. However, Comcast is worried about placing Netflix a "trojan horse" inside Comcast's network. I don't understand that concern.
But, in the end we the users pulling data across the same routes that Netflix data is passing are getting hosed. Seems like a simple fix, but so far Comcast seems unresponsive. So much for Business Class priority.
There's more to this than meets the eye. Cogent is one of the worst networks out there. I remember a few years ago when I had a BGP circuit going to them. I was stunned to discover I could advertise ANY netblock into their BGP network and it would be propagated to the rest of the world. Even blocks belonging to other people.
The fact is that all major networks peer. A peer agreement is very complex but boiled down it would be something along the lines that Comcast and Cogent both agree to send roughly equal amounts of traffic into each other's networks. As long as that is going on then neither side pays each other. But if one side sends a huge amount of traffic into the other side's network and the other side doesen't send much traffic back, then the side sending the huge amount of traffic is effectively getting free carriage.
That's the situation now. Cogent needs to pay Comcast since Cogent is sending far more traffic into Comcast's network than Comcast is sending into Cogent's network. In effect Comcast is charging all of us subscribers fees that are essentially supporting Netflix - in other words, the fees you pay Comcast aren't funding increased bandwidth that you can enjoy, it's funding increased bandwidth that your Netflix-watching neighbors MANY OF WHOM ARE ON OTHER ISPs are using.
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