What is Digg?47 Comments
- Greengoo, on 08/06/2008, -0/+28Google: "We neen to talk about your data rate."
Comcast: "Really? I-I have 2 mb on. I also--"
Google: "Well, 2 is the minimum, okay?"
Comcast: "Oh, okay."
Google: "Now, you know, it's up to you whether or not you wanna just do the bare minimum or, uh-- Well, like ATT, for example, has 4 mb on today. And a terrific smile."
Comcast: "Okay, so you want me to wear more?"
Google: "Look, Comcast--"
Comcast: "Yeah?"
Google: "People can get media anywhere, okay? They come to the Internet for the atmosphere and the attitude. Okay? That's what the speed's about. It's about fun."
Comcast: "Yeah. Okay, so more then, yeah?"
Google: "Look, we want you to express yourself. Okay? Now, if you feel that the bare minumum is enough, then okay. But some people choose to wear more and we encourage that. Okay? You do wanna express yourself, don't you?"
Comcast: "Y-Yeah."
Google: "Okay, great, great. That's all I ask."
Comcast: "Okay." - Avian00, on 08/05/2008, -2/+30I completely support this initiative. This "Up to 4 Mb/Sec" wordage is complete crap. ISP's should not be getting away with this. While technically not false advertisement, it's deceptive at best. A guaranteed minimum is what should be sold (even if that minimum is less than what they currently advertise) with a promise to deliver more if possible. This is how honest companies do business.
And before anybody says it... I know... cable and telephone companies aren't honest. - rocketman42, on 08/05/2008, -0/+19I seem to remember Canada, and maybe other countries, already do it like this. You buy a 256kb connection that is burstable to 1.5mb, or something like that.
- maninalift, on 08/06/2008, -0/+16But neither is simply selling on the minimum guarantee the best option IMO. Better is a few clear statistics (not something vague like "up to" or "typical") like:
We deliver:
xxx minimum bandwidth
xxx median bandwidth in your area
xxx median b/w at peak time
statistics certified by an independent tester - cgoff, on 08/06/2008, -1/+8The article stated it quite plainly: countries like S. Korea and Japan have unmetered 100Mbit duplex connections to their homes. Other than the sheer size of the US and the fact that our infrastructure needs upgrading, there is no excuse for metered bandwidth or "minimum data rates". I understand if you can't give the rural areas FTTH, but don't cry to me that you don't have the network capacity.
- jgtg32a, on 08/06/2008, -1/+8something wrong with that?
- noisymime, on 08/06/2008, -0/+7This doesn't solve the problem, as many countries are discovering. ISPs used the same thinking here and oversold the download caps as well. Eg They sold everyone 12gb per month expecting that most people would only use 2-4gb. Now people are beginning to push the 12gb month in month out, the ISPs are in the same position, not enough bandwidth to meet what they have sold to customers.
- jsmith39, on 08/06/2008, -1/+7Oh my Gosh... a corporation looking out for it's own interests instead of making you the priority! What moxy!
- MikeSobe, on 08/06/2008, -0/+6Why? I had Speakeasy for a while and loved the service but the price for the bandwidth just wasn't comparable. If you are guaranteed 10mbit and it could be as fast as 30mbit compared to 6mbit all the time, why would you take the 6mbit?
- taseedorf, on 08/06/2008, -1/+7Regardless of how much data you use, you should not have to pay anything more than your normal monthly service charge. What is wrong with everything the way it is now? Sure, internet speeds are a touch slower during the day, but thats a given. If companies would upgrade their infrastructure, maybe we could be on the cutting edge with Japan and get 30 megabit connections on the norm.
- sandiegodude, on 08/06/2008, -1/+6This will always be a touchy subject. Consumers want the freedom to access the internet at fast speeds, ISPs don't want to shell out any more money than they have to (which is a standard view for any corporation).
The old business model of shared bandwidth is dying fast, because your average internet user no longer only checks email and a few html pages. Your standard user is now streaming/downloading music from iTunes, watching videos on Youtube, pulling movies across to their set-top media centers, etc. Where 10% of the users were consuming 60% of the max available bandwidth before, all of a sudden 75% of the users are consuming 100%, leading to network slowdowns.
Comcast thought they could get away with crippling the black sheep of the Internet by limiting P2P, but even if the FCC hadn't put the kabosh on it, it was merely a band-aid at best. We're headed to a point where we're either going to be paying for bytes transferred or we're going to pay for minimum service abilities as Cerf has suggested.
Either way, an infrastructure upgrade WILL be required, and you know who is going to foot the bill... It won't be the corporations at the end of the day, but instead the consumers, you and me.
Edit - BTW, if we get forced into pay per byte style billing. I better have the ability to shut off stuff on the server side, ala advertisements! I'm betting a good 20% of standard bandwidth usage is from ads. - jamesdew, on 08/06/2008, -0/+5The big issue here is about ISPs telling customers what they are paying for. They are a business and they are about making money in a competitive marketplace. Fortunately for them most of their consumers are very poorly informed and have no idea what they are buying.
