Cable companies best at streaming Netflix video [CNET News]
Netflix has released a report on how its streaming service fairs on the various networks of some of the largest Internet service providers in the country. The company examined the performance of its long-form, high-definition streams over various networks and found the cable networks offered far and away the best performance.
Of the top 16 national companies Netflix examined, the top seven were all cable companies. Charter was the strongest performing cable company overall. Insight was not mentioned in the report.
Netflix’s research looked at network traffic from October 1, 2010 through January 15, 2010. The research looked at the highest bit rate HD video Netflix offers. When networks slow down or become congested the bit rate of the streaming video drops. It’s impossible to sustain maximum bit rate throughout an entire video, but the higher the bit rate throughout the video the better the performance of the network.
Cable networks had the best results across the board, which is not surprising, given that, with the widespread rollout of DOCSIS 3.0, most cable networks offer much faster broadband speeds than virtually all of their competiors.
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