Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#181

Post by userbinator » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 7:52 PM UTC

beloch wrote: post #150

userbinator wrote: post #33

a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month "Unlimited data" should mean you can saturate the connection 24/7. Anything less is deceptive advertising. For a gigabit connection, that would mean around 300TB per month.

I used to have an "unlimited bandwidth" account with Shaw Cable in Canada, back before Rogers bought them. "Unlimited" was very much front and centre in all the advertising, etc.. They started charging me overage fees. I called them up and asked them to explain why they were charging me overage fees on an unlimited bandwidth account. Their explanation was that the bandwidth was unlimited in when I could use it, not i…

Did you ask them what times you are allowed to use a non-unlimited account?

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#182

Post by Loughla » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 10:50 PM UTC

jhenkens wrote: post #173

Loughla wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I know part of the money was through the state. It was matching funds for federal dollars. I think it was through rural development, which is closed, but I'm not absolutely sure. I'll check with my neighbor (works for ISP) tomorrow to see if he knows. To be honest, we approached the ISP, who was offering fiber in a town 45 minutes away. They said if we could get sign ups at least every half mile, on average, they…

Thanks! Yeah, we have a local ISP that has laid fiber in other communities where they could get grants (namely native communities), but they are only doing WISP in our community right now, and it won't service about half the homes here.

I confirmed that the majority of the funding was through federal rural development grants that aren't open anymore. Sorry about that! Now it's just low interest loans that are available to isp's.

What state are you in? There are quite a number of state grants, depending on where you are.

For real though. Talk to one of their planners and see if they have a number of necessary sign-ups. We did a signature campaign and had what we needed before the grant existed. They had committed to our stretch of fiber before they had the grant, we just had to all sign contacts for services. It took a year or so of knocking on doors. And that was to run the line about 40 miles.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#183

Post by walrus01 » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 10:57 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #179

wincy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An actual Google PM called me up the other day trying to upsell me to $200 a month 20 gigabit. Said they’d give me a router but I’m free to hook whatever I want to the fiber, saturate it as much as I want, no worries. They must have a lot of extra bandwidth if this is a service they’re offering in my neighborhood.

That'd be the testing of the 25G-PON. They say you can do that because they known oversubscription ratios of 32:1 really aren't such a horrible concept. Think about it - they told you and a couple dozen others to blast it with 20G up and 20G down as much as you want... and how often do you actually use anywhere near that much? When you do, how long are you actually using the full pipe? For 99.999% of home users high…

In the active ethernet FTTH and GPON/XGSPON last mile world, to put it in the most casual language possible, you can put a metric fuckton of 1 Gbps symmetric residential last mile users on a single 10 Gbps full duplex uplink before anyone starts to notice that they aren't seeing 1 Gbps speed tests.

Or before you can no longer claim that you are delivering 1 Gbps.

Your average residential user does not move that much traffic at all, if you have a traffic chart that's something like 60s SNMP interface bit counter poller interval for their CPE, fed into a time series db, and draw grafana charts for that customer over a 1 day or 1 week or 1 month period of time.

Even when a customer does something like buy several new 140GB xbox games in one day, the actual amount of time that they're really utilizing that link near full capacity in the same 24 hour period is very minimal.

The only caveat is that you need to be able to watch out for the 1 or 2% of outlier/heavy use customers who will really use their link for huge amounts of data. In many neighborhoods there won't be any of those.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#184

Post by walrus01 » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 11:00 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #180

walrus01 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The FTTH offerings from Ziply, Cox, Comcast, Google, ATT, Centurylink etc are all the same "shared media with high oversubscription" design too. No, they're really not, you can't compare single strand FTTH XGSPON on singlemode fiber (16:1 or 32:1 contention ratio), something that is built on 10G XGSPON tech, to something that is built on bonded RF channels on coax copper. The aggregate capacity per oversubscribed n…

DOCSIS 3.1 is extremely comparable to PON in terms of oversubscription design (in bandwidth and allocation breakout). The largest difference between the two is DOCSIS uses dynamic bonding of OFDM channels to chop up the ~10 Gbps of bandwidth while 10G-PON uses TDM to slice up the bandwidth. The physical medium itself really has next to nothing to do with it. You can TDM and OFDM on both fiber and coax. The bandwidth…

> The physical medium itself really has next to nothing to do with it.

yes, it does, because actual fiber is significantly more future-proof. The same boring 9/125 fiber that's being built today is capable of 100/200/400 Gbps ethernet with only a change in electronics at the ends. Can't say the same for coax. Even the must rudimentary DWDM with 10G OOK optics on single strand or two strands of fiber has vastly more capacity than anything coax based.

