What is Digg?73 Comments
- mobbo, on 10/11/2007, -3/+71Yes.
- kenvsryu, on 10/11/2007, -14/+70In the US yes, in a technologically civilized nation no.
- WhipkickeN, on 10/11/2007, -0/+40Well even if they don't cap, they will throttle. Since Rogers (Canadian isp) started throttling and blocking all encryption, i havnt been able to get torrent downloads to go faster than 30 kB/s. Even though i pay for unlimited bandwidth and 5mbps download. I'd say its time to switch.
- filmbandit, on 10/11/2007, -4/+43can't we just build a bigger series of tubes? ; )
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+38No, they won't spoil it. As demand grows, they will build out extra capacity, because it's an arms race: any ISP whose customers can't watch (eg) YouTube will find itself with fewer customers.
- gamebittk, on 10/11/2007, -10/+31Does anyone know if fiber will have the capacity to hold up? I need to switch ISP's, but I need a good one. Digg me down, but at least give me an answer.
- d2htornado, on 10/11/2007, -7/+27...later _than_ you.
- dacheetah, on 10/11/2007, -0/+20@hdtvdust:
> kenvsryu...hey moron...name ONE other country whose population is even CLOSE ato as sparsely populated as the US
> whose "technology" when it comes to this sort of thing is even clsoe to as good as the US.
> TIP: Don't bother doing any reseacrch. You won't find any country.
I know I shouldn't respond to a serial troll, but I can't help it.
The USA has a population density of 31 people per square kilometre.
Australia, (who are very close technologically) have a population density of 2.6 people per square kilometre, roughy TEN TIMES as much space per person.
TIP: Don't listen to hdtvdust, ever. (His grammar alone will make your eyes bleed) - daeken, on 10/11/2007, -6/+24@NicksVideo
No, he was wrong. When saying "x later than y" you're making a comparison, not giving a sequence of events.
"He submitted it, then I tried to submit it myself" -- Correct
"He submitted it a few moments earlier than I did" -- Also correct
"He submitted it a few minutes earlier then I did" -- Not correct - BZKyle, on 10/11/2007, -8/+24Yay! Grammar Nazis!
- avsfan987, on 10/11/2007, -1/+17It looks to me like these ISP's are going to have to start offering closer to "promised" bandwith if they want to stay ahead or else they're going to fall way behind.
- Uranium118, on 10/11/2007, -0/+13I use about 400GB per month. uTorrent is running 24/7. I guess my ISP's unlimited bandwidth really is unlimited, well only limited by my speed. Let's say a normal person uses 10GB per month, there must be a really big bunch of people using only 1GB to compensate for my usage.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14This article is about the United Kingdom (it's not labelled, but what the hell, you Americans rarely say articles are US only). Here, there are only really two national "providers" of broadband - Virgin Media and BT. Most other companies resell the products offered by BT and therefore only BT and Virgin really have control over this sort of thing.
I think what's really going to be more shocking is when people who sign up for these pitiful 1GB/mo plans start receiving letters about their access - I know that most providers offer much higher capacity services for extra fees but the real consideration will be to whether people actually enjoy VOD/Online TV enough to be prepared to pay the extra money required. - NoOneButMe, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11Not all ISP's are trying to control their network's minute details.
- leetdood, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11Then your ISP has a crappy network. If the guy wants to download with P2P stuff on HIS account, with the speeds the ISP promised HIM, then it's not his fault if the ISP can't make sure everybody gets the speed they should. If one guy uses his full download speed, the other people in the neighbourhood still should be able to use their connections. A connection isn't a goddamn timeshare.
- kurtu5, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11Oh mr jock man, I see your astute "Neeeeeeeeeerddds!" comment.
How a bout this pretty boy...
Why don't you get offline, and ***** all of your hot girlfriends while us nerds run the internet. Ok?
Get the ***** off a nerd site. *****. - redrock34, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9I believe the contention ratio is 50:1 for residential users and 20:1 for business users. So basically you can have up to 49 people sharing the same advertised bandwidth as you.
- filmbandit, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8maybe Ted Stevens will sponsor a bill to get us a bigger series of tubes.
- cubed2d, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Anyone know if there is a site that list what ISPs wont treat you like ' dirty rotten thieving scum'? ive been with blueyonder for years, and ive noticed its got slower since virgin took over, now i know why! i want out.
- wolfkeeper, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Actually the real ratio is often nearer 150:1. The ISPs also rely on the fact that users are only online about 1/3 of the time at most. When they are online 50:1 usage is not unusual if you are web browsing and doing a few downloads.
- tsctsc, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7@filmbandit
We just need to schedule more horse races to unclog them. - callthisnumber, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6This has always been the case. Back in the day I worked for Prodigy and then Mindspring/Earthlink. The ratio of users to modems was something like 5 to 1 or even worse. Hosting companies pull the same kind of thing when they pretend to offer you 200GB of bandwidth a month. The truth is that if you were to ever get that kind of traffic they would shut you down for "Using to many resources on the server". They count on the fact that 99% of their clients won't use even a fraction of the bandwidth they pretend to offer.
