New Contributor
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4 Messages
Internet dropping when visiting certain websites
Hello, my internet seems to completely cut if I browse to certain sites like Twitch.tv. I do realize that comcast and other ISPs throttle Twitch as they take a chunk of level3 bandwidth, and that level3 has been taking a huge dump (in simple terms) as of late. This is getting ridiculous though, and it is obvious. I have a private vpn set up in a center in NYC and when I am not connected to it and go to twitch.tv, my internet just seems to stop working, skype will disconnect, spotify will disonnect, and I cannot browse to other websites. I will close the internet tab for Twitch and after about 5 minutes my speeds will resume to normal. I load twitch back up and my internet cuts out, I connect to my VPN, and I can then browse the website as normal and my internet is perfectly fine. This is fairly obvious that Comcast is throttling. If they are not, I would like another explanation because this has been quite frustrating. This also happens on a few other streaming websites as well, not as frequent like Twitch but it does happen. Any suggestions/help would be much appreciated! Thanky you.
Accepted Solution
train_wreck
Gold Problem solver
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610 Messages
10 years ago
well, i don't have any bona-fide explanations, as i'm just another user along side you. But i will point, at the very least, to the terms of the Comcast/NBCUniversal merger, which, i believe, dictate that Comcast abide by the "open internet" rules of the FCC. (this is a link to the terms http://corporate.comcast.com/news-information/nbcuniversal-transaction , didn't feel like reading legalese to find the specific clauses. I have been told they are there.) Among other things, these rules forbid Comcast from throttling specific websites, other than doing it purley for congestion management on the Comcast network. I believe that Comcast must be evaluated yearly as to whether they are compliant.
To your original issue with Twitch, they could be experiencing the same kind of backbone/peer congestion with their ISP as Netflix was/is with certain ISPs. If that's the case, then it unfortunately would most likely not be a Comcast problem. The backhaul congestion could (and probably is) localized to your area, which is why using your VPN improves performance - for traffic to get from twitch to you, it now goes over different links, primarily located in NYC, and those links appear to be performing better than the ones close to where you actually are.
Just some thoughts, without reports from both Twitch and their ISPs there is unfortunately not much hard data to go on.
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SamuelAdams
New Contributor
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4 Messages
10 years ago
Thank you for that information, actually fairly helpful with my understanding of this issue. It just seems odd that my entire internet drops when I go to certain sites. Then again, since level3 has been performing very poorly these last few days (>180ms to most isps) that could be why, as level3 is the primary CDN for Twitch and other stream sites.
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