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222 Comments
- Izzmo, on 05/11/2009, -2/+168Areas with high-population would see this problem, but if you live in a suburban area with people that don't know "how to use the internet", then your speeds would be suprisingly high, like mine.
- harpdog, on 05/11/2009, -1/+119What would be the point of having a 200Mbps connection from Virgin. Virgin media already have introduced traffic shaping. They already are part of the Big 6 that forward user details to the music industry for those that download music the wrong way.
Their CEO said that net neutrality is a 'load of bollocks' so we know where he stands.
So what is the point of having a really fast connection with an ISP that restricts what you can do with it. - LANjackal, on 05/11/2009, -6/+119Ars forgot one factor: the speed of the home router itself (NOT just the wireless spec, such as 802.11g, that it's using). Many router models are actually limited in the amount of bandwidth they can handle, and that limit is often lower than the max speed of the wired LAN they're on. My Linksys, for example, tops out at 54Mbps even though it's on a 100Mbps LAN. Therefore, if my connection speed goes above 54Mbps I'd need a new router to take advantage of the speed, even if I used 100Mbps Ethernet throughout my LAN.
Also, as someone who's been BOTH a DSL and a cable customer, I can assure you that loop sharing or not, cable is absolutely faster, even at peek hours. Hands down. No competition. All other things being equal, I can't think of any advantage to using DSL besides pricing. - ramd3z, on 05/11/2009, -3/+741993 - y would I need more than a 14.4k modem?
- LANjackal, on 05/11/2009, -2/+64Agreed. I doubt anyone else in my small city really taxes their connection. I get 25mbps from an advertised speed of 15mbps. Not complaining :)
- volcompimp, on 05/11/2009, -0/+57Throughput != Bandwidth
- Temo1, on 05/11/2009, -0/+47Fios can't reach my neighborhood fast enough :(
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -1/+41Please leave the internet, you're only holding it back.
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -3/+40Lemme guess, you're one of those people who thinks that only pirates use a lot of bandwidth. There are plenty of movies and music to be had legally on the Internet, you know, and games, and well, you get the idea.
- ukblacknight, on 05/11/2009, -3/+38@ramd3z So you can write "why" instead of "y" without killing the connection :P
- borez, on 05/11/2009, -0/+34Most heavy users are heavy users because of bitTorrent. Now because Virgin has a vested interested in media distribution, you will therefore never be allowed to use this protocol without it being throttled. I don't care what Mr Branson said about it in the recent Digg dialogue, the nature of this company and it's future business model i.e. to charge you for prime content, won't allow for the free use of BitTorrent. Period.
FTR: I used virgin for two months and it was ***** awful, at peak hours it crawled to a halt completely. You can forget about ever trying to get a decent seed ratio with this service cos it just ain't gonna happen. Now I use Bethere and I'm totally happy. - effedup, on 05/11/2009, -0/+34"but come to think of it, most home owners wouldn't have a clue if they were being sold sub-standard equipment anyway."
You nailed it. - LordVance, on 05/11/2009, -0/+33Streaming, legal video is becoming increasingly popular. The more bandwidth we have the higher quality video we can stream.
- Qumahlin, on 05/11/2009, -2/+32The entire article is a farse because once we start talking about the speed ranges they are they seem to only want to discuss bottlenecks at the actual provider and not anywhere else.
Most sites/providers regardless how big are not going to saturate a 200Mbps connection. Hell most won't even saturate a 50Mbps connection. One example of this is one of the largest uses of broadband, pornography. Many large sites actually put hard limits in place to prevent users from signing and and essentially downloading the entire site in the matter of a day.
Lets consider that an average/large size site may be utilizing a full OC-3 connection which is 155Mbps symmetrical. What this means is that if that site offers large downloadable content and has no caps, that one customer with a 200Mbps line would essentially be able to saturate that sites connection. Now imagine 20 more customers with 200 Mbps lines expecting to max out their speeds as well connecting to the same site...it isn't going to happen.
This is much the reason why I laugh when people tout the speeds in Korea and Japan...sure they offer superfast fiber with insane speeds and no caps, but thanks to latency and the bandwidth of the sites themselves it is incredibly unlikely they will ever reach their max throughput, and if the site is hosted overseas there is no chance at all they will attain max throughput, atleast not through todays networking technologies.
So while I agree speeds may be a bit more misleading when applied to cable, due to the speeds we are talking about it's really not an issue.
The article also fails to address that the QoS methods that CMTS have begun implementing are incredibly robust, especially in areas with A-TDMA frequencies available. - murdockat, on 05/11/2009, -0/+29http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/1/
- Wooodles, on 05/11/2009, -0/+29I get .75mbps from an advertised 1mbps DSL connection. Not complaining, just really sad.
- venomoushealer, on 05/11/2009, -0/+28Blueray quality youtube. And 10 second downloads when I buy a game on steam.
