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Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

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Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#161

Post by close04 »

rayiner wrote: post #153
close04 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlimited - not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent. Best effort is when your taxi driver tries to take you to the airport as fast as possible but traffic gets in the way and you're late. When he stops in a tunnel and requests more money because he has to drive through his lunch break, or else he'll just inch forward that's not best effort. That's what I said before: squeezing for money. Rea…

Clearly a connection cannot be “unlimited” in reality, because there are many physical limits. That’s why you introduce the idea of “artificial limits,” but what are those? The number of cell towers in an area is also an “artificial” limit—the provider could build more. So even by your reasoning, you can’t take “unlimited” literally, and have to apply context. (And that is, in fact, the relevant legal consideration.…

And I'm perfectly OK with being allowed to hit physical limits. Unless you're arguing that 100GB of traffic is a physical limit of the network. Or that a software limiting the speed to something decided by management is also a physical limit. I'd love to see someone try to make that case.

As per the links posted above:

> Santa Clara Fire paid Verizon for "unlimited" data but suffered from heavy throttling until the department paid Verizon more.

I'm an engineer so maybe I have a different definition for what an artificial limitation means. If you can pay for it and instantly get it then maybe it was there all along, just artificially limited. Physical limitations don't get removed with when your payment is cleared. And I'm paying for access to a network which has some intrinsic parameters. One of them is the number of towers, not the potential number of towers. I care about the actual physical speed and capacity describing the actual network.

We also seem to have different definitions of what "misleading" means since you obviously believe saying nothing about the limitations or their true nature while selling an untouchable maximum and even a patently false claim of "unlimited" is in line with "not resorting to dictionary definitions and ignoring context and history". Your explanation above is nonsensical. Nothing else gets judged by 1997 standards. VW should get a free pass for pollution in the context of "this was clean in 1997". EVs can claim they have unlimited range. Can't ignore that history. Maybe you also accept to be paid in 1997 dollars so when you charge a customer $80.000 they can just give you $50.000 and call it even. And some day you might even buy a 50TB HDD that will only have 50GB and some lawyer on the internet will tell you that in '97 people were happy with 5GB and you can remove that "physical limitation" with a paid FW upgrade.

The reason "unlimited" takes different meanings in these cases is that some countries are actually lead by lobbyists and when they say "jump" you ask "how high?". Not because you can ever reasonably argue "unlimited" means 20 hours because 1997. The proof? In many civilized countries such claims are illegal.

And I will say it again: actually reading the article would help you make some important distinctions.

Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#162

Post by charleslmunger »

resters wrote: post #129
charleslmunger wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow your logic - it doesn't take a deep investigation to discover throttling, it takes a deep investigation to prove that poor performance is caused by throttling. It doesn't take a deep investigation to see that your cash register is short, but it might take one to prove that an employee is taking money from the drawer. And we're not seeing network capacity greatly increased through sensible traffi…

There could be many causes of what appears to be differential throttling. For a small ISP there might be a much higher quality backbone link to one video provider than to another. This is probably a coincidence. Also, popular services such as Netflix result in the build out of more dedicated bandwidth that is shaped to match peak demand. Broadly, traffic shaping happens from QoS rules, ISP upstream provider choices,…

All of those are not supported by the evidence in the linked article. They observed specific fixed speeds per provider, regardless of location, time, or load. You're correct that there are emergent effects from peering, routing, etc, but that is not what the evidence suggests is the cause of the issue.

And the specific regulation of "Do not throttle or shape legal traffic based on origin or contents" doesn't require large complicated regulatory intervention. A simple complaint system "we observe that traffic to origin X exhibits dramatically different performance than traffic to origin Y" and response would work basically fine. Of course it would be better if ISPs would behave reasonably without regulation, but we can see clearly that it's not the case.

Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#163

Post by p49k »

nbhuik wrote: post #155
p49k wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is like saying that UPS should deliver to everywhere on earth in one day for the same price No, it's not like that at all. UPS makes it clear to the customer in advance what the cost is, how long it will take, and the customer agrees. Also, UPS is not held responsible for delays that they couldn't reasonably prevent (bad weather, etc). It's also an exaggeration of the situation; it's essentially saying "If we ca…

You can have whatever opinion you want on what the Internet should be, just like I can. But the Internet today is different networks settings their own policy. Google can say "connect to us and we won't charge you for YouTube traffic", but that doesn't stop someone else from saying "no, pay us for access to our networks instead". It doesn't really matter if something is available or not as such because the whole mode…

It doesn’t have to be nationalized, it could alternatively be honestly priced and advertised. Most other businesses work this way: Starbucks doesn’t say “sorry, we only can give you half the coffee you paid for because our suppliers want more money and it would cut into our profits.” Instead, they work behind the scenes to make sure they can serve their product as advertised, and raise the price if necessary. I don’t know why you think the internet is any different; it’s a set of negotiations like any other business.

Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#164

Post by p49k »

rayiner wrote: post #144
p49k wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still the responsibility of the ISP to deliver connectivity to other hosts on the internet at their promised speed, regardless what is necessary to do so or how it operates internally. That's the service that they are advertising to the consumer. If UPS decided to change the way they internally route their packages, it doesn't mean that they can just brush off promised delivery dates because "it doesn't work how…

Internet "access" is, and always has been, a link to an "access network." ISPs promise that that they'll route packets from that access network to the Internet, but nobody promises you end-to-end connectivity at a particular speed (unless you pay for a dedicated line). (Verizon, for example, caveats it's product as being a "gigabit connection to your home .") People like to pretend like internet access service is a p…

This is disingenuous. Yes, an ISP can’t do anything if you pay for 1Gbps but can’t download that fast from a server in Turkey. But the only reason a customer can’t get sufficient bandwidth from Netflix, whose servers are often 5 hops away in the same city, is because the ISP is not doing their job. Being an ISP implies also doing a proper job of setting up agreements such that the bandwidth you pay for is usable.

Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#165

Post by rayiner »

p49k wrote: post #164
rayiner wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet "access" is, and always has been, a link to an "access network." ISPs promise that that they'll route packets from that access network to the Internet, but nobody promises you end-to-end connectivity at a particular speed (unless you pay for a dedicated line). (Verizon, for example, caveats it's product as being a "gigabit connection to your home .") People like to pretend like internet access service is a p…

This is disingenuous. Yes, an ISP can’t do anything if you pay for 1Gbps but can’t download that fast from a server in Turkey. But the only reason a customer can’t get sufficient bandwidth from Netflix, whose servers are often 5 hops away in the same city, is because the ISP is not doing their job. Being an ISP implies also doing a proper job of setting up agreements such that the bandwidth you pay for is usable.

You’re backing off from your original assertion:

> It's still the responsibility of the ISP to deliver connectivity to other hosts on the internet at their promised speed, regardless what is necessary to do so or how it operates internally

So they don’t have to deliver 1 gbps to every end point, they just need to “do a proper job” to make the bandwidth “usable.” But what does “proper job” mean? Historically, it has meant making reasonable efforts to reach interconnection agreements with other network operators. It has not meant that you’re required to upgrade your peering so that 50%+ of all your traffic can come from a single peer, at no cost to the other peer.

Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#166

Post by tptacek »

close04 wrote: post #148
rayiner wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wireless ISPs don’t advertise any particular speed level. They sell “best effort” service and advertise it that way. What you’re asking for is an SLA (presumably for consumer level prices).

Unlimited - not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent. Best effort is when your taxi driver tries to take you to the airport as fast as possible but traffic gets in the way and you're late. When he stops in a tunnel and requests more money because he has to drive through his lunch break, or else he'll just inch forward that's not best effort. That's what I said before: squeezing for money. Rea…

I'm curious what the win condition for this argument is. Obviously, no appeal to semantics is going to alter the business model of a wireless provider. Are you really just after them changing the word "unlimited" to something else?

Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#167

Post by tptacek »

close04 wrote: post #161
rayiner wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly a connection cannot be “unlimited” in reality, because there are many physical limits. That’s why you introduce the idea of “artificial limits,” but what are those? The number of cell towers in an area is also an “artificial” limit—the provider could build more. So even by your reasoning, you can’t take “unlimited” literally, and have to apply context. (And that is, in fact, the relevant legal consideration.…

And I'm perfectly OK with being allowed to hit physical limits. Unless you're arguing that 100GB of traffic is a physical limit of the network. Or that a software limiting the speed to something decided by management is also a physical limit. I'd love to see someone try to make that case. As per the links posted above: > Santa Clara Fire paid Verizon for "unlimited" data but suffered from heavy throttling until the d…

The guidelines ask specifically that you not insinuate the person you're arguing with failed to read the article.

Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#168

Post by p49k »

rayiner wrote: post #165
p49k wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disingenuous. Yes, an ISP can’t do anything if you pay for 1Gbps but can’t download that fast from a server in Turkey. But the only reason a customer can’t get sufficient bandwidth from Netflix, whose servers are often 5 hops away in the same city, is because the ISP is not doing their job. Being an ISP implies also doing a proper job of setting up agreements such that the bandwidth you pay for is usable.

You’re backing off from your original assertion: > It's still the responsibility of the ISP to deliver connectivity to other hosts on the internet at their promised speed , regardless what is necessary to do so or how it operates internally So they don’t have to deliver 1 gbps to every end point, they just need to “do a proper job” to make the bandwidth “usable.” But what does “proper job” mean? Historically, it has…

I’m not backing off my argument; I’m arguing from a stance of reasonableness rather than perfection. And while we can argue on exactly what defines “reasonableness”, I think it’s unambiguously clear that a large number of people do in fact need 50% of their traffic to come from a single peer and I think it shouldn’t be unreasonable to expect an ISPs to address that rather than throttling customers. I know plenty of people whose internet usage consists of email, Facebook and hours upon hours of streaming Netflix.

Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#169

Post by mehrdadn »

close04 wrote: post #83
mehrdadn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to justify what they're currently doing either. What I'm trying to explain is that making something that legally works the way we all want it to is a different and much tougher problem than merely being able to imagine a world in which the current practices don't exist.

Informing the users properly is the the least they could do. Today they willingly mislead consumers.

I agree with that.

Re: Research shows that nearly every U.S. cell provider is doing throttling

#170

Post by kakarot »

sbr464 wrote: post #58
DougBTX wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I’ve had a great experience with 4G LTE, but it is going to depend on lots of factors, including the ISP.

Curious, regarding monthly download caps, has anyone found a solution to using a 4G LTE connection for frequent Netflix consumption? It currently burns through too many gigs to be a cable internet replacement. I was looking for a solution for doing longer term domestic (US) travel.

Seconding T-mobile. Pretty much every major media provider is zero-rated and they welcome suggestions for new additions, so it's actually pretty fair as far as zero-rating goes. Just about the only thing you're out of luck on is if you A) use a VPN or B) stream from a private server.
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