Netflix to cut streaming quality in Europe for 30 days

malachi said:
Yeah but they could also be testing the waters for something else. Slowly reducing the quality without the monthly sub to reflect the change and see how many people complain.

This may be a one off but we don't want to give them a free pass all the time to think it's ok while they charge the same.
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Tbh the price has been creeping up and I don't spend a lot of time using it as it is, it's one of the easiest "luxuries" I can cut without really giving too much thought to it.

Do make some really good content from time to time though.
 
I pay for the 4K service but if it’s going to be restricted to 1080p then I’ll just adjust my sub to the 1080p version and save a few £ until it’s back up and running.
 
BowdonUK said:
I don't have netflix. But I'd suggest this is more an issue with their own data servers than the Internet in general.
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Noooo... netflix have one of the best core networks around, integration into AWS, massive presence in pops around the planet. Literally if anyone has bandwidth to deliver it's them. This is a step to ease the congestion on ISPs.
 
BowdonUK said:
I don't have netflix. But I'd suggest this is more an issue with their own data servers than the Internet in general.
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Yup. They don't want to pay for upgraded servers for this temporary peak.

So they should refund their customers.

Microsoft been suffering with their teams service. Vpn's are getting hammered too.

What did they do in response? Up their own service to be capable to provide the customer demand.

Netflix though decided to cheap out.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
Yup. They don't want to pay for upgraded servers for this temporary peak.

So they should refund their customers.

Microsoft been suffering with their teams service. Vpn's are getting hammered too.

What did they do in response? Up their own service to be capable to provide the customer demand.

Netflix though decided to cheap out.
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That is literally complete and utter twoddle.
 
ultralaser said:
Noooo... netflix have one of the best core networks around, integration into AWS, massive presence in pops around the planet. Literally if anyone has bandwidth to deliver it's them. This is a step to ease the congestion on ISPs.
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Can you provide a source saying isps were struggling?

I mean wasn't the champions league final broadcast for free on YouTube in 4k last year?
 
Psycho Sonny said:
Can you provide a source saying isps were struggling?
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ISPs are getting absolutely smashed to bits right now, we're seeing congestion and problems on many of the big ISPs via our own telemetry, especially in EU and NA and especially at peak times.

Source; I help run one of the worlds largest low-latency gaming networks, and we peer with thousands of other eyeball networks, so we have a very good view of the state of the internet, and it really is taking a battering.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
Can you provide a source saying isps were struggling?

I mean wasn't the champions league final broadcast for free on YouTube in 4k last year?
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It's not that ISPs now are having problems, but netflix for a while have been the major demand on all ISPs (something like 15% of all internet traffic is netflix)....
 
Dis86 said:
Person A didn't plan well.
Person B did.

Person B is a smart cookie. We need more person B's. We need fewer person A's. Alternatively person A could eat person B.
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Cannibalism isn't common but revolution is. That's what often happens when you have a massive income disparity coupled with ignorance and contempt towards the underclass and then add enough desperation. We're not close enough yet and haven't been for at least 150 years, but it could go that way. But probably not cannibalism. Not even if we run out of baked beans completely! :)
 
Screeeech said:
ISPs are getting absolutely smashed to bits right now, we're seeing congestion and problems on many of the big ISPs via our own telemetry, especially in EU and NA and especially at peak times.

Source; I help run one of the worlds largest low-latency gaming networks, and we peer with thousands of other eyeball networks, so we have a very good view of the state of the internet, and it really is taking a battering.
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^^ listen to this chap.
 
I'm no expert. But basically, netflix push as much content (I.e. video) as possible to their own custom hadware in your local "points of presence", they call this netflix open connect, a POP is normally a facility where lots of ISPs or major content providers exchange internet data. Imagine large caches of netflix material with high performance interconnects to the ISPs like BT, Virgin Media etc. Netflix invest a lot in custom hardward in POPs so that rather than streaming content from, say, the united states, your actually streaming it from your local exchange. In the UK for example if you're in Manchester getting your weekly dose of <insert netflix program>, it's likely being provided by a netflix applicance in your local internet exchange (E.g https://portal.linx.net/stats/lans#man1). When content is updated (I.e. netflix say release a new episode) that episiode is synced to the netflix applicance at your local pop and then provided to you, so you don't have to talk to servers in the USA. Management of which users goes where is on AWS (Amazon Web Services) which is scalable compute so as the number of users grow the number of virtual machines that help shape that traffic does too (E.g. you connect from Egypt wanting to watch Top Gear, it'll point you to a POP in your region). When an ISP doesn't 'peer' (I.e. there's no local POP that the ISP and a netflix appliance are colocated) then you hammer bandwidth as all netflix traffic is routed to the nearest other POP (with some load balancing).

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Netflix appliance ^^

Netflix don't need to to this, they have the banwidth and the compute to scale to this COVID situation but the ISPs that connect us to them is a different matter. It's right and correct that Netflix took this step.
 
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ultralaser said:
Netflix don't need to to this, they have the banwidth and the compute to scale to this COVID situation but the ISPs that connect us to them is a different matter. It's right and correct that Netflix took this step.
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Yeah the problem is usually the BNG (broadband network gateway) of the ISP itself, that's normally where the congestion occurs. In many cases you have tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of xDSL / Cable / Fibre subscribers terminating on a BNG, ISPs generally tend to design these in an oversubscribed model, because it's generally accepted that not everyone will be watching Netflix at the same time........ most of them didn't factor viral pandemics into their BNG design :D

Netflix and Youtube have to play ball really... If ISP networks start getting congested to the point where everybody else starts getting affected - ISPs could be forced to take more drastic measures which could hurt Netflix even more, so by reducing the quality - seems like a reasonable thing to do..
 
This is rather frustrating, especially as it's been fine (for me and everyone I know anyway) - but there must be general bandwidth issues for this to be asked for I guess.
 
is this going to be like that thread posted years ago by some guy who used some thermal compound and said it blew his rig up........... can't even remember where that trhread went but it was proper comedy gold.
 
Screeeech said:
Yeah the problem is usually the BNG (broadband network gateway) of the ISP itself, that's normally where the congestion occurs. In many cases you have tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of xDSL / Cable / Fibre subscribers terminating on a BNG, ISPs generally tend to design these in an oversubscribed model, because it's generally accepted that not everyone will be watching Netflix at the same time........ most of them didn't factor viral pandemics into their BNG design :D

Netflix and Youtube have to play ball really... If ISP networks start getting congested to the point where everybody else starts getting affected - ISPs could be forced to take more drastic measures which could hurt Netflix even more, so by reducing the quality - seems like a reasonable thing to do..
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That's where my knowledge is a bit / lot rubish, I assume that a BNG acts a bit like a giant NAT with thousands of home broadband users aggregated via a single high performance (assume Juniper or Cisco with serious bandwidth) device which defo seems like a bottle neck. They (Youtube and Netflix) do have to play ball but definitely feel it's not fair to blame them at the moment as in assuming they don't have the bandwidth to sync content, cos I think they do :D
 
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