- twiztidsinz, on 05/11/2009, -0/+26"Can you imagine the media ***** storm if the were found to be leasing broadband lines with equipment only capable of speeds significantly lower than that of the advertised connection"
Like they've done with modems in the past? - inactive, on 05/11/2009, -0/+24You're confusing the causal relationship here. Your logic is backward. He's saying that people who don't know how to use the Internet are likely to use very little bandwidth, not that people who use very little bandwidth don't know how to use the Internet. In other words, you're criticizing him for a position that he did not take.
- Phil13, on 05/11/2009, -0/+21Megabits/second != megabytes/second
200 Mbps is only ~25MB/s
Internal networks may offer speeds up to 88.5MB/s, but this article is about 200Mbps. - inactive, on 05/11/2009, -0/+21Because hopefully it'll force other companies to update their archaic platforms.
- Craga89, on 05/11/2009, -0/+19Most broadband companies these days send out free routers when signing a broadband contract, so I'd assume that upon signing up they'd send you a router capable of handling the theoretical line speed. Can you imagine the media ***** storm if the were found to be leasing broadband lines with equipment only capable of speeds significantly lower than that of the advertised connection? Talk about a PR disaster... but come to think of it, most home owners wouldn't have a clue if they were being sold sub-standard equipment anyway.
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -0/+18and that's why you still use public trackers.
- stk198323, on 05/11/2009, -0/+18@bilbohicks
Game on the internet while downloading torrents and streaming radio and you will see that you need more then you seam to understand. Of course if you only download one thing at a time and never do anything else then that you won't see any increase in speed from a 200mbps connection but if you download, stream, play, etc all at the same time then you don't need a 200mbps connection to a single website but a 200mbps connection to handle every thing.
Also more and more people start using the internet and a lot of home has more then one device accesing the internet at the same time.
Try this:
- The PS3 is downloading a game from the PS store
- Your playing a FPS game on your desktop
- Your mother is downloading all her crappy chain letter power point show
- Your father is looking at web pages and downloading programs
- Your sister is watching youtube videos
- Your laptop has 5 torrents downloading
- Throw in the Wii, the BD player downloading updates, heck even the fridge downloading recipe from the internet as of now ...
Then tell me the 200mbps connection wouldn't help. - chillybeans27, on 05/11/2009, -0/+18This is why we can't have nice things.
- alexweej, on 05/11/2009, -1/+19Did you just compare DOCSIS to Token Ring?
- Topher06, on 05/11/2009, -0/+17Seriously, I am tired of paying for a service that doesn't offer what you subscribed to. The whole communications industry needs to be turned on their ear and slapped with a class action lawsuit so that if you pay for a 5, 15, 200 mbps service, you get those speeds. I know that there will always be variations in the actual performance you get, but paying for a 5mbps and it only ever tops out at 2.5mbps (regardless of line conditions or distance from some box), or having some download protocols like P2P crawling along at 50kbps is criminal, period.
If you bought a car that claimed it had 250 hp, but then it only ever delivered 100 hp that would not be tolerated, so why is the communication industry immune for doing the same kind of nonscense? - FruitFocker, on 05/11/2009, -4/+21Because all big companies are liars.
- buddyfarr, on 05/11/2009, -1/+17Hell I would just like to see 10... :(
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -3/+19Cry me a river, 200mbps??.
Man these guys are spoiled.... - bilbohicks, on 05/11/2009, -0/+14Weirdly, VM offer a free newsgroup service to their broadband customers where you can download all kinds of illegal stuff at speeds far above that which you will get from a torrent.
- KSUdesigner, on 05/11/2009, -0/+12I don't think they forgot that point, unless they added this after you saw the article:
The gear in your house
As cable's DOCSIS data architecture continues to mature, the new high speed offerings may be too fast for some customers even to use. As Virgin notes when describing its 200Mbps trial, "there are no wireless routers able to deliver throughput of speeds as high as 200Mb, and computers require very high specification in order to be able handle data at such a high rate.
If a home still has a (not uncommon) 802.11b wireless router, for instance, the device can only move 11Mbps under normal circumstances. 802.11g routers can move around 54Mbps, while some 802.11n routers claim speeds in the 100Mbps+ range. None can hit 200Mbps, however.
200Mbps is also faster than fast ethernet (100Mbps), still common in plenty of home PCs tucked in dens, bedrooms, and basements across the country. These machines can never access 200Mbps speeds—and in fact won't even get 100Mbps speeds thanks to network overhead.
In addition, the cable modem needs to be fast enough to handle the new speeds, and customer wiring in the home needs to be able to support 100Mbps+ speeds reliably. - inactive, on 05/11/2009, -0/+11I think you're just infering something that wasn't at least intentionally implied.
- inactive, on 05/11/2009, -3/+14Nothing new being reported here. If you bought a Bugatti Veyron, how often would you be able to get her up to 250 mph? On an oval perhaps.
Same difference. - EarlOfLade, on 05/11/2009, -0/+10Is this the network equivalent of "Nobody need more than 640K RAM" type of argument?