- JasonCox, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Having recently worked at an ISP I can say this is 110% percent true.
- R0CKY, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Where you gonna go? Virgin have the most forgiving cap/shaping arrangement in the UK, that is, if you are a heavy user download a cack load of files at PEAK times, your speed will be slowed for a 4 hour period after you have dumped in excess of 3Gb in one 6 hour period. If you are doing a lot of P2P, schedule it for during the day and everyone's happy.
- 1legalAmerican, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I have had AT&T broadband 3mb up and 1down in the past...They actually only delivered half of the BW...If I had to use FTP, I was basically slammed down to a snails pace. Yes, they do oversell their bandwidth. When I confronted them on it, they pretty much confirmed it.
- rarson, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4"As demand grows, they will build out extra capacity, because it's an arms race: any ISP whose customers can't watch (eg) YouTube will find itself with fewer customers."
Except for HughesNet, because they already know they can rape their customers as much as they want.
I will scream for joy the day cable comes to my house. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8They do offer what they say. You just don't rea the fine print.
And again...are you pissed that Google does not have 2.8 Gig of storage space for EVERY single person that signed up for a gmail account?
Just becuase you are an idiot at business doesn't mean that ISP's should be. It would be a huge awste of money to have enough bandwidth to allow every single subscriber to have, say 5 Meg down when 80% of users never need more than 1 MEg at most at any given time. Not to mention that every subscriber is not logged on at all times.
IT would be physcially impossible to offer that much without raising prices A LOT of cover the infrastructure improvements.
Myself...I almost always get around 4.8 Meg down, where I am supposed to get 5 Meg. I have no problem with that at all. - group0, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4@tamrix
"But in all of that, yes the Internet is VERY over priced.."
Blame it on the greedy Tier 1 providers (AT&T, Qwest, Verizon, Level 3) and LECs. The cost of a single T1 (~1.5Mbps in both directions) is generally in the area of $500-$900 dollars a month, plus buildout costs. What the average Internet subscriber doesn't understand is that they'd never be able to afford dedicated access at guaranteed speeds. Over-subscription by Tier3/Tier4 ISPs is a necessary evil in order to provide any form of competition, most notably to DSL providers, who are almost always owned by or in bed with the backbone providers. Without them, the DSL providers would rape you even worse, because you'd have no other choices.
Consumer level broadband comes with an AUP/FAP, not to be confused with an SLA (service level agreement). This means you are allowed UP TO the maximum rate for your package, but there are absolutely no guarantees.
I agree that some ISPs engage in questionable marketing tactics, but for all the people up in arms about "getting what they pay for", realistically it boils down to this: You really do get what you pay for. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4They won't spoil it, they'll just charge more for it, a lot more.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3@flashman
Actually you would think they would increase the bandwidth once the demand grows.. But their not! If the ISP's dont see any of the money back that they spent increasing bandwidth why would they want to.. In your case its youtube that will see the money..
This is why they wanted to have those new laws which allow telecommunication companys to filter/shape/block traffic from other sites/networks. This way they know their investment from increasing the bandwidth will be safe.. Most others called it the death of the internet. This releates to what gquaglia just said, they will charge more and so the new laws will allow them to.
But in all of that, yes the Internet is VERY over priced.. - Noods, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I work for an ISP. This is true. The problem occurs at the network level as it handles many subscriber streams over few gigabit links. When each subscriber starts pulling 3-4 megs for a single video stream, it heavily taxes available bandwidth. However, new DWDM and fiber technologies will allow for the necessary bandwidth to support new services in the near future.
This is not a node level problem by the way, as node groups can be, and are frequently, split to provide bandwidth for customers. - scronline, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2It would be so nice if people would stop lumping all ISPs together. There is a reason for stereotypes but why do we have to perpetuate them?
- rarson, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3HughesNet (satellite) doesn't have a total download cap, but they do have this BS called a "Fair Access Policy." With the service I have ($60/month), the FAP kicks in if you download 175 MB too quickly. Hughes doesn't specify HOW quickly, but once FAP kicks in, I'm lucky if I can even get Google to load (which is to say, my service is functionally broken). I can hit FAP in a few hours just by watching a bunch of Youtube videos. Forget about downloading a Linux ISO, that would take at least a week with FAP constantly kicking in.
Their reasoning behind FAP is that "as little as 5%" of their users can use up to 90% of their bandwidth at a time. So they limit the bandwidth for the people that are using it so that the people who aren't using it will have their advertised bandwidth if they ever decide to use it (for a little while, anyway). Which makes me ask why they don't just cap the speeds at a lower point so that they don't have to limit bandwidth. But then of course, they wouldn't be able to advertise "as fast as cable and DSL" (what a bunch of bull *****).
