Netflix Compares ISP Performance

[sholling]

As a techie I found the comparison of Netflix performance on Verizon's FIOS and AT&T's Uverse as well has top tier cable ISP pretty interesting.

Link

As expected, there’s a significant separation between DSL and cable and cable and fiber to the home/curb, but wait…why is AT&T’s fiber network performance mired among everyone else’s cable network?

Gotta love FIOS.

 

[BMXTRIX]

I don't know about you, but I look at that and see that even the slowest network tested runs over 20 times faster than what we had about 10 years ago with dial up as the most common internet.

More general, it's only about a 15% difference between the slower connections (AT&T) and the fastest (FIOS). While notable, I doubt most people would even notice the difference between these connection speeds.

When I jumped from Cox cable to Fios the jump was insignificant and I found both services to be extremely similar. I liked the software in the Verizon cable boxes better than Cox, and I like everything on one bill, but beyond that, I see very little overall difference in most areas. Oh, well, Verizon delivers a better looking image on my TV, which does matter.

 

[its phillip]

Pretty poor performance for AT&T in that graph.

I'd be very happy with your upstream. My download speed is okay, but my upstream is poop. I would love to have a 100/100 connection though

Unfortunately I don't really have any options in my subdivision. OneSource Communications is my provider (small ISP based out of Keller), and my only other option is AT&T. I think I can get U-Verse (fastest they offer is 24/3), but I really don't want to go with AT&T. I like dealing with a local company that actually sends techs out when they are supposed to and has a 24/7 help desk. I would probably sacrifice those if I could get FIOS, but they don't offer in my area

The fastest connection onesource offers is a 25/2 cable connection, so that's what I've got. Here's a speedtest I took the other day:

 

[MidnightSensi2]

I have U-Verse Max Turbo or whatever stupid name they gave it. It claims 24 down, but gets 22 at my location, sometimes 23. At any rate, it's blazing fast for me.

I agree about wishing I had better upload speed. I get like 2.5, but I do so much uploading this really has become more and more important to me.

It used to be just people FTP uploading anything of any real size, now with things like DropBox, iCloud or whatever else people are noticing the slow upload speeds.

 

[Hocky]

Low up-caps help make high down-caps possible. Very few people will notice the lower outbound speeds.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Despite the fact I live in major city, my only option for high speed is Cablevision - yes the same one ranked the lowest by Netflix due to evening's congestion issues - and yes - they are noticeable and annoying.

The good news however is thou I'm subscribed to 15/2 package I recently switched the model and got down speed up to 23-24 Mpb

 

[sholling]

Oh I remember BBS system on 2400 and Prodigy on 9600 and the Internet on 28,800 and later 56,000. And I was an early adopter of PacBell's (now AT&T) at the time horribly unreliable DSL service. Yes I appreciate the speeds that some of us have now but not all of us are so blessed. A good sized chunk of the country will be on dialup or ISDN and buying/renting discs for years to come. Others with a high speed connection are getting socked with caps. Fortunately Verizon has embraced the future and their FIOS service actually delivers the speeds that they promise and remains cap free. According to the chart Netflix is barely scratching the service of the my bandwidth.

BTW I like that Netflix now allows customers to adjust the size of the data stream to better fit their connection speeds and the size of their ISP's caps.

 

[baniels]

Unfortunately my speeds don't help the Netflix streaming selection.

 

[DrFunk]

Unfortunately my speeds don't help the Netflix streaming selection.

Dammit, why the hell does the US have to have such shitty Internet speeds.....

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Dammit, why the hell does the US have to have such shitty Internet speeds.....

funny - haha... We have optic 100/100 at the office and we paying 6 large a month or it

 

[its phillip]

Unfortunately my speeds don't help the Netflix streaming selection.

I would kill for that connection

 

[mtrycrafts]

I would kill for that connection

But, would you move to that place? No life sentence attached with a move

 

[avnetguy]

Bandwidth is one thing, what throughput the actual servers give to you is another.

Steve

 

[sholling]

funny - haha... We have optic 100/100 at the office and we paying 6 large a month or it

Isn't FIOS available in most of the NYC area? I know they offered a reasonably affordable 50Mb/50Mb + TV and phone package to NYC customers.

Bandwidth is one thing, what throughput the actual servers give to you is another.

Steve

It's not often that you can download from a single site at much faster than a few megabits/sec (although I have seen a 15Mb/s download a very few times) but what that speed allows is for letting you download a few gigabyte service pack while watching two Netflix streams at the same time.

 

[baniels]

It helps when I'm passing files between my laptop at work and my NAS' ftp across town. The whole town is wired with fiber. I pay 75/month, which includes the landline I use twice a year.

And as pointed out, concurrent downloads see great benefit.

Netflix stutters or drops from hd to sd rarely, but not never. I'm sure they have peak usage weaknesses.

Don't all towns of 10,000 have speeds like this?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Isn't FIOS available in most of the NYC area? I know they offered a reasonably affordable 50Mb/50Mb + TV and phone package to NYC customers.

Fios is available in NYC, but coverage is far from "most NYC areas", especially not in apartment buildings - most tied to monopoly contracts/deals to cable providers - it's hard to overturn this and Verizon demands 90-95% commitment before they wire the building - they don't like to spend a lot of cash to light the building and have 5-10% customers

 

[BMXTRIX]

Yep, FIOS for the win...