Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-19/wireless-carrier-throttling-of-online-video-is-pervasive-study

by pseudolus • 7 years ago

197 170 7 years ago

awinter-py2• 7 years ago

if I were legislating this I'd mandate transparency before I mandated neutrality -- maybe consumers would be willing to pay up or switch to a provider that provided neutrality for streaming.

one way for government to provide usable markets is to mandate good information without setting standards.

NFLX is over neutrality for home internet (not sure about mobile), they're in every server cage

maybe neutrality is the wrong policy

or maybe ISPs shouldn't be in the content biz

zacharycohn• 7 years ago

Most people do not have another reasonable option to switch to.

awinter-py2• 7 years ago

for wired internet I suspect this is right in some places -- I read a thing about fiber providers slicing up cities by block or zip code

but for wireless most providers have dense coverage maps. I use ting which operates on sprint or t-mobile I think so there's even more variety if you include resellers.

mikepurvis4• 7 years ago

It surprises me that most people in the US wouldn't have at least one cable and one DSL option. After all, cable TV is available most places, and everyone has a phone line (or is at least wired for one).

Or is the issue rural locations which were never wired for cable because they all just got satellite dishes?

Ensorceled2• 7 years ago

If you have a monopoly or duopoly, transparency doesn't really help. Your only service provider transparently screwing you doesn't give you an option to switch ...

ApolloFortyNine2• 7 years ago

This article is about wireless carriers, not wired ones. In all but the most remote areas, all 4 major carriers are acceptable.

Wireless also does truly have true limits.

JustSomeNobody3• 7 years ago

On the one hand, I can see needing the ability to throttle for network traffic handling because you'll always have that one person who goes into an all you can eat, grabs 10 plates and all the chocolate pudding because they have to feel like they got one over on ... well, everyone. On the other hand, doing this 24/7? That's just not right and I think this runs afoul network neutrality legis... oh, wait.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC10• 7 years ago

On the one hand, I can see needing the ability to throttle for network traffic handling because you'll always have that one person who goes into an all you can eat, grabs 10 plates and all the chocolate pudding because they have to feel like they got one over on ... well, everyone.

So, you want to allow companies to not fulfill contracts because the company has failed to fulfill contracts?

Mind you, if customers in this scenario of yours don't get to eat as much as they can eat, that has absolutely nothing to do with the other customer that happened to eat as much as they can eat, and everything with the company not being able to fulfill the contract that they entered into. It is the company's fault, and only the company's fault, if they enter into contracts with multiple people that say "N bucks for as much as you can eat", if they then don't have enough food to feed all those people.

JustSomeNobody3• 7 years ago

No, that's not what I said at all. I want someone tending the eatery telling the person scooping out all of the chocolate pudding that, sure, they may have as much as they like, but let others have some now and we have more in the back that we're bringing out. You just need to wait a few moments, so have your one plate, then come back for more.

ben7799• 7 years ago

I keep thinking I see this on my wired (Comcast) connection too.

Stuff just behaves too strangely for it to be anything else.

One video provider will get slow. Switch to the mobile connection and it's fine. Switch to another site on the wired connection, that's fine too.

They've made it perfectly clear they're unhappy I won't pay them an extra $100+/month for 900 channels of crap over and over.

devoply• 7 years ago

They've made it perfectly clear they're unhappy I won't pay them an extra $100+/month for 900 channels of crap over and over.

CEO: You know how we solve this, offer them more channels at a premium price. Which will show them 1 or maybe 2 shows they want to see.

checktheorder• 7 years ago

Same phenomenon for me in southern Ontario. My ISP (Start.ca) is using Rogers' infrastructure. Evenings equal poor streaming video performance on all sites despite an otherwise-perfect connection. If I connect to a VPN, video performance mysteriously improves instantly.

If I were of a suspicious mind, I'd wonder if Rogers is pulling some backend shenanigans to discourage cord-cutting.

jedberg10• 7 years ago

See my sibling comment for a possible explanation.

jedberg10• 7 years ago

This is your ISP being sneaky, but probably not in the way you think. This is what Netflix has been complaining about for years.

Your ISP is purposely providing a too-small link to your video provider. So when a lot of people are using that provider, it gets slow. When you switch to another provider, or a VPN, you get to use a fast connection to that other VPN that isn't overloaded, and then a fast connection back to your video provider.

