Netflix stuffing data on pipe

Rob Seastrom rs-lists at seastrom.com
Mon Jan 4 15:35:58 UTC 2016


I haven't done packet dumps to verify the behavior (too busy catching up on holiday email) but I can't help but wonder if IW10 (on by default in FreeBSD 10 which I believe might be what Netflix has underneath) is causing this problem, and that maybe a more gentle CWND ramp-up (or otherwise tweaking the slow start behavior) for prefixes that are known to be in networks with weak hardware might be a good choice.

Of course this would be a change on Netflix's end...  as for things the ISP could do to alleviate the problem the answer is always "sure, but it'll cost ya".

-r


> On Jan 4, 2016, at 3:11 AM, Pete Mundy <pete at fiberphone.co.nz> wrote:
> 
> 
> Very succiently put, Owen!
> 
> I concur.
> 
> Is anything the ISP could avoid to alleviate this occurrence, or is it entirely a 'server-side' issue to resolve?
> 
> Pete
> 
> 
>> On 4/01/2016, at 8:42 pm, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> 
>> As I understand it, the problem being discussed is an oscillation that is created when the reaction occurs faster than the feedback resulting in a series of dynamically increasing overcompensations.
>> 
>> Owen




More information about the NANOG mailing list