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Verizon Deny Throttling Bandwidth - Thats True!!! Markmonitor do it for them!

I am outraged at the assumption by Verizon that the use of my internet service is not legitimate.

I have a 75/35 connection and use a WDTV Live internet player to view my content from the UK on my TV.

I am a heavy user of this device sometimes up to 16 hours a day, the content is not illegal and is streamed using a slingbox type device from my own equipment in the UK. On my router I use three voip lines, one Mac Mini, one WDTV Live, and a Sony Blu Ray to access you tube on the TV. In the past few days the stream to my WDTV live started dropping frequently and downgrading so that instead of my usual 4800kbps I get between 122 and 400kbps. None of the other devices have changed their behaviour and act quite normally. However if I log into my UK stream/content in the browser window on the Mac mini the speed is 4800kbps. Logging back onto the WDTV live the stream suffers and struggles. If I connect the WDTV live to my neighbor's Comcast Internet I get 3900kbps! I have tried switching the WDTV live for a Netgear NeoTV and get the same unwatchable speed. Verizon Customer services are USELESS!!! They deny throttling the speeds, they say do a speed test - that revelas more than my 75/35, and are unwilling to assist me because I do not use their crummy actiontec router. I have argued with them over this earlier this year when my WDTV became unwatchable and suddenly it worked fine.

The guy that I spoke to told me that my Internet activity was abnormal and raised some flags, because the stream is a peer to peer connection, and that my Internet is controlled by Markmonitor, which slows down the speed to unuseable when previously flagged activity is detected but not for anything else. He told me that I should read my emails as they have sent me several. I never got ANY. I cant use my Internet for the one thing I actually subscribe to it for. Verizon ***** totally ***** and they talk about "Getting It" in their TV commercials. WELL VERIZON GET THIS... I WANT TO BE ABLE TO USE MY INTERNET TO VIEW THE CONTENT THAT I PAY FOR! No amount of throttling by you or your detection robots will make me buy your TV bundles - and while you are at it stop calling me up telling me that I am missing fantastic offers on your TV bundles. I already know what I want to watch. Get rid of the Markmonitor I am not a pirate.

Comments

viafax999

@digimon900 wrote:
Verizon Customer services are USELESS!!! They deny throttling the speeds, they say do a speed test - that revelas more than my 75/35, and are unwilling to assist me because I do not use their crummy actiontec router. .

Presumably you have your own router connected to the ont? which is perfectly legal so unfortunately as you've found out customer support will not support you when this is done.

Agreed the VZ routers are fairly crumby however even their oldest ones will easily give you the 75/35 wired that you are paying for. I would think it might make sense to put their router in place so that their customer service will talk to you an once they have resolved the issue you could then just remove it again.

digimon900

I mailed their router back to them!

viafax999

@digimon900 wrote:
I mailed their router back to them!

Yes I noticed that in one of your other posts. Was a little surprised by that as it it yours to use while you have fios service and typically they never ask for them back even when you terminate service - that's one of the reasons there are so many for sale on ebay.

You could ask for it back as you are paying for it. Sometimes you can find them at the local Verizon stores.

smith6612

MarkMonitor has nothing to do with Verizon and how they manage their network, unless you're pirating content. MarkMonitor's job is to search the Internet for copyright infringing content and help manage it. In Verizon's case, if MarkMonitor catches you pirating, they tell Verizon, and after so many strikes (You'll be well notified about these, both by certified letter and via your MyVerizon account), you may potentially get your connection throttled.

Also while streaming, it's a very good idea to test from another Verizon connection to test a theory of throttling. If you're trying from Comcast, not only are you trying from another provider, you're also trying a connection over an entirely different set of routes. Essentially, you're trading in many variables. But it is good to know things work fine on Comcast.

Since you don't have the Verizon router (can't blame you. The firmware needs a lot of work), you're best checking to see at this point how your video is routing. Many third party routers (non-Verizon) can give you a readout of the NAT table. Use the NAT table to find out the IP address of the streaming server your device is streaming from, and traceroute it. This tells you at least one direction which the data could be traving down, but it won't show you the reverse path. There are some networks Verizon has been having peering issues with, due to saturation at night, and it's caused services like Netflix to decrease in performance.

morseman21

@digimon900 wrote:
I am outraged at the assumption by Verizon that the use of my internet service is not legitimate.
I have a 75/35 connection and use a WDTV Live internet player to view my content from the UK on my TV.
I am a heavy user of this device sometimes up to 16 hours a day, the content is not illegal and is streamed using a slingbox type device from my own equipment in the UK. On my router I use three voip lines, one Mac Mini, one WDTV Live, and a Sony Blu Ray to access you tube on the TV. In the past few days the stream to my WDTV live started dropping frequently and downgrading so that instead of my usual 4800kbps I get between 122 and 400kbps. None of the other devices have changed their behaviour and act quite normally. However if I log into my UK stream/content in the browser window on the Mac mini the speed is 4800kbps. Logging back onto the WDTV live the stream suffers and struggles. If I connect the WDTV live to my neighbor's Comcast Internet I get 3900kbps! I have tried switching the WDTV live for a Netgear NeoTV and get the same unwatchable speed. Verizon Customer services are USELESS!!! They deny throttling the speeds, they say do a speed test - that revelas more than my 75/35, and are unwilling to assist me because I do not use their crummy actiontec router. I have argued with them over this earlier this year when my WDTV became unwatchable and suddenly it worked fine.
The guy that I spoke to told me that my Internet activity was abnormal and raised some flags, because the stream is a peer to peer connection, and that my Internet is controlled by Markmonitor, which slows down the speed to unuseable when previously flagged activity is detected but not for anything else. He told me that I should read my emails as they have sent me several. I never got ANY. I cant use my Internet for the one thing I actually subscribe to it for. Verizon ***** totally ***** and they talk about "Getting It" in their TV commercials. WELL VERIZON GET THIS... I WANT TO BE ABLE TO USE MY INTERNET TO VIEW THE CONTENT THAT I PAY FOR! No amount of throttling by you or your detection robots will make me buy your TV bundles - and while you are at it stop calling me up telling me that I am missing fantastic offers on your TV bundles. I already know what I want to watch. Get rid of the Markmonitor I am not a pirate.

Change the Slingbox port from 5001 to 443, this will make your traffic blend in with other SSL traffic. Another option would be setting up a VPN device at the same location as the Slingbox and connect to the slingbox subnet remotely using an encrypted VPN protocol; SSTP, L2TP/IPSEC or even PPTP with simple encryption enabled. The encrypted VPN tunnel would help obscure your data usage since Verizon probably uses an automated packet sniffer/filter to identify heavy internet use.

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