According to Netflix, Australia's slowest ISP owns half of Foxtel Australia's dominant carrier, Telstra, offers Netflix customers the slowest download speeds, the video-streamer says. Here's Netflix's data for Australia. Netflix Australia speed data Netflix's view of Australian internet service provider download speeds Netflix says its index “lists the average prime time bitrate for …
Although it's the slowest they are all still pissy rates in general given peering/appliance boosts. Might be interesting to slice and dice the data differently i.e. average speed by telco and technology (ADSL, Cable etc).
Chances are you'll find that Telstra is still running most of the ADSL that nobody else is interested in. It would also be interesting to see it compared to link speed i.e. if a user can normally connect/utilise at 8Mb/s and they get Netflix at 2Mb/s then there would seem to be a peering or "acting a shit" problem. Likely Netflix may not have access to this. Telstra's Netflix speed on their Cable Broadband network would be interesting.
and even on-net vs off-net
Although Telstra is not my ISP, because my ISP (TPG) couldn't put its own DSLAM in the exchange, I am on Telstra's kit. It would be interesting to see say, my neighbour's (offnet) Optus vs my (offnet) TPG vs across the road's Bigpond Netflix streaming speeds as we all seem to speed test within 1-2 k of each other (@ 11-15MB most of the time - depending on weather/day/time/how I hold my mouth) as we are all on the same DSLAM and have virtually the same path (neighbour's is 16 m longer).
I just queried Telstra since I'm on Bigpond Cable @ 30Mb/s (sometimes) and "Ab Fab" on Netflix was full of artifacts and was skipping frames and hanging even on the (presumably) lowest quality that Netflix could automagically stream at.
Telstra said nothing was wrong with my connection but hey, why didn't I invest $216 in a DOCSIS 3 modem (home gateway) and another $20 / month for even more blisteringly fast download speeds. We'll see what I can report back next week.
Does anybody know how I can tell what throughput I'm getting from Netflix on either Android (CuBox-i4Pro) or Windows?
Thanks for the tip. I'll have to let Netflix tech support know. They say any problem with Netflix on mobiles: contact "the makers of Android" or the hardware e.g. Samsung. Any problem with Netflix on Windows call the PC maker or Microsoft - no really!
FWIW, Bigpond Cable Internet @ 30Mb/s in North Sydney, streaming in (potentially HD - Netflix don't know how to tell) gives these figures for House of Cards when forced to "high" - same in "auto" in profile. (It's filmed in 4K resolution so I should get 1080P if it is working):
Latency: 0 ms
Throughput: 25336 KBPS
Bandwidth (normalized): 25335 KBPS
Max Sustainable Video Bitrate: 25239 KBPS
<snip>
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + D
You'll get a debug screen the second last section will read:
Latency:
Throughput:
Bandwith (normalized):
Max Sustained Video Bitrate:
</snip>
CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + S will bring up a speed override thing. On the debug screen you should also see a 'current video rate' thing towards the top.
Since you seem to be getting 18Mbps+ you should be getting HD without any issues. If not, i'll ask the dumb obvious question:
1. Are you paying for a plan that supports 1080P? I believe only the top tier 4 device plan supports 1080P and above. The intermediate plan supports 720p and the one device plan supports only TV quality.
2. If you do, check that you don't have bandwidth limiting enabled in your netflix account.
I believe Netflix like Aussie television stations define HD as 720p, not 1080p.
interestingly enough, many of the "better" services are wholesaled from Telstra backbone anyway, so we know the Telstra infrastructure can handle higher speeds. My guess is that this calculation includes everything, including places where Telstra is the only option (regional towns etc) Whereas the other companies are only operating in CBD's and high density surburbia where they get better ROI for their efforts, but are also closer to exchanges etc. so get higher "averages" as a result.
Don't get me wrong. 3.3 or whatever it was for TPG is still abysmal. and all Australian ISP's need to lift their game. but without knowing the footprint, the comparison between the two needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
It's just a shame that if you're trying do anything online other than watch Netflix on Optus, you can expect your speed to really drop:
ADSL 2+
Pre netflix: approx 8Mbps (generally constant across the day.)
Current:
Prime time: 1.1Mbps
During the day, 6Mbps.
Not that Optus would do something as underhanded as prioritising Netflix traffic to try and gain more customers, of course...
The other scenario (and names have been omitted to protect the innocent!), is that your ISP of choice is suffering massive increases in bandwith demand since Netflix launched. I've heard double-digit % increases _every week_ on the network load in some cases, and it's all Netflix traffic.
It's going to be a wake up call for those providers who may have over-committed their backhaul/peering bandwidth just a bit too much...
I'm not sure you can really reach any conclusions based on the data available. It doesn't specify what spread of inner city vs regional customers were measured.
As telstra has the majority of regional connections where bandwidth is likely to be lowest, surely it would pull down their score if these were included.
the biggest issue with those rates is that they are all dependent on the throughput of our undersea cables and satellite links to the US, those speeds would increase dramatically if each major ISP installed a mirror of netflixs movies on their own network - probably only taking up about half a standard rack :P
the biggest issue with those rates is that they are all dependent on the throughput of our undersea cables and satellite links to the US
Netflix Australia content comes from Melbourne. It's on a peered connection and has more direct routes to a couple of ISPs via CDN boxes. The RRDtool graphs from the first few days were "impressive".
Nope... Telstra really is that crap.
(I tell a lie. I know Telstra will hook up customers outside of the minimum signal strength. A good trick is to ask the normal ISP to start the procedure on the line, even though it's out of spec. Then sign up with Telstra who will provision the line, create an account, and tell you it's right to go. Complete the normal ISP's procedure since the line now has codes but the orginal ISP's codes apply first because they registered the port first. Ask Telstra why they've created an account on a port that doesn't belong to them. Been that way for years...)
Posting anon. because I like my job...
These numbers are averages including both ADSL and Fibre speeds. They will be biased towards providers with higher percentage of Fibre customers. Until they provide a breakdown by service type the numbers are just meaningless marketing stats - and as mentioned Telstra own a competitor so Netflix have a vested interest in making them look bad.
100mbs HFC here, but in reality 115mbps with my router because i'm bridging to an edgmax, don't use their crappy routers ever they are insecure and have all firewall features turned off !
However it goes down when it rains so a pile of crap. It also went down for half of sydney 4 months ago for 6 hours , no media report and total silence from them.
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