NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Messages regarding Internet video and other high traffic applications
Greetings. In response to Bob Frankston's recent posting about the initial choppiness he saw on a 2 Mbps video stream over his FiOS connection, a flurry of responses to and from him were cc'd to this list. Rather than post them all here, I'm going to summarize a few key points that I believe are most relevant: Bob wondered if Verizon might be detecting that the stream was video and treating it in a particular manner based on that determination. Brett Glass replied with: "And so you're complaining? Be glad. Many ISPs would cut off or throttle a stream that heavy." (Brett, could you provide us with contacts at any ISPs -- other than your own of course -- that we can contact to better understand the basis of your apparently categorical assertion? Thanks.) Bob suggested that a 2 Mbps stream isn't all that heavy by today's standards. I agree that this is increasingly the case. Full screen SD and "HD" video streams are becoming more common on many sites for streaming to PCs. Also, a number of consumer devices -- some of which compete directly with ISP TV/movie offerings -- will stream and/or download considerably faster. TiVo HD seems to take around half the available bandwidth up to 10 Mbps at least. A number of specialized movie downloading boxes are now on the market with similar characteristics. As these devices penetrate into more homes and are more widely used, P2P may have a lot of high bandwidth company. And on that topic, Brett noted an article at The Register related to non-P2P applications and their ISP impacts: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/20/iplayer_isps_broke/ Warren Kumari wrote that any number of factors other than ISP-specific actions targeting video could have been responsible for the effects that Bob saw, and mentioned that while technically auto-bandwidth rerouting could be involved, that's almost certainly not what's going on in this case. I agree with Warren on both points. And so it goes ... --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator