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Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

stefan.schueller.net

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Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#271

Post by eloisant »

LeonM wrote: post #109
not_your_vase wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, in Switzerland there is a thing, that if a product or service has the name "Swiss" in its name, then it can be sold for any price regardless of quality - and it will fly off the shelves. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Swisscom is the biggest ISP in Switzerland - they charge high prices for very slow internet. But they have the word "Swiss" in their name, so it's okay to sell 100 Mbps connection…

> in Switzerland there is a thing, that if a product or service has the name "Swiss" in its name, then it can be sold for any price regardless of quality That's just basic marketing. You'll see that in most countries, I don't believe that it is unique to Switzerland. For example: in the US you'll see many products that say "made in America" on the box. Those will likely outsell competing products, even if those are c…

Not really.

In France we have a French brand of bikes, from the sports retailer Intersport, called Nakamura...

They actually hide the fact it's a local brand, let people think it's a Japanese brand, to suggest it's higher quality.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#272

Post by Youden »

landgenoot wrote: post #222

I don't care about fancy numbers, I care about high quality peering. I'd rather have a stable 50Mbit than 1Gbit and 0.5Mbit international peering with packet loss.

Init7 (the ISP in question) is pretty fantastic for peering. They're good to start with but there have been times I've just written them an email and said "hey, I know you and ASABCD have a presence at BLAH-IX, could you peer directly" and it ends up working.

I can download from Usenet at consistently around 10Gbps and I've determined the limiting factor is the combination of client/server behavior and TCP windows. With some customization I've saturated the 25Gbps pipe.

Online games (e.g. League of Legends, Path of Exile) typically have a ping of around 8ms.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#273

Post by psychoslave »

serial_dev wrote: post #207
Aurornis wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no idea if Switzerland is any better, but the US situation in 2026 is appalling. Kind of amazing that we're calling 1Gbps fiber "appalling". Every thread about internet access attracts people with unique situations. NYC is a dense city that's hard to build in and has to deal with a lot of regulation. I don't live in NYC and I'm not even in a dense area, but I have my choice of fiber providers up to at least…

Rural area? Hard to build. Dense city? Hard to build. Got it. Jokes aside, I guess population density is just not the main factor in internet. It’s competition, it’s regulation, it’s corruption, and pop density is simply not a deciding factor.

Edge cases are hard is not a bad rule of thumb.

High concentration, and you have saturation issues. Extremely low concentration, and there is not much active elements to leverage on.

Yes, as all rules of thumb, it falls apart in many situations too. But in that case at least the rule of thumb kind of recognize it will poorly scale at full generalization level.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#274

Post by lyu07282 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #243
lyu07282 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the people who think "free market" will fix any problem are the same exact people who think that it would be a great idea if companies are allowed to own their own fiber or put thousands of satellites into orbit. They will see it as a problem of regulations that it is too cumbersome to put fiber into the ground as a company, and advocate for deregulation, "micro trenching" and privatization, that in order to…

The problem here is, unironically, caused by the government getting involved. Many of these companies are granted legal monopoles in their service areas. If someone dares to start a competitor, the incumbent harasses them with lawsuits to try to shut them out. The free market isn't all sunshine and rainbows (and natural monopolies like infrastructure are a place where it frequently fails), but the market is not parti…

No the problem is that it just doesn't work no matter how much faith you have in the free market. The whole point is to get over this crazy ideology and think rationally about it, the problem isn't "caused by the government getting involved" it's caused by people who think like you, running the government. The article explains this very well you should read it:

> True capitalism requires competition. But infrastructure is a natural monopoly. If you treat it like a regular consumer product, you don’t get competition. You get waste, or you get a monopoly.

> The Swiss model understands this. They built the infrastructure once, as a shared, neutral asset, and then let the market compete on the services that run over it.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#275

Post by ElProlactin »

gleenn wrote: post #196
ElProlactin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corruption, aging infrastructure... There are developing ("third-world") countries that have better overall internet than the US.

I heard someone argue that because original phones rolled out in the US much earlier and more broadly, we spend all this money on copper wiring. Because Europe didn't have as much, they transitioned to fast cellular quickly. Being first does not mean you will be best certainly.

> Because Europe didn't have as much...

Europe isn't the developing world. There are countries in SE Asia that put the US to shame in terms of the speed, quality and cost of their internet. I'm literally in one now at a random cafe where I'm getting 400 Mbps down and 500 Mbps up while sipping a $1.75 cup of coffee.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#276

Post by pascahousut »

toast0 wrote: post #180
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really is this bias — it’s crazy. Not just the name “Swiss,” but allusions to the Swiss flag, Swiss typography, other Swiss branding. It almost looks like some of the products are state run. (Also, the internet connection actually is phenomenally good.)

> allusions to the Swiss flag, It is a big plus.

I see red when I read this kind of comments.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#277

Post by khalic »

Aurornis wrote: post #161

This article came up before. It's heavy on the clickbait, if you couldn't guess from the title. Some important points that they leave out: - 25G internet isn't available everywhere in Switzerland. It's just the fastest tier available in some locations. - The United States is 85 times larger than Switzerland. The entire country of Switzerland is the size of a small US state. Covering the US with broadband is much hard…

- Swiss here, you’re coping, 25G is available almost anywhere,

- the size doesn’t matter that much, you also have considerably more money and urban density comparable to us or higher. If you want to start counting reasons it’s harder here: we have mountains to go over, strong environmental regulations, can’t build at night in cities, must stop working on Sunday… no cheap labor, etc.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#278

Post by [deleted] »

toast0 wrote: post #180
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really is this bias — it’s crazy. Not just the name “Swiss,” but allusions to the Swiss flag, Swiss typography, other Swiss branding. It almost looks like some of the products are state run. (Also, the internet connection actually is phenomenally good.)

> allusions to the Swiss flag, It is a big plus.

[deleted]

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#279

Post by rbanffy »

Gasp0de wrote: post #204
guiambros wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NYC, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and yet Verizon Fios 1 Gbps is my only option. I tried to upgrade to Fios 2 Gbps, but it's not available. Spectrum only goes to 200Mbps; no other providers in my area. I have no idea if Switzerland is any better, but the US situation in 2026 is appalling. If we're this bad in NYC, imagine what someone in rural America goes through.

It is harder to install fiber in densely populated areas than in some backcountry farm. Imagine tearing open a busy street in NYC for a few weeks to install fiber vs. digging a trench in the dirt next to the farm road. Which one do you think costs more? For which do you think you need to jump through 1001 bureaucratic hoops?

> Imagine tearing open a busy street in NYC for a few weeks to install fiber

Or you can just run new fiber in the pipes that contained copper wiring that has most likely already been swapped out for fiber in the 1990s. Or just add better line equipment and use those same fibers already there.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't

#280

Post by landgenoot »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #231
landgenoot wrote: post #222

I don't care about fancy numbers, I care about high quality peering. I'd rather have a stable 50Mbit than 1Gbit and 0.5Mbit international peering with packet loss.

Don't sign up with a Tier 1 or aspiring one

How do I compare the peering capabilities of different ISP's? Assuming tier 1 ISP's are not available in my geographic location.
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