“Complaints about streaming video services — notably YouTube and Netflix — are repeated again and again in articles and support forums across the Internet,” Jon Brodkin reports for Ars Technica.
“Why does online video have such problems? People may assume there are perfectly innocent causes related to their computers or to the mysterious workings of the Internet. Often, they’re correct,” Brodkin reports. “But cynical types who suspect their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) intentionally degrade streaming video may be right as well. No, your ISP (probably) isn’t sniffing your traffic every time you click a YouTube or Netflix link, ready to throttle your bandwidth. But behind the scenes, in negotiations that almost never become public, the world’s biggest Internet providers and video services argue over how much one network should pay to connect to another.”
Brodkin reports, “When these negotiations fail, users suffer.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]