Advertising the speed of your line is meaningless in todays ISP market, more information needs to be given without over complicating the choice for consumers.
I am in the UK too and most ISPs are just resellers of BT IPstream products. BT actually do provide minimum throughput levels and they are laughably low. They are an SLA between BT and the ISP though not necessarily the end user. - hokie47, on 08/06/2008, -1/+6I always notice that the ISP speed is about half of what they say it is. Granted there are other factors that cause this, but for the most part I find the half rule true.
- firestorm, on 08/06/2008, -0/+5I'm from Canada and I haven't seen that. It's the same 'up to X Mb/sec' crap. There is no minimum level that they have to provide if you read the terms of service. Although, if they really provided terrible service, you'd switch to another provider (and that means the ONE other provider in most areas).
- jgtg32a, on 08/06/2008, -3/+7@Ksg89
Office Space, took me a second to get it - Barbarino, on 08/06/2008, -1/+5The more FIOS that is rolled out the less of a problem this becomes. Simple economcis. As Fios enters a market, the cable companies now have to complete. Example here in Lauderdale, we only have ***** DSL and Comcrap, but now ATT is coming, hopefully one day FISO. We need competition, not caps or some bs system.
- magical1492, on 08/06/2008, -0/+3It'd be great if someone would help us out if rural areas. It's about 40 bucks a month for 1MBDown/256kup, and that's ridiculous. Too bad it's a monopoly.
- maninalift, on 08/06/2008, -1/+4ISPs do not have an insane profit margin (at least not in the UK). The market is too competitive and though not entirely transparent (or to be more accurate, pretty damn foggy), there is a lot of info out there about different providers. At least that's how it is in UK. PS that doesn't mean I love all of the ISPs, far from it. I just know their profit margins aint that big (taking into account risk).
- enshoku, on 08/06/2008, -2/+4I have yet to experience any caps or even congestion with my 20/20 FiOS connection... Maybe you all have the wrong ISP?
- Elshar, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2Wow, what a gross over-generalization. Anyone other than a giant ISP doesn't make "gross profits" and even then, they probably don't make as much as you think they do. You can do simple calculations and come to the conclusion you did (x customers * y rate), but you're not taking into consideration salaries that must be paid, utilities (Ever see a server cluster? How much space, and energy they use? How much heat they put off that needs to be dissapated via a/c?), equipment, upkeep, leases, etc, etc..
Take into consideration that for one POP, it's likely that the ISP has put thousands if not hundreds of thousands just to get it going. And that doesn't take into account the cost per mile/km it takes to actually lay new cable (Since noone is really sharing or required to share, this is what happens most often). To put new conduit+cable into the ground around where I live is incredibly expensive, and this is a small town. I can't imagine having to survey, hire locators, and the logistics of crew management to do it in a large city.
It's not like they can just wave magic wands and suddenly giant hopping bunnies thread fiber optic cables through the streets into your house, y'know. Someone has to do it, and someone has to pay right then and there for all costs incurred. The monthly subscriber fee doesn't even begin to scratch the initial layout. Most new pops also bleed money for a considerable amount of time before they're "profitable" and even then, unless you have low turnover and incredibly stable equipment, the profits are pretty low.
I'll probably be modded down to hell, but as the owner of a small ISP, it really bugs me that people seem to think that we have unlimited resources and make bajillions of dollars. It's just like any other buisiness, everything is a commodity that is bought and sold at (hopefully) a profit which in most cases is hard-earned. - Tooch07, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2You must be on Optimum Online Boost. I just moved out of their service area. I miss the 30/5, but not their torrent throttling.
- LilBambi, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2The dissimilar up and down speeds are ludicrous anyway. Anyone would prefer having equal up/down speeds once they've seen it in action. There is no reason anyone should be limited on upload speeds. And if you have any websites you very soon feel the crunch and it is quite annoying.
- MikeSobe, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2I have never really cared about upload speed until I started using Wuala. Now more than ever I am jealous of FiOS.
- carlosos, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1Doesn't that already exist with Frame Relay connections since 1984? You got a minimum rate (Committed information rate) and if nobody else is using the connection than you can get up to a higher rate (extended information rate). You can also mark some packets as Discard Eligibility (DE) so that the unimportant traffic will get the non guaranteed rate and the important data can get put at least in the minimum where latency is important (like VoIP and online games).
- spyd3rweb, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1Better pings, reliable network, no dhcp, no hassle with adjusting traffic shaping to fit network conditions. Yeah cable is good for downloading and web surfing, but its awful for gaming.
- FalconJones, on 08/06/2008, -1/+2"Edit - BTW, if we get forced into pay per byte style billing. I better have the ability to shut off stuff on the server side, ala advertisements! I'm betting a good 20% of standard bandwidth usage is from ads."
This is one side effect of the pay-per-byte concept that no one is looking at. If we are going to pay for the content, I'm not going to want to pay to be advertised to. The oil that keeps our free internet running is advertising, and, like it or not, without it, we wouldn't be able to enjoy many of the free services that we do today. This wouldn't represent just a hike in what we pay each month for internet, but many of our favorite sites would end up going prescription, and we would be discouraged from using them as well.
