Vodafone Throttling Netflix???

[FreshMint]

So I have a SamKnows White Box connected that monitors my connection and reports back usage statistics. These are used by the EU to monitor broadband performance across Europe and make up part of official reports on the sate of broadband. 

I've attached to this post one graph showing Netflix download speeds from before I joined Vodafone to the present day. You will notice that in November something happened and Vodafone (and this is Vodafone, not anyone else) obviously started to treat Netflix data differently all of a sudden, slowing it down. I also have attached a second chart that shows that Netflix quality has dropped from UHD to HD on the same time frame.

 I would be very interested to know if this is policy to throttle usage and under what conditions this has occurred. Is this down to a fair usage policy (I did drop Sky for Now TV around that time) based on download volume and where can I find such wording in their terms and conditions.

Given that we are fast moving to a online world where we are far more likely to download our video content opposed to other access methods I find this troubling. 

[gipjon]

think you need to read this thread 

https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Home-Phone/100-Proof-of-throttling-twitch-iptv-etc/td-p/26...

[FreshMint]

I'm not surprised. 

The only reason I posted this here was that I had been waiting for a support person to come avalible on the Vodafone website for going on 3 hours and got bored, saw the community and thought "why not ask there". 

I'm still very interested to see if I get a response from Vodafone.

[gipjon]

The right thing to do here is complaint to ofcom. A lot of customers are having this same issue and with no luck , vodafone broadband is sold as unlimited and some customer are proving that vodafone are using broadband throttling

Please complain here 

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain-to-ofcom

https://help.netflix.com/en

https://media.netflix.com/en/contact-us

[gipjon]

I been talking to nexflix and they said this happen in late 2017 as well 

so make sure you get the complaints in to ofcom nexflix twitch tv etc 

some other place you can also send the same story 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sell-my-story/                               : Newspaper

http://www.bbc.co.uk/faqs/send-a-story                               : BBC News

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mg74/contact   : watchdog

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wck32/contact    : rip off britain

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/contact-us            : Ofcom regulator for broadband

https://www.vodafone.co.uk/help-and-information/complaints/code-of-practice

and then ask for deadlock letter and take it to the Ombudsman Service at

https://www.ombudsman-services.org/

[mbames]

I've just checked my SamKnows logs and I see exactly the same thing

I am sure that VF will blame this on splitting SSIDs!

[FreshMint]

Just so we are clear, general speed is fine:

[FreshMint]

Can you share your chart? this proves it is not just an issue for me. 

[mbames]

Me?

I upload it into the non-privat gallery for my both above?  Can you not seen it?  Your last post shows a triangle!

Attached again, this time from the hidden (default) option.

(hidden gallery)

[FreshMint]

they are blocking the images it appears.

[FreshMint]

now added as an attachment as well

[kingbily96]

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@FreshMint wrote:

So I have a SamKnows White Box connected that monitors my connection and reports back usage statistics. These are used by the EU to monitor broadband performance across Europe and make up part of official reports on the sate of broadband. 

I've attached to this post one graph showing Netflix download speeds from before I joined Vodafone to the present day. You will notice that in November something happened and Vodafone (and this is Vodafone, not anyone else) obviously started to treat Netflix data differently all of a sudden, slowing it down. I also have attached a second chart that shows that Netflix quality has dropped from UHD to HD on the same time frame.

 I would be very interested to know if this is policy to throttle usage and under what conditions this has occurred. Is this down to a fair usage policy (I did drop Sky for Now TV around that time) based on download volume and where can I find such wording in their terms and conditions.

Given that we are fast moving to a online world where we are far more likely to download our video content opposed to other access methods I find this troubling. 

---

Nope VodafoneNZ have a Netflix CDN in the network and partnered with Netflix on launch of services in NZ. Traffic management happens at peak time on P2P traffic only 

Something else is at play here

Just remember, if you are using a bypass method then you are taking responsibility for the quality of your streaming. Vodafone has local Netflix caches as all the other big service providers do and they pay to house and feed the caches (a not insignificant amount of traffic). If you bypass then you are choosing not to use what your service provider is supplying and you are having all of your traffic delivered internationally rather than locally. Now I fully understand why you would do so in regard to the content, but you are really on your own when it comes to if it works properly or not.