The only reason I have Hughes is because it's the only thing available, besides dial up. And as ***** as satellite can be, I'd still rather have the speed sometimes than have to deal with dial up. - rekenner, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2@ dacheetah:
True, but misleading. How many people actually live in the Outback and such? From what I know of its geography, it seems like it would be sparsely populated on average, but would have greater population density in the areas that people do live in. True, the US *does* have Alaska to deflate its population density in the same way. I don't think the habited/uninhabited ratio would be the same for the US and Australia.
Also, an Australian friend of mine used to bitch about his DSL having a cap of 10 GB downloaded *per month*. You could get better monthly downloads on Dialup, if you used it constantly. I don't know how accurate this still is, as I haven't talked with him in awhile. Speaking of caps, though, AFAIK, US ISPs don't have caps, formally, though I've heard a lot about them from various people living in Europe. I've never encountered an ISP sending me anything or cutting access, either, despite using 3 ISPs and downloading sometimes 100-150 GB in a month.
Again - This is mostly speculation, a single anecdote, and personal experience. I didn't do any real research on this. Inform me, please. - esquilax, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2it's not as easy as picking from a list, but you can check out http://www.broadbandreports.com
- Kinjiru, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1DSLreports.com has some good reviews.. but it won't cover them all.. I'm sure there are others as well :)
- Error601, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Any ISP. You just have to cough up the cash to pay for the level of service you want. Call up the business office and they can set you up.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1 We have Sudden Link cable ,second tier and I was wondering if what happens here is related to this discussion?
Often ( over half the time) when I watch a long video,sich as DLTV,Penn & Teller,documentaries, etc...Virtually every time it gets down to the last forth of the video,the video stops.
If i try another website,I get "Server not found", but I'm still connected to the net.
So I have to reboot the router and can pick up where I left off.
But why does this happen?Is it my ISP doing this?
- adz999, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2you guyzas love corected each others grammer, wels no pointsin correctin mine coz i i dont caaare :)
- Brew, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Comcast is already bending me over. I cannot even play a game on Xbox live half the time anymore it has gotten so bad. Surrre my download speeds are great at an impressive 10 mps but my upload speeds you ask 450 kbs. It is ridiculous! I cannot believe I am even saying this, but can I have Adelphia back?
- Error601, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1There's a big difference between your transfer speed and your throughput. My car can go 150MPH yet a 10 mile trip doesn't happen in 3.6 minutes.
- alexforcefive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Yeah, wish I'd read that article last week, before I signed up to virgin media's 20mb package.
Is there anything we can do about this? or is it just another case of consumers getting stiffed until everything reaches a boiling point? - thesutex, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1poor people! here in Norway consumer laws protect us that way so if you buy a 6mbps internet connection the real speed is closer to 6,5 ! Norwegian law requires the speed to be atleast what you pay for!
- slapthemonkey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I agree to it.
- Error601, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Uh...BS. No secret to anyone in the industry that cheap home service is priced on burst type use. Didn't you ever wonder what that that 1.5Mbit T1 will run you a couple hundred while 5Mbit cable service is $40? Just assumed it was magic?
- SteelFrog, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Yeah, and my ISP has been drowning lately. My DSLAM's constantly hitting 100% usage and we keep losing access completely. A week later, they bump the profiles down to 3mbs rather than the 5mbs I'm paying for. They oversold their lines and now they're seeing the repercussions.
- markdr123, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2@fuzzycat
Yes, he was talking about IN THE UK, and he's right. Most other providers like AOL resell packages from BT and in some cases Virgin. There are other smaller providers for specific areas, but none others with nationwide coverage.
Incidentally, putting it like that, they seem to have a monopoly (or actually oligopoly) which is never a good thing.
Edit: Neil beat me to it. - dacheetah, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@rekenner:
Well for a start, I was mostly just proving that what hdtvdust said was a blatent lie.
Secondly, there are alot of people who live in rural ("outback") areas, and pretty much the only uninhabited place is the better part of the desert, and the US has deserts that are largely uninhabited as well. Further, these rural people demand reasonable broadband plans, ans as such the infrastructure still has to cover virtually the entire continent.
As for caps, yes, we have pretty nasty caps on most plans by quite a few of our ISPs, in fact it's fairly rare to have un unlimited account that doesn't have fine print saying that the limit is less than 30GB per month for residential plans. (Sure there are some that go alot higher, and some who have no such fine print, but most will be capped at 30GB or lower.) I'm not saying that out Broadband is good, in fact it's worse than the broadband in the US, but not directly proportial to population density as hdtvdust seems to be implying. - cynicist, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Theres no question that ISP's have the means, they just want to milk us as much as possible while we are still using the antiquated architecture. Once we complain enough about the fact that other countries have surpassed us in a major way, they'll all roll out fiber.
- superkendall, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Call and ask to be a "Gold Tier" member. $10 a month, twice the uplink speed (and some extra downlink, but I don't pay attention to taht as much as uplink).
Or get a DSL line through a real provider like Speakeasy. It will cost a little more but you can do what you want. -
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