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Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

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Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#71

Post by monocasa »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #59
arcboii92 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kiwi it blows my mind how bad your broadband is over there. My cousin recently moved to some rural Aussie town and will be getting 25 megabit, tops. Here in NZ we're rolling out 4 gigabit connections nationwide over the next 6 months. EDIT: props for getting rid of limits and disconnects though. NZ providers are just saying we'll be able to cope with everyone working from home because we have a fancy network.

At least some of that could be due to the fact that Australia is way larger geographically though, right? It's a lot more cable to run.

Then you'd expect the situation to get better in denser areas of Australia far more than it does.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#72

Post by Scoundreller »

closeparen wrote: post #14
nreece wrote: post #6

Here in Australia, a few responsible providers like Aussie Broadband have already announced unmetered data usage and temporarily stopping all service suspensions. https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/blog/aussie-broadband-ann... Edit: The real test though will be the bandwidth of our gov-sponsored, substandard, widely FTTN (instead of full FTTP).

I would expect rationing of the available bandwidth to become more important, not less, as the entire population is stuck at home using it all day.

Reality is that peak usage (at least in Canada) is in the evening hours. Impact from WFH during office hours will just use excess daytime capacity.

WFH (RDP/Webex/VPN) uses much less bandwidth than streaming Netflix.

But the kids being at home might make a big difference.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#73

Post by paranoidrobot »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #59
arcboii92 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kiwi it blows my mind how bad your broadband is over there. My cousin recently moved to some rural Aussie town and will be getting 25 megabit, tops. Here in NZ we're rolling out 4 gigabit connections nationwide over the next 6 months. EDIT: props for getting rid of limits and disconnects though. NZ providers are just saying we'll be able to cope with everyone working from home because we have a fancy network.

At least some of that could be due to the fact that Australia is way larger geographically though, right? It's a lot more cable to run.

The "Australia is way larger" thing ignores that the situation in the cities is just as bad, or sometimes worse.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#74

Post by paranoidrobot »

gt565k wrote: post #70
aidenn0 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia. The only country that makes the USA look good for broadband...

Hey... things have gotten better in the states in the last few years. Not great, but metropolitan areas have fiber. My old building that was built in 1965 got wired with AT&T fiber about a year ago.

Part of the problem with that, is that it's single-provider fiber.

If you don't like AT&T's offerings, you can't go with another ISP.

In a lot of buildings - there's exclusivity arrangements so that no other provider can install fiber.

This is why Australia's NBN was a good idea - the fiber is rolled out by a single body, all the ISPs have equal access.

My apartment has NBN Fiber, I have an ONT provided by NBN, and off that ONT there's four 1Gbit ethernet ports - I can call up my choice of ISP(s) and ask for service from any of them.

The idea for having four data ports was that you could have multiple different network conections.

Perhaps your employer wants you to have a 1Gbit connection direct into their network - no worries, they can provision directly onto one of those ports, and then it doesn't matter what malware might be on my home network, it won't impact the work device.

Perhaps you need some kind of remote-monitored medical gear - well having that on the public internet is a bad idea, so your healthcare provider could provision a port for that, too.

It also means that if I want to switch ISPs, I call up the new ISP and ask for a connection, and when they get around to setting it up - I switch over to their port. Not working? No worries, switch back to the old ISP and continue using that until the new ISP figures it out.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#75

Post by rs23296008n1 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #69
nreece wrote: post #6

Here in Australia, a few responsible providers like Aussie Broadband have already announced unmetered data usage and temporarily stopping all service suspensions. https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/blog/aussie-broadband-ann... Edit: The real test though will be the bandwidth of our gov-sponsored, substandard, widely FTTN (instead of full FTTP).

Australia. The only country that makes the USA look good for broadband...

While I think both countries' ISPs like to compete for a yearly "silliest restriction and worst customer experience" award, the NBN in Australia is a government screwup mostly due to the actions of vested interests and vested politicians.

An entire political party decided that the internet was just for "movies and entertainment", "You don't need fast internet" and similar comments. This guided them towards penny pinching as a strategy which meant they succeeded in seizing defeat from the jaws of victory.

"Penny wise, pound stupid" is the old term for it.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#76

Post by dlgeek »

nik_0_0 wrote: post #21
nreece wrote: post #6

Here in Australia, a few responsible providers like Aussie Broadband have already announced unmetered data usage and temporarily stopping all service suspensions. https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/blog/aussie-broadband-ann... Edit: The real test though will be the bandwidth of our gov-sponsored, substandard, widely FTTN (instead of full FTTP).

