The benefit of these direct connections will be two-fold. This doesn’t “prioritize” Netflix traffic in any way, but it ensures that their traffic gets on our network through direct connections-not middleman networks-that are up to the task. Therefore, we are working aggressively with Netflix to establish new, direct connections from Netflix to Verizon’s network. We fully understand that many of our customers want a great streaming experience with Netflix, and we want that too. We’re Not Satisfied Until Our Customers AreĮven though there is no congestion on our network, we’re not satisfied if our customers are not. Such arrangements have been common practice for content delivery networks in the Internet ecosystem for many years, and Netflix is fully capable of taking the necessary and customary steps to ensure that its connections match its traffic volumes. As we’ve made clear before, we regularly negotiate reasonable commercial arrangements with transit providers or content providers to ensure a level of capacity that accommodates their volume of traffic. Netflix is responsible for either using connections that can carry the volume of traffic it is sending, or working out arrangements with its suppliers so they can handle the volumes. Instead, Netflix chose to attempt to deliver that traffic to Verizon through a few third-party transit providers with limited capacity over connections specifically to be used only for balanced traffic flows. For whatever reason (perhaps to cut costs and improve its profitability), Netflix did not make arrangements to deliver this massive amount of traffic through connections that can handle it. Sandvine recently noted that Netflix now accounts for more than one-third of all North American downstream traffic during peak hours. Netflix sends out an unprecedented amount of traffic. That has not recently been the case with Netflix and the networks carrying its traffic. In other cases there may be traffic imbalances, but the networks or content providers have entered into paid arrangements with us to ensure connections and capacity to meet their needs for their out-of-balance traffic. That is the traditional basis for such deals. In some cases, these are settlement-free peering arrangements, where the relative traffic flows between an IP network provider and us remain roughly equal, and both parties invest in sufficient facilities to match these roughly equal flows. What it boils down to is this: these other transit and content providers took steps to ensure that there was adequate capacity for their traffic to enter our network. One might wonder why Netflix and its transit providers were the only ones that ran into congestion issues. So Netflix Could Cut Buffering By Making Simple Adjustments? The maximum amount of capacity used (or peak utilization) over the links between these other networks and Verizon’s network ranged from 10% to 80% (with an average peak utilization of 44%).īelow is a chart that illustrates the connections we also note the peak utilization on key links on Verizon’s network as Netflix traffic travelled to our FiOS customer in L.A. While the links chosen by Netflix were congested (congestion occurs when use approaches or reaches 100% capacity during peak usage periods), the links from other transit providers (carrying non-Netflix traffic) to Verizon’s network did not experience congestion and were performing fine. There was, however, congestion at the interconnection link to the edge of our network (the border router) used by the transit providers chosen by Netflix to deliver video traffic to Verizon’s network. This review confirmed again what I’ve explained before ( here and here): there was no congestion anywhere within the Verizon network. They measured the utilization – or the percentage of total capacity used – at every link in the Verizon network – from the customer to the edge of our network, where we receive Netflix traffic – to determine where, if at all, congestion was occurring. Review Shows No Congestion on Verizon NetworkĪfter receiving the letter, our network operations team studied the network connection for this customer for the week preceding the date that he emailed us. We, too, wanted to get to the bottom of the problem.

This customer wanted to know what was going on and why his performance wasn’t what he hoped. Worse still were claims that Verizon is deliberately “throttling” Netflix traffic. He was understandably confused by some of the misleading public accounts that inaccurately suggest widespread congestion that could affect Netflix traffic on Verizon’s network. A few weeks ago, Verizon received an email from a customer in Los Angeles asking why he was not getting a good experience watching Netflix on his 75 Mbps FiOS connection.

Netflix throttled by verizon 2014