No matter how you slice it the coax has a much more limited service lifespan and eventual capacity exhaustion problem compared to the more creative solutions that can be employed in the future to grow beyond the capabilities of 10G XGSPON.

Your typical 10G XGSPON setup like with 16:1 or 32:1 split and single strand to the home, is only using maybe 2% to 5% of the actual available THz channels that exist (in the 1470 to 1610 bandwidth range) in the fiber. There's a vast amount of empty channel space in that fiber for future bidi optic usage scenarios if you know how DWDM stuff works.

The RF on coax, on the other hand, is using pretty much every viable frequency in the bands that will work on the coax and is already at its limit.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#185

Post by oooyay » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 11:16 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #141

SkiFire13 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's shared then say "Shared gigabit internet for only X dollars!" I guess the reason they don't do that is because a lot of people would choose competitor services if they were honest. I don't think any competitor will give you a dedicated gigabit to you for a reasonable price, especially if everyone suddently starts asking for one.

I have Ziply Fiber in Oregon. I pay for a Symmetrical gigabit connection, it’s 60 dollars a month. I record speed tests multiple times a day every day and have ever since I got the service last year. They’re growing gang busters too, my entire neighborhood is on Ziply (90% of household converted from what I understand) Aside from them adjusting some things due to the rapid unexpected uptake, I have gotten full connec…

I'm also in Oregon, specifically Portland. DMARCs for fiber are largely shared by providers which is why you can have multiple providers in a given area. That way they don't take up extra pole space and the city can pay a single provider to maintain sections of line.

As long as the DMARC isn't saturated then you're only limited by the other lines also going to the DMARC and the collective activity of subscribers upstream of you between you and the central office. That's to say, you are right that it can be done but only insofar as other posters have indicated: last mile providers need to provision higher capacity lines between the DMARC and the central office.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#186

Post by zamadatix » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 11:52 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #183

zamadatix wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That'd be the testing of the 25G-PON. They say you can do that because they known oversubscription ratios of 32:1 really aren't such a horrible concept. Think about it - they told you and a couple dozen others to blast it with 20G up and 20G down as much as you want... and how often do you actually use anywhere near that much? When you do, how long are you actually using the full pipe? For 99.999% of home users high…

In the active ethernet FTTH and GPON/XGSPON last mile world, to put it in the most casual language possible, you can put a metric fuckton of 1 Gbps symmetric residential last mile users on a single 10 Gbps full duplex uplink before anyone starts to notice that they aren't seeing 1 Gbps speed tests. Or before you can no longer claim that you are delivering 1 Gbps. Your average residential user does not move that much…

You can put the same number of 1 GBPs users on a 10G-PON link as a 10G DOCSIS3.1 link. The determination is total bandwidth, which is why the over subscription profile of each is identical despite being physically different. You are correct that the over subscription ratio itself is almost never a problem. The common cause of it still being able to become a problem being whenever bandwidth increases ISPs start offering higher speeds. E.g. with 10G transports carriers start offering >gbps plans so the story repeats where some isolated case of 2 or 3 users on the same segment thrash it.

I'm not saying this as anti-PON, just that the existing coax improvements are sometimes very sensible and extremely comparable in the current generation. I've architected and deployed several small city G-PON and 10G-PON networks with Nokia gear and it's fantastic for net new and probably the only real option to continue growing 5-10 years from now. That said, if you've already got decent coax for the last mile DOCSIS 3.1 can be extremely comparable and behave near identically at the moment.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#187

Post by walrus01 » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:31 AM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #186

walrus01 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the active ethernet FTTH and GPON/XGSPON last mile world, to put it in the most casual language possible, you can put a metric fuckton of 1 Gbps symmetric residential last mile users on a single 10 Gbps full duplex uplink before anyone starts to notice that they aren't seeing 1 Gbps speed tests. Or before you can no longer claim that you are delivering 1 Gbps. Your average residential user does not move that much…

