> But what about large files, such as videos? Surely there is a latency penalty for receiving the first byte, but shouldn’t it be smooth sailing after that?

So the articles (unstated) conclusion seems to be that, as long as there isn't network congestion, it is smooth sailing after that.

But that congestion reduces bandwidth. But of course, that applies just as much to a national backbone as to last-mile.

So I'm curious: where does most packet loss occur? Is it last-mile, at your ISP, or along major backbones? Because that has major implications as to whether caching video content closer to users actually results in higher-quality video (e.g. supporting 1080p instead of 720p) or not.