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Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

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Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#31

Post by sjm-lbm »

drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

There's a sizable portion of the country that has Verizon Fios - in a random suburb of Dallas, I can get 75/35 for ~$80 with no data caps. It's not amazing, but it's not horrid.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#32

Post by alongenemylines »

Tyr42 wrote: post #23
drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

I don't hate my ISP. But I've got no cap, and good speeds.

Ditto. My only complaint is the price. I pay for 10 mbit service from TWC, and regularly have speeds of 18 mbit. Also, my external ip hasn't changed since I installed my modem, and I don't pay for a static IP.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#33

Post by Jtsummers »

mindslight wrote: post #27
Jtsummers wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we can saturate our internet connections with one video stream. That means it's not fast enough. Presently living alone so this is mostly a nonissue for me, but what about people with 2+ users at home? One wants to watch the latest Doctor Who, the other wants to check their email and browse the web, someone is losing out.

This is exactly the kind of knee-jerk entitlement I'm talking about. I'm guessing if connection speeds were 10x higher, you'd still be making similar arguments for why the slower one was also completely unacceptable. I'd love a 100mbit home connection as well, but we don't have those and signing up for cable is a very stressful way to pretend. As for the current practicalities - first, two of these streams would fit…

I probably wouldn't, my service is around 12Mbit, it is fast enough for me and I've rarely saturated it. I fully understand that (like CPUs and memory) the tech will grow to fill the space provided. You claimed a 1-10Mbit/second data connection was fast enough but essentially made the argument from the standpoint of a single user of that connection. Home connections are often multi-user so by your calculations they are not fast enough for most users.

Second: "upgrade to a non-streaming setup"

What services are comparable to Hulu/Netflix in terms of variety of content (though Netflix streaming seems to have poorer coverage these days, lost some contracts?) that is not a streaming service?

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#34

Post by chroem »

bluedino wrote: post #30
drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

>> Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. Not really. Sure, there are a lot of bad ISP's and places to live with few options, but there's a lot of great internet service out there. Go on any message board and view the threads "Post your speedtest results", and for everyone who's stuck with some shit DSL provider with 1mb up and .25 mb down (my current situation) there's someone with 45.99/mo…

Keep in mind that people go there to brag about their unusually high connection speeds.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#35

Post by nathanb »

drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

I am not constantly enraged at TWC. They charge way too much for what I get, but it works consistently at the advertised speed. The installer added a coaxial port for me in the room I wanted without complaining or charging extra, and my external IP has been static for three years now. I have never seen evidence of a cap (not that I am a heavy bandwidth user).

I still feel like I am charged way too much for what I get, and I'm scared to mess with anything (for example, to buy my own modem to avoid the ridiculous modem rental fee they tacked on) because I don't want stuff to stop working (or to have to deal with their tech support line). I am in no way happy with them. But I am not enraged.

(When I lived in Blacksburg, VA there were three options for broadband -- DSL, cable, and a university-affiliated provider -- which were all in heavy competition to be the most horrible. I was actively enraged pretty much constantly over the miserable state of affairs. So I know that feel.)

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#36

Post by Locke1689 »

drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

I love my ISP, CondoInternet. $60, 100M symmetric. Upgrade to 1000 available. Free static IP, full IPv6 support.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#37

Post by MichaelGG »

humanrebar wrote: post #24
codegeek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not agree more for this specific case. Really wish Internet was just another utility that we paid for and not worry about the monopoly these ISPs have specially in some remote areas.

There is some parallel, but ISPs are not commoditized like electricity utilities are. Once consumer-level data is pretty even across the board and companies are only competing for lock-in and price, those kinds of regulations make much more sense. In other words, let's wait until use cases like uploading multiple HD video streams are trivial before we freeze the current technical expectations and business models.

Why would regulation freeze technical expectations? IP transit pretty much boils down to cables and switches. A regulatory model that mandates specific speeds could probably even specify allowed tariffs. In theory it should be fine. I'm not sure there's a whole lot of "business models" for such a simple thing as transit. Most of those models are just trying to find breakage so you can market services you hopefully don't have to deliver.

The real problem is, like the telephone network, you end up getting all sorts of little exceptions and silly tariffs and they don't get updated and it turns into an idiotic mess.

But in theory, mandating target coverage and speeds should work just fine. Just like the phone network, if the FCC decides to actually get involved and fine people, companies will take things seriously (for the most part...).

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#38

Post by wiredfool »

drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

I like my ISP. My internet's expensive and not terribly fast (18/2), but it's reliable. (more so than the power co. the phone co buried their lines, the power people didn't.)

I'm in a rural area, and as far as I know, there are 2 options, Comcast and the local phone co. I'm with the local company. I've had to call customer service a few times, and the phone is answered at an office 5 miles from here. It's one (not difficult to arrange) transfer to someone who knows what I'm talking about when I go on about routers with the default password and a privilege escalation bug. They're the only telecom that has ever impressed me with their customer service.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#39

Post by nathanb »

forkrulassail wrote: post #20

I've been kicked from 7 South African ISPs as a top 2% or 'abuse' user, after paying for uncapped access. Things seriously need to change this side.

I visited SA a few months ago, with an eye toward possibly moving there and working remotely (I'm a software developer for a large software engineering corporation that's relatively friendly toward remote workers).

My opinion was that it would be very difficult to be a remote software worker in SA because the network infrastructure was so poor. Everyone I talked to just used USB cellular modems to get online, and the load would actually cause the cell tower near my friend's flat to crash sometimes at peak hours. The Internet was entirely unusable for good portions of the day.

Meanwhile, if you're willing to pay a premium for installation and use of a wired connection, you wind up dealing with the sort of thing you faced or just flat out apathy toward whether or not the service should actually work consistently.

In your own experience, is this an accurate assessment?

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