In the US, Comcast generally doesn't get a good rep - but they've done the same: https://corporate.comcast.com/covid-19 Now if we could take a second to talk about all the "From CEO..." emails that are being sent around...

Looks like CenturyLink is joining in: http://news.centurylink.com/fccpledge

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#77

Post by rs23296008n1 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #72
closeparen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect rationing of the available bandwidth to become more important, not less, as the entire population is stuck at home using it all day.

Reality is that peak usage (at least in Canada) is in the evening hours. Impact from WFH during office hours will just use excess daytime capacity. WFH (RDP/Webex/VPN) uses much less bandwidth than streaming Netflix. But the kids being at home might make a big difference.

Having kids at home without an internet connection these days is something most parents would rather not experience. Right up there with lack of electricity but lower in the priority list.

I'd have thought Netflix in particular would use less bandwidth than video conf because of the amount of peering / caching tricks they can do to bring their service "closer".

Note: I'm not talking purely bits transferred - I'm referring to network boundaries. In-network congestion should be easier to manage for an ISP and I'd expect plenty of them make it so Netflix and others' traffic is effectively "in-network".

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#78

Post by Scoundreller »

rs23296008n1 wrote: post #77
Scoundreller wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality is that peak usage (at least in Canada) is in the evening hours. Impact from WFH during office hours will just use excess daytime capacity. WFH (RDP/Webex/VPN) uses much less bandwidth than streaming Netflix. But the kids being at home might make a big difference.

Having kids at home without an internet connection these days is something most parents would rather not experience. Right up there with lack of electricity but lower in the priority list. I'd have thought Netflix in particular would use less bandwidth than video conf because of the amount of peering / caching tricks they can do to bring their service "closer". Note: I'm not talking purely bits transferred - I'm refe…

Sure, but any sane ISP in a big enough metro will have ports are the local Internet Exchange where Amazon, Netflix (if you exceed the appliance), Google, MSFT, etc. all peer at.

After that, what’s left?

In Canada, it’s actually the incumbents that largely refuse to peer freely.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#79

Post by rs23296008n1 »

wwarner wrote: post #20

I'll play the devil's advocate. Bandwidth is a finite resource, and it could be in critically short supply. In those circumstances, I wouldn't expect everyone to get more bandwidth, I'd expect it to be rationed.

At least three factors regarding rationing of bandwidth: Data rate, data volume and caching.

"Bandwidth" is already rationed but is usually high enough you don't notice most of the time or its still good enough most of the time. If you do continuous transfers you immediately see the data rate limits already in place.

But these data rate limits are usually already throttled and therefore different to some monthly download data cap. Those data caps are often marketing/sales driven rather than the actual data rate. And often the real technical data volume limits are for data entering/leaving the ISP. That's the real cost that is being covered by bandwidth caps. They estimate the costs at their borders and cover that first.

Which brings us to the caching involved. The more caching the easier it is to lower costs or limits. Peering means that some ISPs are closer to each other than they otherwise would be. And Netflix and others using CDNs etc place servers at strategic locations to bring themselves closer. That 2GB movie stream is likely traversing a lot less equipment than you'd expect. In some cases, less than a video conference or game.

If caching fails and something got broken along the way, or... they don't have a close enough CDN site, or caching simply isn’t possible, that is when you have congestion[1] since your traffic now joins whatever else is at the ISP entry/exit points. They can still lower your data rate without touching some monthly data cap.

[1] I'm not discounting congestion within an ISPs network but as they have all the dials and can do whatever they like to sort that out its a separate issue. Redundant paths are a thing. Also, if they isolate congestion to a particular user or usage, eg bittorrent, they already have throttling for that.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#80

Post by gumby »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #59
arcboii92 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kiwi it blows my mind how bad your broadband is over there. My cousin recently moved to some rural Aussie town and will be getting 25 megabit, tops. Here in NZ we're rolling out 4 gigabit connections nationwide over the next 6 months. EDIT: props for getting rid of limits and disconnects though. NZ providers are just saying we'll be able to cope with everyone working from home because we have a fancy network.

At least some of that could be due to the fact that Australia is way larger geographically though, right? It's a lot more cable to run.

Australia is pretty densely settled though. I mean I have cousins on the Eyre Peninsula so I know what "thinly settled" means, but most people live in (comparatively) densely settled suburbs.
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