[mbames]

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@kingbily96 wrote:

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Something else is at play here

Just remember, if you are using a bypass method then you are taking responsibility for the quality of your streaming. Vodafone has local Netflix caches as all the other big service providers do and they pay to house and feed the caches (a not insignificant amount of traffic). If you bypass then you are choosing not to use what your service provider is supplying and you are having all of your traffic delivered internationally rather than locally. Now I fully understand why you would do so in regard to the content, but you are really on your own when it comes to if it works properly or not.

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The thing which is "at play" is Vodafone's UK network is is terrible.  We aren't trying to bypass things, we just want it to work as it should.  VF however lie about it and claim there isn't a problem!

[FreshMint]

Ummm.... I'm not bypassing anything. Everything is as Vodafone provided in terms of settings. 

Just got off vodafone support and they have advised me to bypass their own DNS servers and set the router to use Googles (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.4). I've also been assured I won't experiance these problems again. I'll monitor and update.

[danschofield]

I'm not so sure it's Vodafone explicitly throttling Netflix rather than Vodafone having saturated its backhaul link to Netflix.

Netflix's OpenConnect distribution network puts caching devices in peering locations around the world, from their website you can see in the UK they use the LINX LON1 internet exchange to peer with ISPs and they have 2x100 Gigabit links there to share data.

https://openconnect.netflix.com/en_gb/peering-locations/

This peering database link - https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/18 - has the report of who else is co-located at that site, it's a multi terrabit site ( https://portal.linx.net )  so can handle a ton of data. On the right of this page you can filter the peers at that site, so type Netflix or Vodafone to see what IP address and capacities they have there.

If you look at who else is on the LON1 internet exchange you'll see that Vodafone are paying for 2x40 Gigabit links, compare that to 4x50G for O2, 2x200G for TalkTalk, 1x400G for Sky.

If you were to run a VPN you could be tunnelling your traffic via another endpoint, bypassing this saturated link and getting a decent connection to Netflix.

My SamKnows box shows I lost UHD capabilty on Netflix in December and it's been around 6 meg ever since. (I sync at 40 and get about 37 download on SamKnows). For all I know Vodafone had more capacity at that exchange until December or conversely had fewer customers saturating the link. To me it looks like Vodafone are piling on the new customers but not spending the money on their capacity. Gutted that my contract runs until November or I'd be dumping them over this.

[gipjon]

It's not just netflix it's other legal streaming sites as well

Sorry to say changing the dns in your setting is not going to stop this issue .it will help with the other issues of vodafone dns .

Dns database lookup is giving a website a name instead of a ip address . So have nothing to do with download speed 

[gipjon]

And the main thing i firgot to add This is a vodafone issue and has nothing to do with your phone line your router or your laptop all you can do is complain to Ofcom and netflix 

[stevex]

I've been running a few tests with some friends using www.fast.com (which I believe gives an indication of Netflix speeds). I get ridiculously slow speeds (less than 10Mbps) and they (who both live over 100 miles away) get exactly what you'd expect.

I use Netflix, they don't. So this could be down to routing issues and some bottlenecks.

What would be interesting is if people in the same geographical area had different results. That would imply Vodafone is putting some people on the "naughty step".

[danschofield]

Fast.com is by Netflix to test the speed you can connect to their content delivery network so it's basically testing what netflix experience you'll actually get, as opposed to Speedtest.net testing the connection to some other arbitrary server. If you (like me) are being routed through a congested link then you'll get low speeds for Netflix but could get better speeds against other sites. SamKnows gave me a list of the Vodafone Netflix Cache IP addresses and told me I'm getting a terrible connection to them and to report it Vodafone. Sadly their support team don't have that in their standard script so I'm not getting anywhere...

[Joe]

@FreshMint Hi there, thanks very much for getting in touch with all this information. We'd love to look in to this for you, as I've been looking for information like this to pass to our Technical Specialist Team. I've sent you a private message on how to get in touch. When getting in touch please say that you're having issues with streaming services where disconnecting from the Vodafone broadband resolves the issue. Please also inform the team you have the graphs to show the dropping in service from a particular date. Joe