Netflix in Santa Barbara / Goleta Very Slow(multiple locations)

Same here at Mission Viejo, CA over last week.  

Speed tests 120+ Mbps easily, but fast.com or netflix drops to few kbps rendering even 480p playback stutter. The speeds afterhours are occasionally OK (~ 10 PM or after), but still takes a while to get a steady HD stream (2+ minutes on a what was supposed to be 100+ Mbps connection). 

Cox has not acknowledged any issues so far when I contacted customer support. 

Exact same issue here in Mission Viejo.  Not just testing against Fast.com, but actually against NFLX streaming nodes. Cox own speed tests showing 150Mb/s.  Tests to other Ookla nodes showing 150Mb/s so my CM, Router, Wifi, are all rock solid. 

Fast.com 1Mb/s directly. Using a VPN service, 150Mb/s at the exact same time in a different browser. 

Loaded Netflix in primary browser without VPN.  Used CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-D  to see diagnostics in real time of the stream.   Could not get much above 1.0Mb/s .  Using their direct peered nodes in LAX.  Video quality below 480. 

At the same exact time, loaded Netflix and streamed from a different browser with a VPN loaded.  Streamed EXACT same movie at the same time.  CDN nodes were NYC based on the command above.    Streaming bitrate went up to 15Mb/s! 

Their peering with Netflix CDN nodes is seriously oversubscribed suddenly at the beginning of the new year. 

Same issue here in Irvine, Ca with Netflix. Youtube is similar, but not as bad. Issue on my PC and my Amazon Fire TV.  Been happening for the last week or so. 

Fast.com says I'm at 79Kbps

Speedtest says I'm at 350Mbps

Cox's own internet speed test says I'm at 0Mbps. At least it says I'm getting 1Mbps upload...

I am in the exact same boat with OP, my cellphone is much faster than my cable now (for Netflix). Cox is such a joke.

For what it's worth, tonight I was even having trouble listening to Apple Music. Started a song, it played for 5 seconds, skipped, stopped, buffered, etc. Turned off WiFi and all of my problems went away (my 1 bar of LTE is superior to my Cox HSI). Trying to watch DirecTV NOW at the moment and keep getting an error after 5-15 seconds of viewing. This is definitely not specific to Netflix (might be everything that is served by the Akamai CDN, which would include Netflix). Fast.com currently reporting 230Kbps. No call back for my tier-2 ticket as of yet. Having to watch TV on the iPad now.

Luckily they just ran Google Fiber to my place, but it doesn't go live until later this month. 1000/1000Mbps with no data cap nor deprioritzation during peak hours, all for $70/mo – take note Cox. ;-)

Following up on post immediately above, all nodes up to the hop 5-6 border exhibit zero packet loss.  Then 23.246.25.10 exhibits 11% packet loss.  I sent over 2000 packets to each node separately (with the help of good ol' UOTrace).

The border between 68.1.1.x network (cox?) and 23.246.25.x (netflix) appears to be the issue.  10%+ packet loss.

--B

P.S.  there is no such packet loss for route to fast.com.  But somehow their tool is still a good measure of how slow/bad our connection to netflix is at the time.

TiffanyR said:
SB-Cox-User,

The trace that you provided looks good. I am interested in seeing what is looks like when you are seeing the problem.

As expected/feared, upon coming home tonight, Netflix performance is poor and fast.com report <1Mbps bandwidth to Netflix.

I ran netstat on my router to find which netflix nodes my Apple TV was using:  23.246.25.153 and 23.246.25.155.  So, making connection to same class C network at netflix.

Traceroutes to both follow:

-----------------------------------------------------

Tracing route to ipv4_1.cxl0.c074.lax008.ix.nflxvideo.net [23.246.25.153]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms redacted
2 8 ms 7 ms 6 ms redacted
3 7 ms 8 ms 8 ms 68.4.15.22
4 28 ms 27 ms 26 ms ip68-4-11-96.oc.oc.cox.net [68.4.11.96]
5 32 ms 30 ms 28 ms 68.1.1.167
6 44 ms 46 ms 46 ms 23.246.25.10
7 49 ms 49 ms 46 ms ipv4_1.cxl0.c074.lax008.ix.nflxvideo.net [23.246.25.153]

Trace complete.
Mon 01/08/2018
06:00 PM

---------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------

Tracing route to ipv4_1.cxl0.c076.lax008.ix.nflxvideo.net [23.246.25.155]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms redacted
2 7 ms 19 ms 13 ms redacted
3 8 ms 7 ms 10 ms ip68-4-12-42.oc.oc.cox.net [68.4.12.42]
4 10 ms 12 ms 11 ms ip68-4-11-98.oc.oc.cox.net [68.4.11.98]
5 12 ms 11 ms 16 ms 68.1.1.63
6 * 31 ms 27 ms 23.246.25.10
7 29 ms 30 ms 29 ms ipv4_1.cxl0.c076.lax008.ix.nflxvideo.net [23.246.25.155]

Trace complete.
Mon 01/08/2018
06:02 PM

---------------------------------------------------

Traceoute to fast.com follows in case it's at all relevant.  I notice that the "tbone.rr.com" nodes are back.  Those aren't there during the day!

