What is Digg?Sponsored by newegg
Ready. Set. Shop view!
newegg.com - Newegg.com Black Friday Sale starting 11/25 3PM PST. No Lines, No Crowds, Click and Save.
141 Comments
- m0d3s7m1k3, on 10/11/2007, -18/+100Advertising Mega-Bits instead of Mega-Bytes.
- adb44, on 10/11/2007, -3/+67Network traffic has traditionally been measured in bits/sec. That's been true forever...nothing new.
- sotopheavy, on 10/11/2007, -4/+41Get ready for the white coals ISP's shove up your butt now that net neutrality has been shot down.
- redrock34, on 10/11/2007, -2/+28These white lies are expanding into the cable industry because of FiOS. All I hear from the cable companies are, "We have a fiber optic network too!". They forget to mention that unlike FiOS, the optical cable doesn't reach your house.
- str3ama, on 10/11/2007, -1/+26#1 should be "Saying they don't packet sniff and throttle torrent or p2p connections, when they use fine legal print and as Latin as possible to admit it in their EULAs"
Net Neutrality's dying and it's because we let ISPS molest us! - ibeetle, on 10/11/2007, -0/+22I love the 5 questions you should ask your ISP section. Yea, right. Like that 5 dollar an hour hindi girl in India is going to know what neighborhood contention ratio is, or ISP exchange point/provider saturation.
And if by some chance you were able to get a tech on the phone you don't think he is going to lie the facts? Speed test? Sure we do speed test. You can do one too. Just go to this website... we have our on site for speed test so customers can see exactly what they are paying for. - daven1986, on 10/11/2007, -2/+24i paid for 20mbps and i get 20mbps with unlimited downloads. this is in the uk. afaik france and mainland europe, and japan have the best broadband
- Gir9000, on 10/11/2007, -1/+22Comcast gives me decent speeds... They claim 6, But id say around 2-3.
But my issue is not completely about speeds... its also about price! For over 4+ years I have seen Comcast increase their prices (they claim there speeds have increased) and yet their speeds have not improved from what I can tell. Yea the speed is decent but come on something has got to give. $20 introductory for 1 year (they claimed 1.5 + and again I have always gotten 2-3) then $35 when they went 3.5+Mbs to $55 a month for up to 6Mbs and no improvement in speeds seams like information superhighway robbery. And when I called to contest the price they always say that they are under no obligation to keep the price the same and give me the speeds are faster crap again. I even had one person give me the "you are free to cancel anytime you want" garbage. - anagoge, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2290gb? What the hell do you download? wholeinternet.zip?
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -5/+20It's still annoying as hell.
- chedabob, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14Divide by eight. Do you really need a calculator to do that for you? Half it, half it, then half it again.
- sishgupta, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14It is the proper way to measure data transfer rates. Google converts it easily.
- DamnMan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+13Do some of you really know what net neutrality is? It isn't packet sniffing and shaping of p2p traffic. its calling up Google, Yahoo, Digg or some new start up and saying "It would be a shame is something 'happened' to your users traffic. for a reasonable fee we can 'insure' our customers traffic gets though". And of course Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, everyone but the Telcos doesn't want that to happen which is the only reason the debate was ever on the table in the first place. When else in recent memory has the government given a flying ***** about a corporation screwing customers over?
As for the "white lies". contention ratios in particular. You didn't think Verizon could really sell FiOS at 50 bucks a month and be profitable without a few strings attached did you? - jedikv, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12I think its a .rar file
- Murdats, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12or, to get a more realistic maximum transfer rate, divide by 10, its easier and usually gives you a number pretty damn close to that a speed test will return.
- rob3, on 10/11/2007, -3/+12Personally, I think that this guy is just getting confused by bits and bytes, he gets 1.5Mbps broadband and an actual download of 200Kbps, I think maybe he's actually getting something like 200KBps, which is equivalent to about 1.6Mbps - That sounds much more reasonable than 200Kbps. Maybe it's just a problem in the States because everything works well for me in the UK.
