Streaming bandwidth issues on Netflix's side?

I recently joined Netflix, mainly interested in the new ability to stream content through the Xbox 360. Over the last few days I've been using it quite a bit, and from what I've seen it appears that the quality degradation issue is on Netflix's side.

Let me explain a bit. I'm on a 6.5 mbit connection, I confirm this through www.speedtest.net and similar internet sites to see my actual bandwidth. I use the internet a lot including lots of VPN activity during business hours when I'm working from home. I check the speeds often and my returns are very consistant except on the rare occasions that my ISP is having issues.

Over the last several days I've streamed movies and TV shows at all hours of the day from 9am to 10-11pm EST. Ok... so my "working" at home isn't always really working ;) Anyway, during the day I get great connection quality of 4 bars and get HD offerings in HD through the 360. As the night moves on however, the quality degrades through several steps until it's eventually a blurry mess not worth my time.

It start around 7pm EST when I often get my first interruption and a quality adjustment, but the difference is not noticable. Over the next hour or two I will often get a few more downgrades, each time I check my internet speeds and they are consistantly at 6.5mbit. Almost every night around 9pm EST I get a downgrade so severe that the quality is horrible, and often the buffering even at that low quality takes 2 minutes. During the day my buffering for HD quality takes around 15 seconds.

I don't believe this is an ISP issue as my pings, bandwidth, and packet loss quality all remain very steady. I am personally using more bandwidth on my connection during the day with an always open VPN connection that constantly streams data from my work. And yet by 9:15 each night the quality of "my internet connection" is trash from Netflix. I believe this is an issue of bandwidth on their side, not mine.

I was just wondering if anyone else has noticed the same tendencies? The time would probably be Netflix's busiest, lining up with 6pm on the west coast and the most members accessing content. I was initially very happy with the service, but if this is what I will continue to get I don't see any use for it.

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Permalink Reply by Max Hops on January 12, 2009 at 12:49pm: You can score high in all the speed tests but if your ISP is throttling packets from the Netflix servers you'll never get 4 bars. makes sense for the cable companies to block competition from using their bandwidth.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jeremy Johnson on January 12, 2009 at 12:53pm: It only makes sense to throttle if they'd rather have me switch from cable to DSL.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Max Hops on January 12, 2009 at 2:41pm: Definitely and option to consider, the problem is for most things Internet via cable is much faster than DSL.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by digiblur on January 13, 2009 at 5:00pm: Cox Cable user here...

I can get 4 bars during the day but after 5pm it's back to 1 bar. But then I can instantly start downloading something from a website at 1 megabyte per second. I can consistently test at 12000+/1500 on my cable modem. Something farther up the pipe is clogged.

There's a thread on dslreports.com with a free Cox support folks in there. If you are on Cox cable and having no issues or issues please stop by the thread link below and tell us your results with Netflix and Cox cable.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21698784-OK-Netflix-Streaming-Issu...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Max Hops on January 13, 2009 at 6:32pm: It seems like throttling of netflix packets by many of the cable companies starts between 5PM and 9PM. I did some wokrarounds with my Internet settings to disguise bittorrent which Comcast throttles and it seems to help with Netflix.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John Waterhouse on May 11, 2009 at 12:07am: Could you explain those workarounds? I've looked at several forums and dozens of threads on this subject, and it does make sense that it's a throttling issue. But I don't know how to bypass it. Any instructions would be helpful. Thanks.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Max Hops on May 19, 2009 at 5:58am: Try this site http://portforward.com/ tweaks for most modems are there. They don't have anything for Netflix yet, but the bittorent tweaks worked from me.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Julian on May 18, 2009 at 8:33pm: Ever since the beginning of NetFlix's update I have not had netflix determine the video quality above two bars. For months (since netflix on the 360 started) I have had nothing but excellent an connection. Watching HD movies blessed with the speed of angles wings. Fios is my current way of getting to the net. I originally believed that this might be some neutrality thing or a problem with my internal network. I now know that is not the case. 3 routers later and new cables, I have screen captures of what is happening when I start and stop a stream. The captures show a breif moment where communication bounces but then kicks into high gear. Unfortunately, it appears that the way they are determining video qual now is what is causing the bounce in traffic speed. It sucks... and is broken unless you have fake speed (something like speedboost?)

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/8878/20066561.jpg

Here one can see the screen capture. Twice I start the playback for a potential HD stream and I am above 5mbits once streaming starts. That is more than enough to get 4 bars on an SD stream, yet I can only get two bars.; ▶ Reply to This