What in god's name is Airtel doing with video streaming?

[mgcarley]

^^^ Hehehehe BSNL is probably the exception that proves the rule!! I know many users in NCR have been experiencing problems with BSNL routing lately - among other issues, even simple sites like Google are being routed to Chennai via Mumbai (which is nonsensical when there are Google servers in Mumbai itself)...Also, for the record, to avoid the products of Reliance, Airtel or Tata would probably mean you going completely offline. No phone, no Internet, no mobile.

 

[mhsabir]

Thats why I said "Try to avoid" . Also, I am talking about taking up a new service - I still have an Airtel mobile , which I am planning to retain atleast for a while.

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I am also talking about places where I do have other choices

 

[mgcarley]

For google I understand, but how would the DNS matter for sites like putlocker etc that the OP mentions. they have servers outside India only and the difference would only be in resolving the address(some milliseconds) but after that how would it matter?

Which is why I tried to distinguish the difference between sites on massive global CDNs like Google and Apple versus these "smaller" sites (which, by the way, is pushing about 50% of the entire bandwidth utilization of India by themselves): Putlocker's host network is pushing 120Gbit/s through Amsterdam *only* and Airtel's entire ISP network is doing less than 200gbit/s!

 

[Ryan]

Can you private message me some links and I'll test it out here to see.

 

[vebk]

@mgcarley: I know very little on this topic, but are you really saying that it could be a DNS issue that some video streaming sites are giving me 10-30 KB/s, and some (very very very few) are giving me 500-550 KB/s on a 4 Mbps connection? From my perspective of a lay man it seems either this is a routing issue, or more likely Airtel is doing something to suppress video streaming speeds. (Perhaps it's a combination of both?). Anyhow, I have had this problem while I was using Google's DNS, and subsequent to the Airtel technician changing it to Airtel's DNS there has been no improvement whatsoever.

 

[mgcarley]

@mgcarley: I know very little on this topic, but are you really saying that it could be a DNS issue that some video streaming sites are giving me 10-30 KB/s, and some (very very very few) are giving me 500-550 KB/s on a 4 Mbps connection? From my perspective of a lay man it seems either this is a routing issue, or more likely Airtel is doing something to suppress video streaming speeds. (Perhaps it's a combination of both?). Anyhow, I have had this problem while I was using Google's DNS, and subsequent to the Airtel technician changing it to Airtel's DNS there has been no improvement whatsoever.

It's a combination of things, yes, but what I am saying is that the most efficient DNS is *supposed* to be the ISP's DNS, since it will point at the ISP's content cache or mirrors or a directly peered node in the case of a CDN-powered site - but it may also depend on the site concerned: in other words, the DNS server in use does effectively determine the routing (unless the routes are forced by the ISP's gateway routers), and an incorrect config can lead to an inefficient route.

This is not to say that Airtel or any other ISP doesn't shape certain types of traffic - I'm very sure that it does (and it has been proved time and time again). You would be correct in coming to the conclusion that it is a combination of things, but as mentioned, for an Airtel customer, accessing certain sites (such as Youtube or Apple) are most efficient when using Airtel's DNS.

Even then, this is not necessarily a hard and fast rule: BSNL customers using BSNL's DNS can find that the routing is completely screwed and traffic goes all over the show unnecessarily to reach it's destination (no wonder the network is so overloaded).

 

[x720]

Even then, this is not necessarily a hard and fast rule: BSNL customers using BSNL's DNS can find that the routing is completely screwed and traffic goes all over the show unnecessarily to reach it's destination (no wonder the network is so overloaded).

But then why does namebench suggest I use bsnl's DNS ?
Shows something like it being 419 times faster than Google DNS

 

[kickass]

forget the namebench thingy. it just compare the latencies and a couple of other things (can't remember right now). it doesn't see which can actually perform better. the namebench suggests me mtnl dns for my mtnl connection. but there is no way on earth i m going to use it. sometimes websites open , sometimes don't ...all kinds of problems. i simply changed it to 8.8.4.4(google dns). everything works properly after that.

 

[Sushubh]

here is to explain it in simple words. what do you think is more reliable? a server in a data center in USA or a box running from your home? your home box would give you excellent pings. but the server in USA would give you higher pings. which is more reliable?

 

[x720]

Ah, now I get it. Thanks guys ;-)