You can put the same number of 1 GBPs users on a 10G-PON link as a 10G DOCSIS3.1 link. The determination is total bandwidth, which is why the over subscription profile of each is identical despite being physically different. You are correct that the over subscription ratio itself is almost never a problem. The common cause of it still being able to become a problem being whenever bandwidth increases ISPs start offeri…

It's true that the capacity is nearly the same at the moment with docsis3.1, but consider that a docsis3.1 system that is using pretty much EVERY viable RF channel can just barely have the same capacity as a 10G XGSPON system that is using maybe 1-2% of the THz channels available in normal singlemode fiber.

If you look at a typical residential 16:1 or 32:1 split XGSPON system on an optical spectrum analyzer that's capable of all DWDM ranges, it looks gapingly empty. There's just a few channels used for the downstream and upstream with the timeslicing for the various CPEs' usage. And vast ranges of totally empty optical space.

What I find interesting is that your average residential user does NOT really use much more traffic in (in average Mbps per CPE or GB per month) if you give them a 2.5Gbps or 5 Gbps or 10 Gbps connection. I have plenty of 2.5Gbps and 5 Gbps and 10 Gbps customers. Maybe 1-2% of them are really heavy users. The rest of them use exactly the same amount of traffic as the 1 Gbps users, because the vast majority of non-technical residential end users these days have only wifi client devices. Finding someone who has a desktop PC with a 1000BaseT or 2.5GBaseT LAN port to do a proper speed test is maybe 1 in 50 customers.

Even if you've got people with 3x3 802.11ax stuff running in 80 MHz channels they're just barely going to approach 900 Mbp speed tests downstream one way.

If we had offered 10G FTTH to the home in 2002 the sort of power user who would buy that might actually try to run a small server farm out of their spare bedroom. But now it's 2024 and people who are serious about hosting their own stuff are doing it with their own VM/VPS/cloud based stuff, or by colocating a few servers, etc. They know that a residential last mile gigabit+ connection is not the best place for it. There's outliers and exceptions of course, but they're getting even rarer every year as a percentage of the total customers (eg: someone who wants to run a torrent seedbox from their house or something).

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#188

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:27 AM UTC

pixelatedindex wrote: post #114

userbinator wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 56kbps dialup connection saturated 24/7 will get you ~18GB per month.

That was a ton back then! I suppose 300TB/month is a lot too but it doesn’t feel that big anymore

I’m not sure what people are doing at home, but that seems a hell of a lot to me to me. I use 3-10TB a month and thought that was a lot.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#189

Post by sneak » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 12:41 PM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #81

sneak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can lie all they want; they are integrated with the government and they have no consequences for fraud. I gave Cox over $2000 explicitly for unlimited data and still got nastygrams from them for uploading 4TB of my original digital photos to S3 for backup. It’s effectively illegal to start new ISPs in America, that’s why this shit happens.

I would absolutely forward those to my state's public utilities commission.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Re: Cox slows Internet speeds in entire neighborhoods to punish any heavy users (2020)

#190

Post by zamadatix » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:52 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #187

zamadatix wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put the same number of 1 GBPs users on a 10G-PON link as a 10G DOCSIS3.1 link. The determination is total bandwidth, which is why the over subscription profile of each is identical despite being physically different. You are correct that the over subscription ratio itself is almost never a problem. The common cause of it still being able to become a problem being whenever bandwidth increases ISPs start offeri…

It's true that the capacity is nearly the same at the moment with docsis3.1, but consider that a docsis3.1 system that is using pretty much EVERY viable RF channel can just barely have the same capacity as a 10G XGSPON system that is using maybe 1-2% of the THz channels available in normal singlemode fiber. If you look at a typical residential 16:1 or 32:1 split XGSPON system on an optical spectrum analyzer that's ca…

Agreed. I think the most underrated feature of PON is the ability to run future generations simultaneously on the same line, without any impact at all to the existing install. The bandwidth on SM fiber is so enormous it will pretty much always (for my lifetime at least) leave other wavelengths open. This allows for deploying 25G-PON on the same fiber as existing 10G-PON with no negative impact to the existing customers. That's huuuuge in terms of long term operations budget and upgrade logistics.