Netflix is Responsible for Experience Degradation, Verizon Says, After Study

Netflix itself is responsible for congestion experienced by its customers, a study by Verizon engineers suggests.

A FiOS customer in Los Angeles wanted to know why the Netflix experience was not optimal, so the Verizon network operations team studied the network connection for this customer for the week preceding the date that he emailed us.

They measured the utilization at every link in the Verizon network to determine where, if at all, congestion was occurring.

The review confirmed here was no congestion anywhere within the Verizon network, Verizon says.

There was, however, congestion at the interconnection link to the edge of Verizon’s network (the border router) used by the transit providers chosen by Netflix to deliver video traffic to Verizon’s network, Verizon notes.

While the links chosen by Netflix were congested, the links from other transit providers to Verizon’s network did not experience congestion and were performing fine.

The maximum amount of capacity used on those links ranged from 10 percent to 80 percent,  with an average peak utilization of 44 percent.

“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,” Verizon says. “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.”

“Netflix knew better,” says David Young, Verizon VP, Federal Regulatory Affairs