They are both garbage. TW is the only out of 4 providers in Austin to not offer gigabit Internet by mid year.
The question that matters is does the merger actually harm consumers. I'm not (yet) convinced it does. To your statement: Is it possible TWC customers could benefit since Comcast will invest and improve their products? I despise Comcast as much as anyone and haven't looked back since switching to U-Verse. My knee-jerk instinct is to oppose anything they want to do. But I'll get out some popcorn and listen to the public debate for a while. For those that believe in "net neutrality", maybe the FCC can make Comcast agree to it as a condition for approval.
comcast has data caps right? i think as of right now TWC doesn't. this means more than likely caps come to all the now TWC customers. no bueno. i don't think right now its such a big deal...but what happens in the future when streaming services take off and have 4k vid? they'll just tighten the caps and boom end of cutting the cord.
Broadband streaming with ala carte options is the future. The cable and satellite companies know that. The company that controls the broadband has the key to cornering the entire market. It is concievable that in the future, one will have to pay a "cable rate" simply for broadband as it will be the medium that TV entertainment is delivered.
Here's an example of the innovation thing I was referring to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/18/comcast-time-warner-netflix_n_4809856.html More companies means more possible experiments. If TWC adds Netflix to their settop box, that makes it more likely DTV and others follow suit. But with fewer companies, those types of possibilities become less likely.
Saw a report about this on the Verge a few days ago. It's true, just did a traceroute to Netflix and Comcast and Netflix appear to have entered a peering agreement. Netflix traffic is going directly from Comcast to Netflix and not routing through L3, Cogent, or XO. I'm almost willing to bet Comcast is doing this to please FCC regulators since they have to follow certain rules until 2018. If they say "We'll stop throttling Netflix traffic if you let us merge with TWC" it might gain traction. Interestingly enough, Netflix streaming from Houston currently routes through Dallas and Los Angeles (TWC markets, formerly of Comcast though) In comparison, this is a trace route I just did from an Austin server using Time Warner Cable. This is why TWC customers get so ****ty Netflix traffic. Goes through TWC, then off to L3, and then to Netflix
That is not "innovation." That's two competing streaming services unable to get along. Big difference. To be honest, comcast currently offers more streaming, on demand, and mobile access than any of the other providers... And they've been doing it for over a year without the other providers catching up. The other providers lack the infrastructure and resources to compete in the broadband market. They're all going to be obsolete, merger or no merger, if they can't match the mobile streaming options (which is the ever growing future of what "pay TV" will be. Also, Netflix needs the #1 streaming provider to be their friends far more than the other way around...And you'd never see them approach a satellite company the same way.
Not necessarily, if Comcast decided to not play nice, Netflix could easily just use even more commercial CDN's that play nice with Comcast. (CloudFront, AWS, XO, GTT, L3). Though, there is one con for this. Netflix would essentially appear to have been defeated as they would have to incur the cost of replicating this content to more data centers than ever before just to please Comcast subscribers. They most definitely have the funds though. Is it fair? Absolutely not, but they can bypass Comcast. It would also single handedly ruin their plans to have Netflix content exclusively go through Open Connect. The good news is that according to the tests that others have done, and that I have confirmed, Netflix and Comcast are on really good terms at the moment from a technical standpoint. I'm not sure if they're on an MPLS circuit that is giving the appearance of less hops but I think Comcast just secretly joined the Open Connect alliance https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/faq Bingo. My source destination currently is ipv4_1.lagg0.c070.sjc002.ix.nflxvideo.net
I meant it from the standpoint of comcast/twc will be the largest broadband provider, and thus will have the most Netflix streaming subscribers as well. Wasn't talking about just bandwidth/server issues. Sure, Netflix doesn't have to use their servers. But the majority of people will be using the current broadband infrastructure to access their Netflix accounts.
I can't wait till isp start to redirect sites. So when you type google.com it takes you to bing.com. It must drive companies like comcast and tw crazy that google is making so much money on the back of their work. Why not start selling domain redirection to the highest bidder. I am sure governments won't care since they killed net neutrality laws.
Netflix reaches deal with Comcast: http://www.chron.com/business/technology/article/Netflix-reaches-deal-with-Comcast-5260557.php?cmpid=hpbn
Next news article: "Netflix to be only exclusive to subscribed Comcast Xfinity customers. All other ISPs are **** of of luck."
Pretty much... as Comcast would be the only one so far to guarantee enough widespread bandwidth to stream netflix consistently at HD quality. Google fiber needs to start trying to get as widespread as possible sooner.... before this merger... or else risk fighting an uphill battle in nearly every major market.
Their servers? Netflix doesn't use anyone's servers. Their own servers replicate content through a CDN (content delivery network) in numerous nodes throughout the country. ISP's use these servers to pull the traffic back to the customer. The problem is the route it takes. Some of these CDN's aren't close to where the netflix content resides which results in terrible streaming connections. The current broadband infrastructure in it's capacity can handle Netflix (assuming you're on a relatively decent connection. Hell, even a non-saturated 6mbps DSL circuit can achieve Netflix HD) the problem mainly lies on providers like Verizon who don't want to upgrade the capacity at these colocation sites. To be honest, even prior to me seeing that my Netflix traffic was being routed directly to Netflix servers, my Netflix streaming was fine, I was even achieving Super HD 5800. This generation is just technical illiterate, people blame the ISP's for everything. I remember as a kid they said that this generation would be the smartest. Yeah, just because we know how to use Facebook doesn't mean people know **** about how all of this stuff works. I'm not trying to say the ISP's are right. They are downright shady as ****, and I spend a lot of my days at data centers (some of which host Netflix traffic) and know the underlying issues. Both sides have their issues. Everyone talks about how ISP need to become dumb pipes without realizing the internet backbone is maintained by major corporations like Level 3, GTT, Cogent, Internap, XO, and even Sprint. ISP's need to make deals with these companies. It's the backbone providers that need to be more like dumb pipes for this this to become a reality. Edit: Sorry, I don't mean to sound condescending toward you Nick. This issue just frustrates me after seeing circlejerks all over Reddit. "OMG, **** COMCAST, COMCAST IS THE DEVIL, VERIZON IS THE DEVIL, HOW DARE NETFLIX NOT GET PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT" A perfect example of my frustration is NBA League Pass. They use very few CDN's in the country. Atlanta, Boston, and I believe Nevada via Akamai. Some people have terrible experiences with League Pass buffering and this is mainly League Pass' fault for not using more CDN'S that are to offer a better streaming experience for customers in certain geographic areas. But if Netflix starts suffering, it's not Netflix's fault anymore, It's Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, etc. What does Netflix do? Get the public on their side by publishing these monthly ISP reports