This way your ISP can claim they are not throttling traffic because they aren't inspecting the packets for traffic shaping, they are just using physically poor connectivity to certain providers for traffic shaping.

briffle3• 7 years ago

Not to mention, they can now go and ask that provider to pay them for the right to 'upgrade' their connection, to enable their customers to get what they are paying the ISP for.

kwhitefoot2• 7 years ago

The title should say "US Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study"

The article doesn't suggest that this problem exists outside the US. Perhaps it does.

cryptoz• 7 years ago

The second sentence of the article links to the paper cited, which shows the international data.

kwhitefoot2• 7 years ago

Ah, thanks.

A cursory scan of the paper found table 4 which suggests that the problem is principally a North American one nonetheless.

JohnJamesRambo• 7 years ago

I’m reminded of a comment I read a few days ago from someone that has their own small isp that said bandwidth was basically an inconsequential cost for them. Throttling like this is penny pinching of the highest order. How do we get the benefits of competition if every company is doing it?

maxerickson• 7 years ago

Upstream vs capacity. If there's a bunch of phones on a tower, bandwidth on that tower isn't inconsequential.

wbl• 7 years ago

Shannon-Hartley is a harsh mistress. There is only so much wireless capacity especially when you have a bunch of phones close to each other.

sixothree6• 7 years ago

when you have a bunch of phones close to each other

Even when you don't apparenly...

woah• 7 years ago

Bandwidth to the internet is inconsequential. Bandwidth to your home (or phone) is the entire service the ISP is providing. Throttling saves on both.

BubRoss• 7 years ago

Cable companies and wireless companies want to keep selling you your data multiple times. Internet fast enough for video eats in to selling you video. Wireless internet that can use WhatsApp for mms means you won't pay extra for more texts.

ApolloFortyNine2• 7 years ago

This is mobile where at least it is limited, at least with 4G.

Wired on the other hand has no excuse.

tcxqy2• 7 years ago

Wireless is a medium that is severely limited because of the laws of physics. I 100% support QoS.

And by QoS I don't mean limiting video even if there's available bandwidth, I mean limiting it if other people are trying to use their connections reasonably.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC10• 7 years ago

Now, please explain why, in the case of contention, the user using video should get less than their fair share of the available capacity?

tcxqy2• 7 years ago

Because in case of congestion the user watching video is abusing the system. It's like going to a congested public road with a convoy of lorries just because you can. Really, don't be a dick.

toast03• 7 years ago

In part, because most video sites will adapt the stream to the achievable bandwidth.

In part, because if the throttle all bulk data transfers over some minimum size, all the time, most people are only going to notice on video streaming, since videos are the most frequent bulk transfers.

kortilla• 7 years ago

If everyone got a constant equal share of capacity on LTE, it would be so slow nobody could watch video at all. Are you sure that’s what you want?

berbec• 7 years ago

If companies were better about being up-front, I would have no issue. I usually can't tell when my phone's streaming resolution drops to 480p, so I really don't care. It's being sneaky about it, on page 13 in small text, that bothers me.

jcims• 7 years ago

If these streaming providers would actually provide consumers with effective tooling to determine if throttling is taking place, this would get a lot more traction. I fought with CenturyLink for 18 months collecting stats on overall network performance vs. throughput to YouTube because it was clear something was going on. It was a giant pain in the ass trying to come up with figures for YouTube.

jedberg10• 7 years ago

Check out https://fast.com from Netflix. It's a speed test based off of Netflix's servers, so it will tell you your bandwidth to Netflix at any given time.

Then complain to your ISP if that doesn't match your advertised speed.

psim1• 7 years ago

When the advertised speed is "up to XX Mbps" and you occasionally do get those speeds, then what is the proper complaint? They are providing "up to" the speed purchased. It works very well in the provider's favor.

criddell5• 7 years ago

Just ran it and I'm getting 44 Mbps. AFAIK, that's plenty of bandwidth from Netflix's perspective, so would complaining to my ISP make any sense? Should I be getting 300 Mbps with Netflix?

milankragujevic4• 7 years ago

I find that fast.com is often inaccurate as in showing impossibly high values. Like, speedtest.net shows 120/10 Mb and fast.com shows 190/77 Mb.

hristov• 7 years ago

I am going to say the obvious here but sometimes the obvious needs to be said. This is why we need net neutrality!

dehrmann4• 7 years ago

This is where net neutrality fails. I'm all for not letting vertically integrated carriers give their own services an unfair advantage, but if throttling a high-bandwidth user to improve the service of nearby users? I'm more ok with that.

MrStonedOne• 7 years ago

But thats not whats going on.

This is throttling by content, not by user.

All video content gets throttled so that the html5 video player negotiates a lower video resolution. t-mobile literally touts this as a feature.

