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FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

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Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#51

Post by rhino369 »

woodruffw wrote: post #49
mhays wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think 25 mbps is what you'd need for a family of four? Is there some sort of data out there for this? Netflix states you need 3.5 mbps for SD, 5.0 mbps for HD.[0] With a family of four, does this means everyone could be watching HD Netflix, and do various other browsing simultaneously, and still be under 25mbps? If so, wouldn't 25mbps be far above what a family of four would need "without being ba…

> Assuming that HD video would be the most data-intensive thing I think this is the wrong assumption to make. I have a 30mbps-ish plan right now, and I can slow my apartment's connection down to a crawl by initiating a large download. 25mbps might be enough for a family of four whose connections are consistent , but I'd wager that the average home's traffic is more on the bursty side.

That could be solved with better QoS on the router right?

Obviously a download from a good server will saturate a 100mbps line, but so what? Other than video games and massive file backups, 25mbit is fairly fast. I pay for faster, but it's only a marginal improvement.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#52

Post by adventured »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #47

I used to ask why anyone would ever need 100 Mbps, until I got 100 Mbps. Then I said the same about gigabit, until I got gigabit. Now I've moved from New Zealand, with its amazing internet infrastructure, to Australia, where I'm lucky to get 10 Mbps, and it keeps dropping out. I couldn't even download a folder from Dropbox last night because my connection was too slow and flaky. It should be the priority for governme…

The slow part of Australia's Internet I get, that's a very common issue people talk about. What is the nature of the flakiness? If you don't mind elaborating. How frequently is it like that?

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#53

Post by bb88 »

rhino369 wrote: post #44
dsr_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit more than that, but not much more. I changed from 50Mb/s to 1000Mb/s service a few months ago; latency is much the same, which means that when the pipe is not crowded, I really can't tell the difference. (But it's wonderful headroom for large file transfers.)

I can't tell the difference between 75mbit and 900mbit. Most servers don't get anywhere near 900mbit. And my hardware is almost always a limiting facture (wifi, hdd speed, etc).

One way to do a test is to bittorrent something legal, say an Ubuntu DVD.

If you use a transmission client (e.g.), you can change the upload speed of your client. Do one test at a low upload speed (5K/second), and one test just above your ISP's advertised upload speed.

In the first case you should see your speed peak out around 850mb/s. In the second, if you have a bufferbloat situation, the download speed will drop significantly as the uploads push the download acks into a queue, forcing TCP to throttle heavily downwards.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#55

Post by woodruffw »

rhino369 wrote: post #51
woodruffw wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming that HD video would be the most data-intensive thing I think this is the wrong assumption to make. I have a 30mbps-ish plan right now, and I can slow my apartment's connection down to a crawl by initiating a large download. 25mbps might be enough for a family of four whose connections are consistent , but I'd wager that the average home's traffic is more on the bursty side.

That could be solved with better QoS on the router right? Obviously a download from a good server will saturate a 100mbps line, but so what? Other than video games and massive file backups, 25mbit is fairly fast. I pay for faster, but it's only a marginal improvement.

Better QoS on consumer routers would definitely help, but it's not a panacea -- ballooning website sizes also lead to bursty network conditions, and I wouldn't be surprised if my router's QoS is configured to prioritize HTTP(S) connections. Same goes for automatic updates.

Edit: I meant to add this:

We have the ability to provide (or at least develop) 100mbps connections to the vast majority of Americans, and we recognize that Internet transfers aren't getting any smaller. It's good to look at ways to improve the status quo (e.g., QoS), but we should also be looking to change the status quo itself.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#56

Post by vonmoltke »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #38
freehunter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that like city water never needs maintenance. My neighbor had roots growing into his pipes from a tree on city property, but since the pipes were on private property he had to have them replaced on his own dime, and also fix the flooding in the house from the backed-up sewer line. I'm not arguing that septic tanks are better, and I apologize that many people reading my comment seem to think I am. What I'm arg…

Most cities I lived in serviced the lines up to the point they entered the house, though. Not as much to worry about.

