How the ISP duopoly is nailing Netflix — and you

If you didn’t already have a Netflix streaming subscription, I’m pretty sure you got one for Christmas this year. Since Christmas day, Netflix streaming has been quite problematic in these parts, with audio dropouts, stuttering video, rebuffering, and other problems. Prior to Dec. 25, that was a very rare occurrence.

The cynical conspiracy theorist in me suspects that my ISP/cable company may be interfering with the packets going to and from Netflix in order to make me point fingers at Netflix’s service. After all, no regulations prevent it from doing this.

[ Read Paul Venezia’s full commentary on Comcast bullying Netflix. | Paul’s geek credentials are on full display in InfoWorld’s Networking Deep Dive. ]

Actually, I think it’s a capacity problem. I’ve noticed that these problems seem to crop up more during prime TV-watching times — say, 9 p.m. on a Wednesday. It results in an odd mixture of extremely modern, high-quality video and the clunkiness of a VCR. You simply don’t expect it from a local cable on-demand service or a rented DVD, and it needs to be fixed if a service like Netflix streaming is to find success.

There are numerous ways to address this issue from a technical standpoint: QoS in home firewalls, ISPs caching content locally for distribution to customers, even multicasting. The first option may actually come to pass. It wouldn’t surprise me to see consumer-grade firewalls with Netflix badges on them at some point in the future. They’d offer the ability to automatically prioritize Netflix traffic over everything else in order to reduce the problems caused by teenagers who are downloading tons of stuff while Mom and Dad are trying to watch the second season of “Lie to Me.”

But the other fixes would require not just the acceptance, but the active participation of the ISPs in order to do any good. There may be incentive for the ISPs in terms of bandwidth savings, but I can’t really see service providers — which have their own competing streams — going out of their way to smooth the roads for Netflix and other independent streaming services. It ain’t gonna happen. I can see them stepping on competing service’s packets while whistling and looking in the other direction, however.

That scenario may in fact be the arrow that slays independent streaming services — not necessarily the active involvement of the ISPs, but their carefully orchestrated apathy. If they play their cards right and do nothing to deal with the problem, they may find that it resolves itself. Of course, this comes at the expense of their customers, but that concern has seldom been a major factor in past decisions by the big ISPs.

We have the computational power, the storage densities, and the networking technology available to make just about any type of media-streaming scenario work. Encoding, storing, and streaming HD video is old hat. So why must it be such a struggle to get that video where and when we want it? No major technological hurdles stand in the way — with the exception of the comically horrible DVR service that Time Warner and others provide. It’s even cheap to do, as evidenced by the $99 Apple TV that streams HD-quality video from a wide variety of sources. The problems are political.

The big ISPs wail and gnash their teeth about Netflix and other streaming services, and as Net neutrality weakens, they may gain the legal right to muck with your network traffic any way they see fit. But the reality is that they need to suck it up and improve their service. If they weren’t granted monopoly status in so many parts of the country, this wouldn’t even be a problem. In markets with actual broadband competition, there are fewer problems with capacity and timely packet delivery because the consumer actually has a choice. If Netflix sucks with Comcast, but your neighbor has FiOS where Netflix streams perfectly, which service would you choose?

Netflix is a disruptive technology — one that has made explicit Open Internet legislation imperative. When I discussed this last week, several commenters responded that the last thing they wanted was the government messing with the Internet. They have a point; no one likes the idea of the federal government arbitrarily blocking citizen access to information or services. On the flip side, that’s exactly what the ISPs will be able to do at a whim. It’s a terrible choice, but I find I have to trust the government more than a monopolistic corporation.

As for the taxi driver analogy I made last week, think of it this way: There’s a very good reason that many cities have laws that enforce fixed prices for taxi rides to and from the airport. We need similar controls on the ISPs, or we’ll definitely be taking the long way home.

This story, “How the ISP duopoly is nailing Netflix — and you,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Paul Venezia’s The Deep End blog at InfoWorld.com.