Of course the net is not 100% capable of sustaining 200Mb/s, that is not the point. If the argument is that some parts are only 10Mb/s so you don't need any faster, then I say, build it and they will come! Bandwidth will be increased all over and is constantly being increased. The Verizon argument is a bad excuse to avoid spending money on their customers installations and on their own infrastructure.
I can easily get 100Mb/s to my company' VPN server, but with only a 3Mb/s DSL, I feel set back a decade. What Verizon and Americans do not realize, is that in other countries, bandwidth is being increased in a furious pace while here in the US, nothing really happens. Every month that goes by, development elsewhere leaves USA further and further behind - counterplex, on 05/11/2009, -0/+10I'm that boat too but remove dial-up and add smoke signals. Come to think about it, I'm NOT in the same boat am I?
/s - ultrafez, on 05/11/2009, -0/+10Download music the wrong way? Like by not using BitTorrent protocol encryption?
- b0rg, on 05/11/2009, -0/+10You mean a suburban area like mine where the neighborhood consists of a geologist who uses a mix of Xwin and VNC on four computers, a lawyer who watches video from three cities, an IT manager who uses QoS to avoid crushing his own VoIP under the NNTP traffic, seven teenagers who can't tell you what channel ABC is on because they're watching Hulu, two women who run their business off eBay (get yer mind out of the gutter, they're selling handbags and some sort of artsy crap)?
That's just the first five houses on the block.
The myth that the 'burbs aren't any less oinkish on bandwidth is badly in need of a tune-up.
Now excuse me while I watch a 1.8mb/s stream from the slingbox at home... - Vektuz, on 05/11/2009, -0/+10Not for long. Eventually everyone will understand things like hulu or youtube. Then it will drop down to like 10 kB/s because thats all the provider has actually requisitioned, because its easier to pack 100 people onto one line than it is to actually build more lines, as long as you assume 90% of people don't use the bandwidth.
That is changing. - norman619, on 05/11/2009, -0/+9LordVance:
You don't need that kind of speed now. You would prob only use at most 10% of your bandwidth. They are trying to futureproof thier system. The internet in its current incarnation can not support wide spread adoption of streaming video or TV let alone streaming HDTV. As ISP's have determined here most of teh bandwidth is being sucked up by a minority of customer doing p2p. The average person never gets near taxing the connection they currently have. I know this is true since I used to do IT for an ISP. This is why they have felt they could safely oversell their services. Now it's coming back to bite them in the arse. You will not get the advertised 200Mbps they advertise. Their system would grind to a halt if all their users decided to take full advantage of their 200Mbps pipe. - heartoftofu, on 05/11/2009, -0/+9One of my friends is still on 56k... It's sort've funny because he pays about as much for it (maybe more) as he would for a DSL connection.
- stk198323, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8So what is your point exactly? Your telling us your hd can support 60mb/s and that would be too slow for a 25mb/s connection?
Also ssd will become faster and faster and cheaper every year... - likwidfuzion, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8You're on a boat?
- lashtal, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8"there are no wireless routers able to deliver throughput of speeds as high as 200Mb" <-- BS — 802.11n -> data rate from 54 Mbit/s to a maximum of 600 Mbit/s; the current state of the art supports a PHY rate of 450 Mbit/s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n
Furhermore, every modern motherboard is equipped with gigabit ethernet chip, and such speed can be reached inside LAN. If provider uses equipment and cables compatible with gigabit standard, you'll easily be above 200mbps mark for WAN. - TypeEE, on 05/11/2009, -0/+81.5Mbps here and it cost me $15 for the land line + $25 for the play = $40USD
- Tiak, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8"I can't think of a reason to use DSL besides pricing."
Here's one: Comcast is my local cable company. - digitalpencil, on 05/11/2009, -0/+8we're not spoiled, you guys are getting ***** in the ass.. there's a distinct difference.
When someone uses statistical data to advertise their service and that data doesn't hold true, we as consumers have a right to kick up a fuss. It's one of the reasons why the ASA are actually a good, responsible organisation in the UK, ordering companies to backup the claims made in their marketing campaigns.
You guys are getting completely ripped off and the fact that US broadband is falling SO far behind other countries despite all the investment that was squandered after the Clinton-Gore initiative to invest billions into an infrastructure overhaul delivering a FTTC, common-carriage, neutral network is ridiculous.
The FCC should hold ATT/RBOCs responsible for the theft of billions of dollars from the US taxpayer & the ASA should order VM to backup their speed claims with empirically verifiable data. - Shadowarriorx, on 05/11/2009, -0/+7I dig you up because that was informative.
- spo0oky, on 05/11/2009, -0/+7Maybe all of you should use a 2400baud modem for a week. Then you'll hug a 512k/512k DSL connection like it was a lost brother.
- askantik, on 05/11/2009, -0/+7I'll take a guess that it's the same reason you never seen 6Mbps on a a 6Mbps line.
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