All the cities I have lived in would only serice lines up to and including the meter. Everything downstream of the meter was the property owner's responsibility.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#57

Post by Clubber »

woodruffw wrote: post #49
mhays wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think 25 mbps is what you'd need for a family of four? Is there some sort of data out there for this? Netflix states you need 3.5 mbps for SD, 5.0 mbps for HD.[0] With a family of four, does this means everyone could be watching HD Netflix, and do various other browsing simultaneously, and still be under 25mbps? If so, wouldn't 25mbps be far above what a family of four would need "without being ba…

> Assuming that HD video would be the most data-intensive thing I think this is the wrong assumption to make. I have a 30mbps-ish plan right now, and I can slow my apartment's connection down to a crawl by initiating a large download. 25mbps might be enough for a family of four whose connections are consistent , but I'd wager that the average home's traffic is more on the bursty side.

I would assume he meant cumulatively. It's a safe assumption that most households watch video way more than they download 4GB files.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#58

Post by mhays »

rhino369 wrote: post #50
mhays wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think 25 mbps is what you'd need for a family of four? Is there some sort of data out there for this? Netflix states you need 3.5 mbps for SD, 5.0 mbps for HD.[0] With a family of four, does this means everyone could be watching HD Netflix, and do various other browsing simultaneously, and still be under 25mbps? If so, wouldn't 25mbps be far above what a family of four would need "without being ba…

I ball parked it conservatively. I thought netflix streams took more like 7.5mbps. So I bet they could probably get away with less. I bet a 4 person household will have less than 3 streams almost always. So that's 10mpbs. You'd need some room for surfing, updates, downloads, etc. I bet 15mpbs is fairly usable for a family of 4. Not to be an old man, but back in my day, we had one PC that everyone shared. And it had a…

Yea, certainly wasn't trying to call you out or anything :)

And yes, I remember when there was only one or two TVs in the house. Then there was 56k, where only one person could be online, and it took up the phone line. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to greatness, but it's amazing how far we've come.

Which leads to another line of thinking: If a family does only have a 5mbps connection, and is thus forced to share their streaming, maybe by forcing them to all watch the same thing in a room together like we once watched TV, is this so much of a bad thing? Are there other ways to mitigate a low mbps so that you can still experience a 2018 Internet?

This makes me sound like a telco shill, but the 1gbps/100mbps/Xmbps-or-bust arguments, I think, are sometimes utopian in nature and often discount how much people can do without such high-powered Internet. Yes, of course more speed is good, but are those with only 15 or 10mbps really in the stone age?

However, I say this while living in Seattle, where we both have amazing choices and speed, so I am definitely one of the fortunate ones.

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#59

Post by oneplane »

MrVitaliy wrote: post #54

It's not broadband for me, it's monthly data caps. I can stream 4 different netflix shows, on 50Mbps, and blow through 1TB monthly cap in 3 weeks. No point of getting even faster connection.

Where in the world do you live that you still have data caps?

Re: FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds

#60

Post by roganartu »

adventured wrote: post #52
toomanybeersies wrote: post #47

I used to ask why anyone would ever need 100 Mbps, until I got 100 Mbps. Then I said the same about gigabit, until I got gigabit. Now I've moved from New Zealand, with its amazing internet infrastructure, to Australia, where I'm lucky to get 10 Mbps, and it keeps dropping out. I couldn't even download a folder from Dropbox last night because my connection was too slow and flaky. It should be the priority for governme…

The slow part of Australia's Internet I get, that's a very common issue people talk about. What is the nature of the flakiness? If you don't mind elaborating. How frequently is it like that?

The flakiness is a byproduct of constantly degrading last-mile infrastructure that is prohibitively expensive to maintain.

With the exception of FTTP installations that were completed before the NBN[0] became a political football, the majority of consumer internet connections in Australia have a copper last-mile serving ADSL2+. Flakiness with this copper is caused by general network neglect (due to unsustainable maintenance costs) resulting in things like contractors wrapping tangled messes of cables in plastic shopping bags to keep them "dry"[1].

Anecdotally, several ADSL2+ connections I had over multiple years and residences in Australia would noticeably degrade for a week or two after heavy rains. I know others who experienced similar behaviour.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=telstra+australia+plastic+ba...

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