- Lavarock, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9The problem is that your browser measures it in bytes/second, and that's the number everyone's familiar with, so when they see "20kb/s" down there they ask "why isn't it 160kb/s like they said?" not realizing they're using two different measurements. ISPs are familiar with this ignorance.
- MosaicM, on 10/11/2007, -7/+15Upload speeds are even worse, especially in the USA. The ISPs say your getting high speed internet, but they fail to mention your up speeds are almost total crap.
- loganhid, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9my provider is capping my speeds during the evenings on weekdays.
- DocDEB, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8..."you are free to cancel anytime you want"... and I will tomorrow after my FiOS connection is installed. Weeeeeee...
- vtbarrera, on 02/03/2009, -1/+9I understand the "actual speeds may vary" portion of the fine print for most ISPs. But I just got Verizon FIOS, and they can't even deliver 3/4 of the 2MB upload I was "guaranteed" at signing. I actually did some investigating on this issue and I found out the fine print is there because Verizon purposely tones down your connection to stretch their bandwith; this was confirmed by mutliple FIOS technicians that work for Verizon. I can't beleive that I pay 50/month for a 15/2 MB connection and can't even get my full upload speed. What a bunch of crap.
- Dundasbro, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8I'm from Australia and internet is universally *****.
- astmanager, on 10/11/2007, -4/+11Excellent article. It's amazing the difference I get at home with my "4.5 Mbps connection" via cable modem versus my guaranteed 1.53 Mbps T-1 connection at work. Namely: marketing garbage can say whatever the lawyers will let it and the performance bears that out, but contractual obligations... ah... that's a horse of a different color. My cable internet can go get bent... I'm doing my downloading at work.
- aussieNickuss, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6My Internet service is advertised at 1.5Mbps and I usually get (from a healthy server) a continuous download of 160-190KBps. 8 x 190KBps = 1.520Mbps, which means I pretty much get whats advetised.
- lcarsdeveloper, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6OK, seriously stop spamming your crappy chatroom now. I saw your link once, and ignored it. I see it again now, and I consider you a spammer. There will never be a Digg chatroom because most diggers don't want to chat with other users, they'd rather just use the comments system so their opinions and contributions are put on record permanently. Also, everything remains on Digg, and doesn't end up on some crappy 3rd party website.
- Markpdotcom, on 10/11/2007, -4/+10Do you have ADSL? Do you know what the A means? :D
- darksabrelord, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6actually, that happens because they advertise in megabytes (10^6) while your computer's OS measures in mebibytes (2^20), which causes it to "see" less free disk space. If they measured in bits, it would cause the free space to be 1/8 what is advertised, which I assure you is NOT the case
- scooterh, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Rob3: "Personally, I think that this guy is just getting confused by bits and bytes, he gets 1.5Mbps broadband and an actual download of 200Kbps, I think maybe he's actually getting something like 200KBps, which is equivalent to about 1.6Mbps - That sounds much more reasonable than 200Kbps. Maybe it's just a problem in the States because everything works well for me in the UK."
ToastyGhost: "Marked as inaccurate, the article writer clearly doesn't recognise the difference between bits and bytes."
Toastyghost and Rob3 FTW. Come on, folks, it's pretty obvious the writer is a Grade A nimrod. I'm no huge fan of the ISP's in general, but even here in the US 1.5Mbps internet is available in most (not all!) areas. And in those areas, the speeds do tend to be around 200KB (THAT'S A FRICKIN "B" for "BYTES") per second. Which is the format that the speed measurement tools usually produce after the test. It's also the number (Bps) used by your pretty IE and Firefox download bars. - BGFeltenink, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6You're defending the butcher? How much of a bitch are you?
- Zippo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Ugh, I totally agree with you, Mike. Everything is a huge mess. Hard drives, Flash memory, and DVDs are measured in metric bytes, but CDs and RAM are measured are in binary bytes. Of course, your computer itself measures in binary.
