What in god's name is Airtel doing with video streaming?

[Bobbyguitarist]

Your example is too simplistic. I've not said it's the site's fault, I've said it's problems with the site's connectivity, but blame can be placed in three ways:

1. With the site: As video streaming sites, they're the ones responsible for distributing their content. The only problem is that since the content they're distributing is not strictly legal, no CDN will help them, so to counter the situation they'd need to set up their own and put servers in data-centers all around the globe (so long as the networks they get placed on don't mind the content.

2. With the International carrier: For not having sufficient connectivity to every corner of the globe.

3. With the ISP: for not buying more routes and diversifying it's sources of bandwidth, even if Airtel does own shares in a number of cables touching Indian shores.

I'm not saying Bharti *aren't* doing things wrong (in fact, I think I said that they are). They aren't "skimping" on buying cheaper routes if for no other reason than because they part-own the cables. Their network is not, however, as pervasive as Tata's - it's geographic (physical) reach is not was widespread as Tata's and this contributes to the situation in that to get from say Moscow to Delhi, the connection has to go over more networks to get there. Those networks only interconnect with each other at certain rates, so you have to rely on those interconnecting links not being congested.

On the other hand, if Tata's network reaches all the way in to Moscow, then there's no interconnection required because the bandwidth between Moscow and Delhi is owned entirely by Tata and not in use by any other ISPs in Europe.

To simplify this even further: if I buy a dedicated line to Singapore, I'll get awesome speeds & pings to Singapore. But my pings and speeds to the USA might suck because of all the competition I was mentioning in my previous post - the only way to combat this is to buy a dedicated line all the way to the USA, terminate there and peer as much as I can in order to ensure I have decent connectivity for my customers here.
Awesome explanation. But the average joe wouldn't understand all this. All he wants is to watch videos without buffering. And if airtel can't provide this, he would naturally be unhappy 😕

 

[Sushubh]

@vebk airtel wants me to tell them your contact number 😀

Twitter / Airtel_Presence: @broadbandforum Hi! Kindly

 

[hitman]

@vebk .. I think they have unblocked the video sites.. isn't it?And which video streaming site u think they r throttling? If they r throttling then shouldn't all the video sites be effected?I am facing issue with Vimeo .. The site is working but the videos just don't play at all .. either HD or SD ..

 

[Sushubh]

player.vimeo.com is blocked. i assume this is used for the video content on vimeo that's why the site itself works but videos (embedded as well) does not. freaking bunch of idiots.

 

[mgcarley]

Awesome explanation. But the average joe wouldn't understand all this. All he wants is to watch videos without buffering. And if airtel can't provide this, he would naturally be unhappy 😕

Unfortunately this is true, however, most "average joes" only care about the biggies like Youtube and, well... mostly Youtube. They could give half a toss about all the other ones. Of course, I'm painting with a very broad brush here, but that's the basic jist.

@vebk airtel wants me to tell them your contact number 😀


LOL. You could just say "Everyone on Airtel is having this same problem. It is not specific to any one customer."

player.vimeo.com is blocked. i assume this is used for the video content on vimeo that's why the site itself works but videos (embedded as well) does not. freaking bunch of idiots.

We've got it bad with them, they even did an upstream block on some sites, so even ISPs using Bharti wholesale couldn't get around it (well...)

 

[vebk]

Look without getting into the technicalities of it - If other ISPs can provide a decent video streaming experience, while Airtel cannot, logically it stands that either Airtel is entirely to blame or at the very least, Airtel is not doing something it can do in order to improve the experience. Youtube working fine for me does indicate that there is something Youtube is doing right, that despite Airtel's sh**ty routing, videos play at (near) 4Mbps. So I concede that perhaps something can be done at the websites' end to improve the streaming speed. But do we really expect every video streaming service out there to have the kind of resources, expertise and budget like Youtube? In that sense are we saying that only the big players should thrive, and the internet should not be an equal playing field?

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@vebk .. I think they have unblocked the video sites.. isn't it?
And which video streaming site u think they r throttling? If they r throttling then shouldn't all the video sites be effected?
I am facing issue with Vimeo .. The site is working but the videos just don't play at all .. either HD or SD ..
I would have to confess some ignorance on this account. I don't know if the can have the technical feasibility to throttle some websites vs. others, but my (layperson) experience is that youtube videos stream at near 4 Mbps whereas videos on sites like vidxden, vidbux, gorillavideos, glumbouploads, putlocker etc. start in such a manner that within a second they 'rev' up to 30KB/s then stagnate there for a second or so, and then slowly drop down to 25, 20, 15, 10..... till

 

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[mgcarley]

Look without getting into the technicalities of it - If other ISPs can provide a decent video streaming experience, while Airtel cannot, logically it stands that either Airtel is entirely to blame or at the very least, Airtel is not doing something it can do in order to improve the experience. Youtube working fine for me does indicate that there is something Youtube is doing right, that despite Airtel's sh**ty routing, videos play at (near) 4Mbps. So I concede that perhaps something can be done at the websites' end to improve the streaming speed. But do we really expect every video streaming service out there to have the kind of resources, expertise and budget like Youtube? In that sense are we saying that only the big players should thrive, and the internet should not be an equal playing field?

This Internet is NOT by any means an equal playing field. That is why some sites dominate and others don't. Few sites have the resources to use a CDN, let alone build their own as Youtube/Google have and as such will perform well in some regions of the world and not others simply due to their location & connectivity.

While there may be some blame placed with Airtel (let's face it, I experience issues with them as well because of crappy configurations which make *my* traffic work less efficiently) we have to remember that the Internet is a mesh, but despite this, not every network can talk directly to each other network. If the traffic has to go via via via to get from A to B, then obviously the performance is going to be seriously degraded.

I would have to confess some ignorance on this account. I don't know if the can have the technical feasibility to throttle some websites vs. others, but my (layperson) experience is that youtube videos stream at near 4 Mbps whereas videos on sites like vidxden, vidbux, gorillavideos, glumbouploads, putlocker etc. start in such a manner that within a second they 'rev' up to 30KB/s then stagnate there for a second or so, and then slowly drop down to 25, 20, 15, 10..... till

 

[vebk]

Interestingly for the past week or two, speeds have picked up on a couple of other sites with streaming happening at 150-200 KB/s. While it's still not 4 Mbps technically, it's sufficient and satisfactory in that all videos I have tried so far (20-30 in number) start streaming within a couple of seconds and continue without any stuttering for buffering. That's the experience I want! (fingers crossed! 😛)