I have a few clients that have netflix, roku and fios. over the last few months they have been increasingly unable to watch netflix without a buffering issue. other apps/videos load instantly (100/100 speeds) Its on all 3 rokus and 1 TV at one house and another there are 2 Apple TV's that have this issue.

It appears that both clients are a victim of Verizon hatred of Netflix and some throttling is going on. resets of devices dont do anything other then resetting the ONT which seems to help for a day and then goes back to the same issue.

Searching google brings mixed things regarding whats going on here. Before I have both clients switch over to comcast is there anything else I should check or do? one client has a microtik and another has and edgemax. Its known that verizon throttles netflix over cellular data but there is a mixed bag on fios.

Dont turn this into a net neutrality thread. this has been going on for months before anything changed.

Have you tried deleting Netflix and reinstalling it? What about a reset of the Roku? I had to do that and the Roku 3 I was using started working better. Also, make sure the ad tracking is turned off.

Have you streamed Netflix using a computer or smart TV (if you have one)?

Restarted the roku, not reset. Didn’t think about deleting it. However his daughter was home from college and brought her TV back and had the same issue (Sony) one of the ipads was also doing the same thing.

I should mention the rokus are all hardwired, the TV and iPad were of course wireless. Didn’t do anything with the ad tracking, didn’t even know that was a thing.

Ad tracking is in System, Privacy- go to the right and you'll see 'Reset Advertising Identifier' and 'Limit Ad-tracking'.

I use two Roku, one is the Stick and the other is a Roku3, neither is hard-wired because they're very close to the router and the Stick can't be. I let Netflix lapse because I wasn't using it but I don't have problems with buffering. The only one I have problems is any of the news streams that have anything to do with Newsy, which runs stupid commercials consecutively in pairs, trios and sometimes, almost ten commercials in a row (not at one time, but when they're annoying, once is more than enough).

If it's happening across multiple platforms, it's time to call the ISP, or possibly reset and clear the cache in the router/gateway and even a switch, if you have one. I never heard that a switch could mess up network speed until I reset one and it went from 2Mbps to over 25Mpbs.

If you do reset the Roku, doing an update will restore the apps, but their positions on the home screen will have to be changed if they like certain ones to be at the top.

Wondered how this turned out for you.

I have several customers in the area now that are complaining of buffering issues. The common thread is they are on CenturyLink.

Where I'm located in the swamp, I personally only have CenturyLink as an option for internet. And for the past few months I also have been experiencing buffering issues. This week, it has started with YouTube. I can't seem to stream any YouTube videos in HD.
I can do speed tests however, all day long to servers all over the southeast US and get ping 35-45ms and speed 20Mbps.

These f^n companies are throttling services. And in areas where you only have 1 choice for a provider, there is nothing you can do about it. This crap is criminal!

While I'm not a fan of the cable companies, we do need to have some respect for the physics. As more and more customers are streaming movies with an "all you can eat" package, the ISP's facilities are being stressed. There is a big difference between delivering peaky traffic such as web pages, emails, social junk, and delivering steady HD video streams. There can be choke points between the NETFLIX server, major distribution nodes to the ISP, the ISP's facility, and the last mile to the customer.

A speed test result is a crude figure of merit for this sort of drama because the path for the speed test is likely different from the movie path.

But there is a way to test speed when streaming Netflix- it's shown at the lower part of the link but not all devices support it.

When I hear complaints about buffering and speed, I start by asking about the time of day- if it's near the time when most people come home from work/school, I tell them to try later and explain why that time is worst. I also do speed tests while streaming- if it shows a bottleneck, I pause the stream and try again.

[Link: help.netflix.com]

I found out yesturday that Netflix is now a FIOS channel.