Slow Netflix? It’s not always your ISP’s fault

[Commentary] In the last week of May, a large number of New Zealand customers started experiencing difficulties accessing Netflix. In the context of the current net neutrality debates in the US, it was inevitable that some immediately jumped to the (erroneous) conclusion that their Internet service providers (ISPs) were deliberately slowing down or blocking Netflix traffic for some strategic reason.

However, a little local journalistic sleuthing elicited only denials from local ISPs that they were ‘shaping’ Netflix traffic. Furthermore, the problem appeared to be affecting customers of a number of ISPs. A day later, all became clear: Netflix itself was primarily responsible for the interruptions to its New Zealand customers, but it wasn’t intentional.

The New Zealand ISPs were also contributing to the problem, but this too was accidental. It turns out that Netflix had made some technical changes to its content distribution that had caught the ISPs ‘on the hop’. The change meant that the ISPs were no longer detecting and caching the popular content, so everyone had to endure the long wait as every copy requested was streamed live from the US.

[Howell is general manager for the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation and a faculty member of Victoria Business School, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand]