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Tutor

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4 Messages

Thursday, July 4th, 2013 6:31 AM

AT&T Uverse and Twitch.tv

Not sure if it has been posted about on this board before but in the last couple of months there has been a huge stutter and lag problem across the board for all major ISP's and this site, to include Uverse. From what I can tell it occurs at the Level 3 CDN that uverse routes through. I know Comcast and Time Warner have talked to Twitch.tv to get this issue fixed but is AT&T going to be doing anything about it?

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Official Solution

ACE - Expert

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34.6K Messages

11 years ago


@kmharris09 wrote:

I am having the exact same problem. I ran a traceroute to twitch.tv and almost every hop times out.

 

As explained numerous times on these forums, AT&T's decision to not respond to the ICMP messages used by traceroute does not imply anything with regards to how these same routers handle TCP or UDP traffic.

 

What my options for fixing the stuttering issue?

 

I don't quite follow some of the analogies. Is the issue that twitch won't pay for sufficient upload speed? That seems very unlikely because it makes their service unusable. My understanding is that during high traffic periods ATT simply throttles certain high volume web services to save themselves money on developing bandwidth. Am I not correctly understanding the problem?

 

You are not understanding the problem.  There is no deliberate or active throttling or active traffic shaping going on.  Actually it's more complicated than my analogy.  Twitch.TV has their ISP.  AT&T is your ISP.  The ISP's have connections between them where they agree to a certain connection size (like you did when you subscribed to your ISP).  These are called peering arrangements.  The original idea was "you scratch my back so my customers can get to yours, and I'll scratch your back to your customers can get to mine."  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering.  After a while, because of the difference of size in ISPs, paid peering became the norm.  ISPs with a lot of customers want companies with a few customers to pay for their data connection to all their customers.  Here's likely where our conflicts begin.  Twitch.TV's ISP and AT&T have agreed to some peering connections of a bandwidth for a rate.  Twitch.TV's growth has caused the load on some of these connections to reach the agreed upon bandwidth.  Unless AT&T and Twitch.TV's ISP agree to a new peering arrangement for more bandwidth before the expiration of their current arrangement, this situation will continue.

 

Twitch.TV's ISP is likely going to Twitch.TV and saying: "Y'all need to pay us more money because we need to expand our peering connections."  Twitch.TV is probably pointing at their contract and saying "nope." 

...

 


 

Tutor

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4 Messages

11 years ago

Bump because this needs to be addressed and is an issue that is plagueing many Uverse users and causing them to switch ISPs. Twitch.tv has said before that the option of Peering is available and they've done it with some ISPs but not all because for some it doesn't improve "their bottom line". Would really like input on this from someone within AT&T.

ACE - Expert

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34.6K Messages

11 years ago

If you would like an official response from AT&T, then you will likely need to contact AT&T directly, instead of posting it on the user community forum.

 

You could call AT&T Technical Support at 800-288-2020, or search around for the corporate e-mail adddress.

 

My guess is that it is likely that AT&T would allow Twitch.tv to obtain additional peering connections at the going rate, but I doubt AT&T is going to subsidize Twitch's business model for them.

 

Tutor

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4 Messages

11 years ago

Wasn't aware this was just a user forum. Figured ATT would at least have some of their workers here.

Tutor

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4 Messages

11 years ago

FYI, called that number. Got hung up on twice by techs because they have no clue what to do and finally noone can help me. Great service.

Contributor

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1 Message

11 years ago

I currently have to use a VPN to remove most of the stuttering issues, but I've had these issues starting 3-4 weeks ago. I am definitely looking in to switching ISPs, this is absurd. I love paying for 24MB/mo. and I can't even watch one 1080p stream. Cat Mad

ACE - Expert

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34.6K Messages

11 years ago

If the telephone people could not help you you can contact the social media support team by clicking this AT&T logoCustomer Service link to send a Private Message (PM) to the AT&T customer service team to help you resolve your request. You can expect a reply via return PM (the blue envelope envelopein the upper right hand corner of this site) in a business day or three.

 

However, if the issue is with Twitch.TV's CDN's connection to AT&T's network, then there is little they can actually do for you.  They can report it up the chain, though.

 

24 Mbps into your home means nothing if they can't get 24 Mbps to AT&T's network to carry to your home.  And to get 24 Mbps you either need async traffic, extreemly low latency or both.  Fortunately, streaming compressed 1080 takes a lot less than 24 Mbps.

 

Let me ask anyone who wants AT&T to "fix" the issue to Twitch.TV's CDN: You pay AT&T for your connection to the Internet to be "big enough," right?  It sure sounds like Twitch.TV's is asking AT&T to provide a connection to their CDN for less than the normal rate.  Why should AT&T do that?

 

 

Contributor

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1 Message

11 years ago

While you point out the CDN issue, Level3 is the CDN used by twitch and used by many others. I expect ATT to do their best to provide my posted speed to wherever I try to arrive within the interwebs. 

 

To say taht ATT would be at a disadvantage I'm not sure. But I will say this I pay ATT for my internet not Level3 and as a result I expect to have fast secure connections of at least 25% my posted bandwidth (or a much as the connection I am trying to reach will allow. ATT isn't hosting the Twitch traffic someone else is.

 

Much like a highway, while I dont' expect it to be empty, I do expect that just because I'm from out of state I don't have to travel on a single lane road with every out of stater just because I'm not a resident. This is much the same. So no, ATT should do this as it is what I pay for much like I pay taxes. ATT needs to fix this and they need to get their a** in gear because it is horrible that not only are they beginning to fall behind in speeds, but also in competitiveness to other companies. 

Contributor

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1 Message

11 years ago

Oh, I didn't realize that I'm paying AT&T for access to a limited selection of internet roads based on some arbitrary deal between 3rd parties.  They really should put a disclaimer on the service you buy that says "hey, we reserve the right to give you awful, slow access to things you want to do on the web sometimes because we would have to pay a fee.  And we can't be bothered to pay to improve our service, that's your job."   Honestly. 

 

Or better yet, let me opt-in to paying part of that fee if it really is such a huge issue.  OH WAIT.  I thought I did that already by opting to pay extra for higher speed internet?  I guess not.  I really should just opt for a slower speed since I can't get high speed access to some parts anyway, what is the point of having 25M down if you can't even get 300k down from some silly streaming video site?  I might as well just downgrade to the 5M down plan.

 

I can't wait till I move so I can drop this terrible internet service, for one that can actually handle simple streaming properly.  Sad, too, because the TV part is pretty nice, but this idiocy with streaming video is unacceptable.

ACE - Expert

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34.6K Messages

11 years ago

Let's try another analogy:

 

Your neighbor (on his AT&T U-verse connection) decides to start a video streaming service out of his basement and sells subscriptions.  He decides that 6 Mbps down, 1.0 Mbps up is all he wants to pay for.

 

You buy one of these subscriptions.  You try to view a video that needs 0.9 Mbps to stream.  That works, you point it out to your friend and he starts watching it on his laptop and you pick another video.  Both of your videos buffer, stutter, etc., etc.  Why?  You've got more than 1.8 Mbps down, that's plenty of room. But wait, your neighbor's 1.0 Mbps up can't handle it.

 

You complain to your neighbor.  He calls AT&T up and demands that he increase his upload speed to 2.0 Mbps (at no extra charge) because his customers aren't getting the service they pay for.  Or, if they won't do that, they should install a computer in their datacenter and hook it to their network (again at little or no charge) and he'll put his content on that.

 

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