Net neutrality is the belief that isps should only be allowed to throttle by user, never by content, all data should be equal.

geggam3• 7 years ago

Use a VPN in AWS to see the difference over the same line. It is interesting to say the least

Easy way to implement one to test with here

https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand

gruez4• 7 years ago

VPN in AWS

at 9 cents a gigabyte, it's definitely going to be pricey.

geggam3• 7 years ago

Given the reduction in size streaming ... not really.

So that same 2 hour movie on Hulu may be as little as 1.25 GB - Yep, 1/1200th of the original…. Or as much as 5–7GB for Netflix or Youtube.

dehrmann4• 7 years ago

Congestion is a real thing for LTE networks, so you have to throttle. There's only so much bandwidth over a shared medium.

QUFB• 7 years ago

I really, really hate to defend mobile carriers, but...

Congestion is a real thing. Mobile subscribers are now using significantly more data due to video streaming, and wireless carriers aren't expanding their capacity fast enough. 5G won't help for most of CONUS. Millimeter wave 5G, which will help, will only be deployed in urban areas. Mid-band and low-band 5G will only increase spectrum efficiency around 20%.

For now, carriers are throttling videos and introducing various deprioritization options. All the major carriers only offer plans with forced traffic deprioritization. For some plans, all traffic is deprioritized. For others, deprioritization happens after a threshold.

There isn't enough bandwidth in the US to support 240 million subscribers streaming Netflix 24/7.

preinheimer• 7 years ago

Sure, congestion is a thing, but:

- I feel like there should be some oversight or required transparency about how and when they're applying throttling. Can they throttle customers in under served markets all the time to save money? - They're currently throttling sites not protocols or users. Why? Did some sites pay them off? If they need to throttle they should be applying that process equally among sites. "But AT&T didn't slow Amazon.com's Prime Video at all" - I would be curious to see where bandwidth problems play out in terms of "carrier could build more towers, but hasn't" and "we've reached the actual peak of what's possible with current technology.

rhino3692• 7 years ago

And 720p or even 480p looks pretty fine on small ass screen. I left Tmo's throttling on so I wouldn't blow through my 6gb too quickly.

dehrmann4• 7 years ago

I really, really hate to defend mobile carriers, but...

For the most part, carriers sell unlimited, then throttle heavy users. While it's not honest, they're also not upselling those users on super unlimited plans. This makes me think carriers genuinely don't have the capacity for all this video. Without an upsell path, if they had the bandwidth, there'd by no incentive to throttle.

eeZah7Ux2• 7 years ago

so you have to throttle

Not at all. TCP already does its own rate limiting without external throttling.

bigdubs• 7 years ago

tcp doesn't work well for wireless because packet drops due to signal interference look like collisions

SpaethCo• 7 years ago

Not at all. TCP already does its own rate limiting without external throttling.

Individually, cars brake on the freeway to avoid hitting the car in front of them.

Collectively on a busy freeway, that sets off a chain reaction that results in the familiar rush hour crawl.

Minnesota did a study in 2001 on the effect of ramp meters, and disabling the meters (ie, removing throttling) resulted in statistically significant increase in overall freeway travel times.[0]

Statistically multiplexed shared networks like mobile wireless face similar issues. For a single TCP session the only metrics that can be divined by the endpoints are round-trip time and loss. As the shared network reaches capacity, larger numbers of TCP connections all back off around the same time, but large flows are more aggressive at ramping up than smaller flow (email/instant messaging, etc) and can result in an effective breakdown of network usability. A network control that has visibility to multiple flows and awareness of capacity of the system can influence overall performance much more effectively.

Ideally mobile providers would be trying to shoot for maintaining uniform latency per flow, similar to what queuing strategies like CoDel[1] achieve, but that's likely beyond the CPU and buffering capabilities of their existing hardware. Lacking the perfect solution, it's human nature to move on to the next approach: managing the biggest problem. Video is usually easy to identify, and so it wins the "able to be managed" prize.

[0]http://www.dot.state.mn.us/rampmeter/study.html [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoDel

larrik• 7 years ago

AT&T Inc. throttled Netflix Inc. 70% of the time and Google’s YouTube service 74% of the time
T-Mobile US Inc. throttled Amazon Prime Video in about 51% of the tests, but didn’t throttle Skype and barely touched Vimeo
Choffnes says Verizon can’t restrict his ability to publish research and the companies that support him don’t influence his work.

Yet, missing from this article: any %'s from Verizon

crazygringo3• 7 years ago

For both wired and wireless, it's time for legislation to address exactly what it and isn't permitted with regard to advertised speeds, throttling, and total usage -- both with respect to users, and with respect to peering.

It's not just an issue of policy, but one of transparency too.