For god sakes, just measure everything in binary! - dawesdust12, on 10/11/2007, -4/+9In Canada, I'm with Shaw, and With the package I was on, advertised at 5Mbps/512kbps, and I got usually about 4.5Mbps/475~kbps, and now I'm on a higher tier package, advertised at 10Mbps/1Mbps, and I get about 9.8Mbps/960~kbps. So speeds are quite close to advertised, and can pull those speeds very often from servers 6000 miles away from here.
- Uranium118, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Easy trick, divide by 8.
- msgyrd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+490gb isn't *****. Download 3 seasons of a TV show in DVD format. 35gb right there easily.
With a 120kbps connection (1.5Mbit, fairly average), you can probably download around 300gb in one month if you downloaded nonstop, or about 9gb a day. - coldfusion1970, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3BT did that to me when i downloaded over 90gb in a month.
I told them that 'unlimited downloads' should mean unlimited, but apparently the 'fair usage' policy trumps their marketing spiel.
It lasted for a few weeks and then they uncapped me.
Now i only abuse my bandwith once or twice a month. - xGeneric, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Ohh boo hoo :)
My ISP(Pinetree Cablevision, based out of Maine) provides me with the excellent speed/price of 768k for $56 a month. They've got more users than they can handle in my town, which causes a plethora of connection problems. Not to mention that I've had the same connection problem for nearly one year now(about 9 months), that they acknowledge but refuse to fix. However, they still have no problem sending me a $56 bill every month, even if I ask for a credit. I'd sell my soul to get a Comcast or Verizon connection.
STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM PINETREE CABLEVISION. Horrible prices, horrible service. - aussieNickuss, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Or it could just be shonky ISP's in the US. I get my full advertised speed here is Australia, and it looks like you UK users do as well. Its just the states that are lacking.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3A possibly more important question than speed is availability. My cable company availability has dropped considerably (below 90%). Telecoms come from the "five-nines" (99.999% uptime) era; FIOS for example says they maintain 99.9% uptime.
What good is any Internet connection if it doesn't stay up? The cable companies don't even seem to have a process for dealing with unreliable service. If the connection is up and the signal levels are good, they're done. They don't care that the connection goes down a dozen times a day, as long as it comes back up, no problem. - Splitt3rxx, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6I get up to 10mbps on comcast in Albany, OR. I have witnessed this while downloading torrents before, not just from speedtest sites.
- BillDoE, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Me too. I get 10 - 15mbps. My beef with Crapcast is the HD TV service. It cuts out and locks up daily. Several hundred calls and service visits to replace cable at my house has repaired nothing. Comcast denies there is any problem at all.
- spiffytech, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3It's not the division that's the problem so much as the fact that nothing else uses it. I have to remember how big an average mp3 is in megabits to understand on-the-fly how fast downloading one would be across services. I know that 768 KB/s is 6 Mb/s, but I have to actually calculate Mb to KB for any other speed to understand how my download speeds will differ between services. This is a pain.
- Satanscock, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3one more key question for the ISP is do they have a cap
local cable ISP with 20 meg connection....and a 6 gig a month cap! - 35263526, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Is it possible you're confusing megabits with megabytes?
- eclectro, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3comcast throttles certain ports - how do you get around this?
- JoeBaynham, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Ahh well Tiscali tell me I have unlimited broadband! as long as I don't go over a 1gb cap between 4pm-12am.
- bigdsinferno, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2same price? cox has increased my price over and over.
- ronaldinho, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2That's what marketing people are paid to do, fella......talk garbage. Author made a good point to ask questions though. I think we are too trustful of our entire environment nowadays and we should be questioning more things
- coldfusion1970, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Yeah, what msgyrd said.
I was downloading TV shows from torrent sites, comedy audio cds (eg. Emo Phillips) from Usenet and the odd blue movie from some naughty sites. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4I have cable internet, and I can agree with Mosaic. Upload speeds are significantly different than download speeds. This is not limited to ADSL.
- dr4g0nnn, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2And what's 950 multiplied by 8? Oh yeah, 7.6Mbit; you're close to your advertised there, stop complaining and learn the difference between bit and byte.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 143 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is