[kev009]

Well, under-provisioned backhaul, peering, and/or transit would cause exactly this. And the blame trail could be quite complex. I'm not apologizing, but commentary by almost anyone other than the network architects and peering coordinators of these organizations are pretty baseless speculations.

Disclaimer: I work for a major CDN. Netflix is trying to ween off of us and our competitors, which has contributed to lesser experience. Their model of co-locating gear for free doesn't make much sense to ISPs in the grand scheme of things.