Please support a free internet. - vat0r, on 08/06/2008, -1/+2You guys complain to much. I live in the sticks and the best connection we can get is less then 1mb..
- inactive, on 08/06/2008, -1/+2What's the difference between ' bandwidth and b/w ' =/ lol
- HonoredMule, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1That's even better, but I'd be ecstatic just to get a minimum bandwidth guarantee on upload and download rates (that is some reasonable amount...not something stupid like 1/15th of my current max).
- LilBambi, on 08/06/2008, -1/+2Please don't go there. That's the unrealistic thinking of the controllers. Traffic is traffic. My traffic is not more important than yours, and yours is not more important than mine. Regardless of the use of the bandwidth.
- inactive, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1I'm in the same boat. i get 1.5 down and 512 up, and it's the only provider (Qwest dsl) in the area. I haven't been hammered for my bandwidth usage, though, so I really do get to use the speed advertised.
- rnawky, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1Wrong, ISP's cap your bandwidth.
http://speedtest.net/
Post your test. - Nosferotu, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1I don't understand why there is so much animosity toward Google, or at least toward anyone who posts with positive, glowing hope for Google's role in the growth of technology. I love Google, they're leading the way both in business and technology, and if more companies would follow their lead, it could mean amazing things for the future of tech in our country.
- afrothunderman, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1I've already tested before, I really do get 30MB/s down and 5MB/s up almost all of the time and I've never seen it go below 15MB/s down and 3MB/s up.
The only problem I have is the need for a wifi extender for my laptop :)
Is it really hard to believe that I have I good connection? I just with they would stop blocking ports 80 and 25. - Tenoq, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1The reason the bandwidth caps are in place (in Australia at least) is not due to over-subscription, but more to do with the high cost of backhaul and data to and from the US. The caps limit the cost charged to the ISP for sending so many gigabits of data over the Southern Cross Cable (or the AJC).
If you're already in the US, it's kinda a non-issue. :p - twrife, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Took me more than a second to get it.
And why do I have to enter a captcha? - afrothunderman, on 08/06/2008, -0/+0I think that was called Goobuntu. It's supposed to be some customized Ubuntu Linux distro that Google uses internally.
- scabbers, on 08/06/2008, -1/+1No, but let's act like it's for our benefit.
- carnivore0311, on 08/06/2008, -1/+1As always google comes through. I'm still holding out for a google OS.
- LilBambi, on 08/06/2008, -1/+1Daggone right! It's bad enough with cellphones and faxes where you have to pay for the dubious pleasure of getting ads thrown at you!
BTW: This is why PointCast died years ago. They were taking all the friggin' bandwidth (dialup), and a fair chunk of hard drive space to put ads: images as well as text and we were paying for the privilege in time and hard drive space when we were on unlimited dialup (and we did have true unlimited dialup unlike today's connections). You were not just paying (time and hard drive space wise) for the 'time' to download the news being pushed to you. It was much worse than that.
Now these big ISPs want to charge by the bits/bytes and there by charge us for ads on webpages, in video, in audio, not to mention getting charged for the malware downloaded in your email inboxes and trying to insert itself into our computers through websites and worse!
No thanks. Just say no. - mudpuppies, on 08/05/2008, -4/+4leave it to Comcast the company that has a bad reputation in treating its customers unfairly to lead the way in how NOT to manage internet use. ISP's make an insane profit margin, there is nothing stopping them from delivering better pipes to residential areas short of not robbing their customers. For those of us who have internet powered DVR's, Tivo's, and Roku players, the much better AT&T DSL service while maybe slower, doesn't place a unspoken bandwidth cap, which seems to be the sensible alternatives for the user who does't want to deal with the internal ISP drama that is todays news.
- spyd3rweb, on 08/06/2008, -2/+1I really don't like this idea, I much rather get away from connection types that are affected by network usage and peak times. I'd take some nice 6mbit (or even 3mbit) DSL from Speakeasy over this crap 10mbit cable that is burstable to 30mbit any day.
- afrothunderman, on 08/06/2008, -1/+0Wow, reading these comments makes me feel really great about my connection :)
I get 30MB/s down and 5MB/s up and it stays that way about almost all the time. Although I think this has to do with the fact that I use cable internet and am the only customer on the whole node. - giskard88, on 08/06/2008, -6/+4I think people would be disturbed how low the "guaranteed minimum" would be. I'd expect it would be lower than dial up speeds. the solution is simple and is practiced in much of the would already. Sell people a monthly data quota, then reduce their speed to dial up levels if they exceed it. no one gets hit with an unexpected bill, nor are they stranded without internet access, and the isps are not overwhelmed by users who are using most of the resources while paying the same price.
- scabbers, on 08/06/2008, -10/+1Google looking out for its own interests as usual.
- Ksg89, on 08/06/2008, -18/+2Do you like the word Okay?
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