Tracing route to fast.com [104.70.214.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms redacted 
2 7 ms 7 ms 6 ms redacted
3 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms redacted
4 11 ms 10 ms 11 ms ip68-4-11-96.oc.oc.cox.net [68.4.11.96]
5 14 ms 12 ms 14 ms 68.1.1.171
6 13 ms 41 ms 14 ms 209-18-36-50.tbone.rr.com [209.18.36.50]
7 21 ms 15 ms 16 ms bu-ether27.tustca4200w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.57]
8 16 ms 15 ms 23 ms bu-ether14.lsancarc0yw-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.4]
9 21 ms 26 ms 20 ms 0.ae1.pr0.lax00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.118]
10 14 ms 20 ms 15 ms a104-70-214-23.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [104.70.214.23]

Trace complete.
Mon 01/08/2018 
06:04 PM

Compared to earlier today. . .

Tracing route to fast.com [23.214.235.225]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms redacted 
2 5 ms 6 ms 6 ms redacted
3 7 ms 6 ms 10 ms redacted 
4 16 ms 18 ms 17 ms ip68-4-11-98.oc.oc.cox.net [68.4.11.98]
5 19 ms 42 ms 19 ms 68.1.1.63
6 23 ms 29 ms 18 ms ae-7.a00.lsanca20.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.194.165]
7 19 ms 21 ms 19 ms ae-3.r01.lsanca20.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.2.233]
8 21 ms 21 ms 19 ms ae-8.r23.lsanca07.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.6.48]
9 22 ms 24 ms 22 ms ae-2.r01.lsanca07.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.107]
10 19 ms 20 ms 20 ms ae-1.a00.lsanca07.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.2.116]
11 20 ms 18 ms 19 ms a23-214-235-225.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [23.214.235.225]

Trace complete.
Mon 01/08/2018
09:54 AM

This is a traceroute to fast.com from Irvine CA when everything works fine but Netflix.

I have tried on Apple TV, iphone, Android and alson on PC Web browser. They all **.

http://speedtest.googlefiber.net/ reports 150 Mbit down / 10 Mbit up

https://fast.com/ reports 430 Kbps

winmtr fast.com

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.0.1 - 0 | 45 | 45 | 2 | 55 | 725 | 6 |
| 10.74.96.1 - 0 | 45 | 45 | 11 | 66 | 739 | 23 |
| ip68-4-12-132.oc.oc.cox.net - 0 | 45 | 45 | 14 | 71 | 738 | 25 |
| ip68-4-11-12.oc.oc.cox.net - 0 | 45 | 45 | 11 | 68 | 741 | 26 |
| 68.1.1.167 - 0 | 45 | 45 | 15 | 72 | 743 | 32 |
| ae-7.a00.lsanca20.us.bb.gin.ntt.net - 0 | 45 | 45 | 17 | 77 | 766 | 19 |
| ae-3.r00.lsanca20.us.bb.gin.ntt.net - 14 | 30 | 26 | 0 | 87 | 319 | 34 |
| ae-6.r22.lsanca07.us.bb.gin.ntt.net - 0 | 45 | 45 | 30 | 89 | 765 | 32 |
| ae-1.r00.lsanca07.us.bb.gin.ntt.net - 0 | 45 | 45 | 29 | 89 | 755 | 35 |
| ae-0.a00.lsanca07.us.bb.gin.ntt.net - 3 | 41 | 40 | 29 | 102 | 749 | 32 |
|a96-6-101-119.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com - 6 | 37 | 35 | 29 | 105 | 731 | 36 |

TiffanyR said:
We would prefer to see a traceroute to Netflix. You can use IP 69.53.236.17 . By viewing the trace, it will help determine where the problem is. Are you able to send us a trace while you are having the problem and while you are not?

Hi Tiffany,

Thanks for your reply.  I tried a traceroute to the IP you provided (69.53.236.17).  It behaves strangely.  All hops after hop 3 time out.  Which, I have to assume is prior to my even leaving the Cox network. This doesn't happen when I traceroute any other IPs.  Can't explain it.

Having said that. . . using netstat on my router, I was able to determine the IP to which my AppleTV (wired connection) is connecting as of now, 10:30am Jan 8 pacific time:  

Tracing route to ipv4_1.cxl0.c094.lax008.ix.nflxvideo.net [23.246.25.173]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms redacted
2 6 ms 7 ms 7 ms redacted
3 9 ms 7 ms 7 ms 68.4.15.22
4 62 ms 9 ms 10 ms ip68-4-11-96.oc.oc.cox.net [68.4.11.96]
5 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms 68.1.1.167
6 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms 23.246.25.10
7 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms ipv4_1.cxl0.c094.lax008.ix.nflxvideo.net [23.246.25.173]

Trace complete.

I'll update again this evening when/if the problem returns.  To see if there's any difference in the route.

Well, all other streaming services are fine on my end.  Amazon Prime, Youtube, Apple-purchased content, all run perfectly smoothly.  Only Netflix is affected.

As for "what are the odds all of this started happening just one business day after the net neutrality repeal takes place?". . . I'd say the odds are pretty darn low.

If the alleged goal is to force us away from streaming and back to Cox as our primary television/video content provider even while they have a document on their support page pledging to honor net neutrality. . . I think they would probably be more subtle than throttling Netflix down to dial-up speeds within 24 hours of doing so becoming "legal."  

Just my opinion.  I tend to want to fully rule out other technical (and in my opinion, far more likely) possibilities before assuming (and making accusations regarding) conspiracy/malfeasance.

--B