It's a fact of life that more people will want to consume data than a network can support. So where are we going to make the cut? Diminish everyone's usage proportionally? Provide a guaranteed minimum? A minimum per minute, per hour, or per day? Prioritize traffic based on type? Implement caps? Allow people to pay for more speed, higher caps, or both?

Some of these will be better or worse for different users. But since people often have little or no choice over which carrier or ISP they use and switching can be expensive, this is exactly where it makes sense for policy to be made democratically, as with utilities. And publicized.

When I pay for a carrier, I want to know what I should be able to count on, and what I can't count on.

dec0dedab0de• 7 years ago

When I pay for a carrier, I want to know what I should be able to count on, and what I can't count on.

I can't up vote this enough. I think false advertising really needs to be clamped down on across the board, but when it's something I understand the nuances of it really gets to me.

Why do companies find it so difficult to just say what it is they are selling in clear concise language, without being purposely misleading, or hiding things in fine print?

clairity• 7 years ago

"Why do companies find it so difficult to just say what it is they are selling in clear concise language, without being purposely misleading, or hiding things in fine print?"

because it's more profitable?

it's a pretty direct line between the pressure to produce profits and lying to people to get it, particularly as it gets harder to produce profits through honest means.

remember that capitalism entices participants with profits to spur innovation, not to indulge the profit-taking itself, so any temporarily profitable enterprise should attract interest and drive down profits as competition enters the industry. so professional managers (e.g., executives) sometimes (often?) choose to lie & cheat to lengthen the period of profit-taking.

it's inexplicable that we accept that as normal, as if holding people & companies accountable for their words would stifle commerce and descend us into a totalitarian dystopia. instead, such accountability would only mean that getting filthy rich would be harder, while attaining comfortable wealth would be unchanged, if not more attainable.

stochastic_monk• 7 years ago

When I pay for compute on AWS, I get an SLA with guarantees. Why are citizens afforded any less?

lrem• 7 years ago

What false advertising? The ad clearly reads "up to 50mbps" and the 1.1mbps the copper in your neighbourhood allows is indeed positively in the 0-50 range!

Damn I hate consumer ISPs, with a few small exceptions.

14• 7 years ago

It's a fact of life that more people will want to consume data than a network can support.

Is this actually true or is it just a matter of the isp not building the needed infrastructure required? Because if it is just an infrastructure issue then I would question why they choose to not expand to a better service. Is it because they can get away with providing crappy service as many people only have a single choice of what isp is available in their area? I highly agree with your final statement and it’s true people just want to know what they can count on and not play the guessing game.

nerdponx• 7 years ago

It seems to be mostly true for most infrastructure (especially roadways), so it would be weird if it weren't true here.

crazygringo3• 7 years ago

It's a matter of economics.

An ISP could build the required infrastructure to support everyone's peak desired simultaneous usage... but then they'd probably have to quadruple (or worse) what people are paying for it just to break even, which the market wouldn't support, so they'd go out of business.

The same way restaurants could invest in enough space to handle all demand for Friday nights and Valentine's Day... but would go out of business because they couldn't keep it full enough to pay the rent the rest of the week/year.

Balanceinfinity• 7 years ago

Basic laws of supply and demand state that when you charge a fixed price and permit unlimited usage at that price, usage will approach infinity (that is, when the marginal price is zero). Everyone with a fixed price, unlimited usage plan has no incentive at all to restrain use. The wireless carriers cannot provide infinite service (the bandwidth simply doesn't exist).

usrusr2• 7 years ago

Take any public space. Now imagine it at it's peak density, when it is as crowded as it gets, maybe due to a once-a-decade event. Now imagine installing cells in sufficient density to avoid any oversubscription on that day. This density will never happen.

usrusr2• 7 years ago

When I pay for a carrier, I want to know what I should be able to count on, and what I can't count on.

You can absolutely count on any wireless transmission happening on a shared medium. Inconveniencing one high volume user to keep up service quality for dozens of low volume user is a perfectly rational business decision. As for transparency: well, good regulation is not easy, particularly when support for trying is not very strong.

sixothree6• 7 years ago

Strange that in 2019 YouTube is considered "high volume user".

gruez4• 7 years ago

Diminish everyone's usage proportionally? Provide a guaranteed minimum? A minimum per minute, per hour, or per day? Prioritize traffic based on type? Implement caps? Allow people to pay for more speed, higher caps, or both?

In the case of limited bandwidth, the "fairest" way would be to enforce a moving average cap. The most economically efficient way would be some sort of dynamic price system[1].

But since people often have little or no choice over which carrier or ISP they use and switching can be expensive

In the context of this thread (wireless carriers), isn't this moot? I get how there are local ISP monopolies for residential internet, but the whole country has good access to all the major carriers.

[1] instead of getting 5GB, you get 5,000,000 "bandwidth credits". If a cell tower is below capacity, each megabyte of transfer only costs a nominal amount of credits (200). But as capacity approaches 100%, it costs more and more (up to 10000, or more). We could even have a total free market similar to bitcoin network fees where customers can enter a bid. If your bid isn't high enough you're limited to 2g speeds, or get no data at all.

casylum• 7 years ago

But then carriers would have a financial motivation to not upgrade tower capacity. The more congested - the more money they make.

dylan604• 7 years ago

And how is this indicated to the user? At least the ride hailing apps displayed their "surge pricing" before you used the service. As I'm traveling through town and being handed off to different cell towers, am I going to see a pop-up saying the current rate on this tower is XXXX amount and allow me to accept or not? The flexible invisible cost is just not a good thing for end users

crazygringo3• 7 years ago

but the whole country has good access to all the major carriers

That's why I said switching can be expensive. If you discover bad internet speeds a month after you signed a standard 2-year contract with a carrier, what are you going to do?

Even if you pay that, you may need to pay for a new phone because of incompatible networks.

Not to mention the PITA of transferring your number.

(Similarly even if you have multiple ISP's, you may need to pay $$ for installation, a new modem, etc.)

badrabbit2• 7 years ago

How can they do this if the connection is over TLS? Or is this regardig real time UDP video?

dmitrygr3• 7 years ago

other side's IPs? They are usually well known

badrabbit2• 7 years ago

I suppose without a CDN that makes sense

big_chungus• 7 years ago

There is an actual problem here, but wireless carriers use the actual problem of how to balance traffic as a fake cover for charging more.

However, assuming we bypass the garbage tiering, there is a legitimate reason to do this. Page-loads are simple and fast. Every one loading pages is not much of an issue, as they typically load at different times for a brief moment and then are done. This means for a rated connection speed, you don't need as much actual capacity.

Video streaming (or other downloads) are constant. To stream video at rated speeds, you must build to provide most users that speed at the same time. Problem two here is that in cases of high traffic, video streaming is greedy. If it's not going at full resolution, it will suck up all available bandwidth it is given. If more is given, it will raise quality (by default settings, at least).

A sensible solution to this is to stream video and audio over UDP and have the router just drop UDP when TCP needs bandwidth (to a point). The point is, requirements are different. People sending e-mails shouldn't have to wait a minute to send because you really want to stream your netflix every where you go and in 4k.

Which reminds me, I thought mobile connections were for simple stuff. Light browsing, email, what-have-you. Even with "unlimited" plans, you're throttled after twenty-odd gigabytes of data per month. Why can't people just download netflix in advance? Failing that, I'm not sure why people expect to use a wireless internet connection in the same way as a wired one.

makecheck• 7 years ago

I don’t necessarily want throttling at the ISP level but I do want rules on what is “reasonable” for web sites on wireless. Data is expensive.

A big one: I often do what should be simple things data-wise, like tapping a link to “view article”, and am punished. Is it my fault that the obnoxious target site decided on its own to download and auto-play a huge video with sound in a floating window, none of which was requested or required!?

I have the right to squash that crap to save my data plan and battery (and sanity). That has meant installing blockers, and it doesn’t look like I’ll ever be able to stop doing so.

esotericn• 7 years ago

I don't see an issue with throttling video at all - the idea that I can bang a 4K stream down on LTE, which might be limited to 100mbit from the tower for everyone, means that's necessarily going to happen.

That said, I use secure encryption to prevent the ISP from viewing my browsing habits. Throttling VPN use carte-blanche because you don't know what's in there would be overkill.

It seems to me that it's best to just throttle based on allowing burst usage and treating all bulk downloading including streaming video identically.

avidetto• 7 years ago

Here's a thought - just mandate that all carriers should have an API that returns true congestion rate and throttling rate of users at a given time. This way we can keep everyone honest and transparent. That way - If i'm unable to watch my Netflix show in HD without bufferring across LTE, Netflix app can call an API to see if the throttle is limiting them.

projektfu• 7 years ago

I see a number of people who use YouTube just to listen to music on their phone. If you have an unlimited plan it's cheaper than paying for Spotify. So instead of a cheap 128kbps stream they are sending full motion video for someone who isn't watching anyway. I am curious what portion of streaming this represents.

JustSomeNobody3• 7 years ago

I have AT&T. Fast.com never goes over about 4Mbps. Any other speed test shows 20, 30, or more Mbps.

Wireless Carrier Throttling of Online Video Is Pervasive: Study

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