Netflix stuffing data on pipe

Owen DeLong owen at delong.com
Mon Jan 4 07:42:12 UTC 2016


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

> On Jan 3, 2016, at 21:26 , Justin Wilson <lists at mtin.net> wrote:
> 
> Netflix is streaming video.  It will try to do the best data rate it can.  If the connection can handle 4 megs a second it is going to try and do 4 megs a second.  If the network can’t handle it then Netflix will back off and adapt to try and fit. 
> 
> Keep in mind, at least last I knew, a full HD stream was somewhere around 5 megs a sec.  If the customer has a 4 meg plan it will try and fill up that 4 megs unless the algorithm backs off and steps it down.  ISPs who run into this on lower packages need to implement QOS at the customer level to deal with streaming.  This can be done several ways.  This is one reason an endpoint the ISP controls is a huge asset, especially if it does QOS. 
> 
> 
> Justin Wilson
> j2sw at mtin.net
> 
> ---
> http://www.mtin.net Owner/CEO
> xISP Solutions- Consulting – Data Centers - Bandwidth
> 
> http://www.midwest-ix.com  COO/Chairman
> 
>> On Dec 31, 2015, at 1:39 PM, Evelio Vila <evelio at thousandeyes.com> wrote:
>> 
>> It is actually buffer-based, as it picks the video rate as a function of
>> the current buffer occupancy.
>> 
>> See here http://yuba.stanford.edu/~nickm/papers/sigcomm2014-video.pdf
>> 
>> --
>> evelio
>> 
>> On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 6:56 PM, Matt Hoppes <mhoppes at indigowireless.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Has anyone else observed Netflix sessions attempting to come into customer
>>> CPE devices at well in excess of the customers throttled plan?
>>> 
>>> I'm not talking error retries on the line. I'm talking like two to three
>>> times in excess of what the customers CPE device can handle.
>>> 
>>> I'm observing massive buffer overruns in some of our switches that appear
>>> to be directly related to this. And I can't figure out what possible good
>>> purpose Netflix would have for attempting to do this.
>>> 
>>> Curious if anyone else has seen it?
>> 
> 




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