Earlier quoted context omitted.
*Pedant
Totally fair call, fixed.
Try again
FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
81–90 of 432 posts
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#82happy to see upload get the attention it deserves. nothing is more annoying than uploading a video to $messagingapp or $socialmediaplatform and it just taking forever due to slow upload. a nice quality of life improvement to shove that quicker to someone. even stuff like backing up computers, or running security cameras that you can view remotely or that record to the cloud (encrypted) are really hampered by upload s…
Oh, it's worse than that. With my 20-1 DSL connection, saturating the uplink effectively causes a DoS for the downlink.
You gave me flashbacks to 2010 when I had used ADSL and thought 128 KB/s download was the best thing ever for downloading MP3s. And as you mentioned, using up all upload bandwidth effectively DoSed everyone else on the network, though in my case, any single person downloading also slowed down everything else to a crawl. I must have had less "downstream channels" (or whatever the DSL equivalent is) than your setup.
My current internet connection uses DOCSIS 3.1, but I can't recall any resource contention even if I have several computers trying to upload simultaneously. Not a big fan of asymmetric speeds, though, but apparently DOCSIS 4.0 (which is being finalized this year) gets us closer to symmetrical speeds.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#83This is nice, but with increased speed, they should also require ISPs do not impose a data cap to be considered broadband.
Why shouldn’t there be a cap? Bandwidth isn’t free. It’s sad seeing people on a forum called hacker news having no idea how networking infrastructure works.
They already charge for bandwidth. People pay more for 500mpbs than 50mbps. We are talking about total monthly data caps, which have nothing to do with bandwidth.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The costs for your ISP are fixed whether they serve you 1MB or 1TB. That's only true in a very abstract sense. If everybody went from using 1MB/day to 1TB/day there would be massive congestion issues and costs would increase as ISPs rush to install higher-bandwidth equipment. Put a different way: It is cheaper to construct a network where all subscribers consume only 1MB/day than a network where all subscribers con…
Well it should be true in the concrete sense. If they can't consistently serve you at 100mpbs or whatever else then they shouldn't advertise it. "But everyone else is using it at the same time so too bad" wouldn't work as an excuse in any other industry.
> If they can't consistently serve you at 100mpbs or whatever else then they shouldn't advertise it.
But that's true of almost every industry. Your bank advertises that you can withdraw your money at any time, but if everybody withdrew their money simultaneously there would be issues. A store advertises next-day shipping, but if everybody ordered simultaneously there would be issues. A house might have 100A power service, but if every house started burning 100A simultaneously there would be issues.
Put another way, what you're proposing is dramatically slower speeds for most users. ISPs are profitable, but they're not that profitable. Actual average usage on most lines is probably low single digit percentages, if not sub-1%. I just checked my line - my average use is about 200kB/s (for a total of about 500GB per month), or about 1% of my speed cap.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#85happy to see upload get the attention it deserves. nothing is more annoying than uploading a video to $messagingapp or $socialmediaplatform and it just taking forever due to slow upload. a nice quality of life improvement to shove that quicker to someone. even stuff like backing up computers, or running security cameras that you can view remotely or that record to the cloud (encrypted) are really hampered by upload s…
Oh, it's worse than that. With my 20-1 DSL connection, saturating the uplink effectively causes a DoS for the downlink.
Cake or fq-codel on Openwrt
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that speed should be symmetrical. We are continuing to push the boundaries are content going out.
That's what gets me. Is there a technical reason why symmetrical connections would be more expensive than asymm?
AFAIK, PON (Passive Optical Network) has inherent reasons to be asymetric
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Data packets aren't a limited resource. The costs for your ISP are fixed whether they serve you 1MB or 1TB. Data caps and overage charges are purely a money grab, not some fundamental economic requirement. So no, infrequent users aren't "subsidizing" anyone else.
This just isn't true, though. The limit for a network provider is peak bandwidth usage. When they sell a 2gbps connection to a customer, that 2gbps connection is not reserved entirely for that customer. It isn't like the total bandwidth an ISP has is 2gbps * N number of customers. They over-subscribe because they know not every customer is going to be using up that full 2gbps 24/7. Now, you can argue that an ISP SHOU…
would it be fair to say that bandwidth is just another product sold like plane tickets?
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Data packets aren't a limited resource. The costs for your ISP are fixed whether they serve you 1MB or 1TB. Data caps and overage charges are purely a money grab, not some fundamental economic requirement. So no, infrequent users aren't "subsidizing" anyone else.
>> Data packets aren't a limited resource. No, but bandwidth is. Particularly wireless where you can't just lay down another cable or fiber.
Bandwidth and data caps aren't hand in hand. If I download a COD update that is 100gb right now at 1gbps. or I watch 3gb of netflix a day at 10mbps, i'm still using 100gb. But the bandwidth requirements are very different.
They either have infrastructure that can handle 1gbps per user, and then they have bandwidth available, and data caps are nonsense... or they don't have the infrastructure, and are banking on their service being idle 90% of the time for most users, and this is why after 5 oclock, my internet goes to crap when everyone is getting home and starting to use the internet. And now suddenly Im drastically overpaying for non-broadband internet because my ISP underprovisioned way too much.
This goes back to the point that everyone is making that ISPs shouldn't be able to underprovision to the point that it degrades performance during high usage times.
My ISP saw $800 million in profits on $2 billion in revenue in 2019. That's an AMAZING profit margin. They can afford to not underprovision, and when they don't under provision, then no, bandwidth isn't a limited resource.
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why shouldn’t there be a cap? Bandwidth isn’t free. It’s sad seeing people on a forum called hacker news having no idea how networking infrastructure works.
Let me throw that question back at you: why should there be a cap? You are paying ISPs for a certain bandwidth speed per month and they sure as hell are not prorating your service based on data that you did not consume. If the ISP is in capable of delivering the agreed-upon band with every minute of the whole month, then they are not meeting the SLA that you’re paying them for.
If ISPs were like an electric utility, we'd see something like a cost per GB transferred in cents, with a minimum charge reflecting the cost of maintaining a connection of a certain speed to the network.
Which is algebraically identical to a monthly charge and data cap with overage charge. The main issue is the overage charge is too high, it should be like 1 cent per GB (Comcast is charging 20x that).
Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]
#90This is nice, but with increased speed, they should also require ISPs do not impose a data cap to be considered broadband.
And that speed should be symmetrical. We are continuing to push the boundaries are content going out.
A huge portion of people don't need a massive upstream. This sounds more expensive for basically no benefit (for most)