What's the big deal with the broadband speed race? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 12:55:05 am
content: In the election rant thread there were lots of comments about broadband internet speed. But what on earth do people want all that speed for?Here in the USA I have a fairly unexciting cable internet service, it gives about 15 Mb/s down, 1 Mb/s up. Nothing earth shattering, but honestly, I have never found it too slow. Why do you need 25 Mb/s, or 50 Mb/s, or 100 Mb/s? What improvement does it give to your experience?Why I say this is that every time I am disappointed with my network speed, it is not a problem with the local link to my ISP, it is a remote problem with the servers dishing out the content. I can do massive downloads from, say, Microsoft, and I have no problem with the download speed at all. Why do I care if a 3 minute download might take 2 minutes or 1 minute instead? It's as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea. It's irrelevant to my quality of life.Do you get frustrated with YouTube videos halting and failing to play smoothly? Yes, you and a million other people. And guess what? It is not the fault of your internet service bandwidth, it is YouTube's fault! You could be on 100 Mb/s service and you would still get freezing videos. Their software and their service has been bungled to the point that it doesn't work any more.So please, let's get real. What serious use would you have for 100 Mb/s internet?

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 01:25:25 am
content: I have 100/6 and I actually get these speeds, for about 20$ a month, about 30$ a month with tv and phone in a package... I would actually like some higher upload speed but at the moment I can live with it.Higher bandwidth allows for innovation.With slow download speeds, a service like Netflix may not be interested to launch in that region because they would have to overcompress the content and it would look bad compared to normal cable tv. As far as I hear, it's already bad in US.Let's say I want to launch an online TV streaming service in Australia, so that people pay me half the amount they would pay now for cable tv and watch tv through the internet. If they have only 10 mbps and a bandwidth cap of 50 GB a month and I'm streaming HD at 2-3 mbps I'm basically eating 1 GB an hour out of their 50 GB cap, they would use up those 50 GB in a week and pay a lot for each extra GB. It's obvious nobody would be interested in my service, so why launch it?With my internet connection, when I'm in the mood, I just go to a tv station's website and click on live streaming and I get SD stream, but at about 2-3 mbps and I can just leave it running throughout the day without caring about download caps, throttling due to AUP and other crap like that.In my case, I could probably just the same stream a 720p version at 4-5 mbps or a 1080p version of that stream running at 10 mbps. With 100mbps download speed, it hardly makes a dent.Now picture your family (you, your wife and a kid or two kids, ditching cable tv and relying on internet to get your phone, tv and other things) .. you may want to watch a football game on your ipad/whatever, your wife may want to watch oprah or something in the kitchen, one of your kids watches a cartoon in her room or listens to music, your other kid may want to play online... that 15 mbps can be saturated quite easily.Or, let's say you want to save money and instead of calling using your cellphone you may wish to use voip, or skype. Grab a 720p/1080p webcam, try to do a voice phone call. With 1mbps, you may not be able to stream hd, while me with 6 mbps upload I may have no problems streaming the image as it comes from camera at 2-3 mbps for 720p.At the same time, my 2-3 mbps upload won't make the downloads other people (parent, wife, kid playing online games etc) may do in the house crap out or lag.I'm a freelancer ... I work for myself, have several websites, I dabble in various electronic projects as hobby, I fix electronic hardware from time to time...I also work for a company and get paid well to do video editing, editing commercials, encoding video for television, for DVD, bluray etc ... for a company in Canada it's more expensive to hire someone locally compared to hiring me to do their projects. For every project, I basically download 20-40 GB of raw footage, edit it and upload it back to them over night.With 100/6 connection, I can basically download 40 GB in less than an hour, do the work, and the result of my work (about 2-3 GB) gets uploaded back to them in a couple of hours. Try doing that with 1 mbps of upload bandwidth.As for Youtube... here, it buffers maybe once every few weeks... it's very smooth. All the videos are mostly streamed from datacenters in Germany or France, which are hundreds of miles away from me. Maybe the ISP also transparently caches the videos, I don't know and I don't care.Uploads to Youtube don't seem to be limited, I can upload at 4-6 mbps, the maximum of my upload bandwidth ... when I need to publish lots of videos to Youtube for a client, I basically upload the videos overnight to a rented server that's located in a datacenter in Holland, and then from that server I start 3-5 simultaneous uploads to Youtube, basically saturating the 100 mbps bandwidth that server has.Basically the 6mbps upload limit at home is a problem for such situations, and that's why I'd like to have higher upload bandwidth, but this ISP doesn't offer higher upload speeds for non-business accounts.QuoteThat's a faulty reasoning. No, it's not necessarily Youtube's fault. Lots of times it's your ISP's fault for not being willing to accept peering connections or pay extra for more bandwidth, or cache content in their own networks. In US, Netflix is also a problem... but not such a big one.A lot of ISPs also have cable tv, and they don't want to make Youtube and netflix and other services attractive out of fear they'll lose money from cable tv business.As for South Africa, Australia, New Zealand... a big reason why internet sucks more there is the cost of fiber optic bandwidth and insufficient fiber cables, and greediness of the companies in those countries.

author: staxquad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 01:40:19 am
content: Quote from: IanB on September 08, 2013, 12:55:05 amI have to pay $30/month for 1 Mbps. I can do all I want to do with that service, so I'm not interested in paying more for quicker downloading or streaming. I'd be happier paying $10/month, but its monopoly services in Canada.It's $45/m for 10 Mbps and $58/m for 40 Mbps with the same provider.Almost as bad as AustraliaIn Toronto, $225.99 /month for 250 Mbps, $125.99 /month for 150 Mbps, $77.99 /month for 45Mbps, $67.99 /month for 35 Mbps, $54.99 /month for 25 Mbps, $44.49 /month for 6 Mbps, all with download limits. Nothing cheap.expensive entertainment

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 02:08:23 am
content: Quote from: IanB on September 08, 2013, 12:55:05 amPersonally, I don't know. While I can sit down and come up with ideas I don't have the skill set to implement any of them.I remember like it was yesterday, joking around with friends and family about video phones and how if the phone rang in the morning you would have to fix yourself up a bit before answering the phone... We all imagined some crt tv on the self where the phone sits with a video camera atop of it. If someone had of suggested that in ten years time it would be done on a mobile phone, not much thicker than a credit card, we would of asked that person to share the drugsWe have a mindset limited by the years of well recognized technological limitations. Younger people, however have grown up without being exposed to some of the limits and as such have a broader view or imagination as to what is possible or what could be possible. If you grow up in an era where coms speed is not an issue then that is one less thing to limit your imagination. Is it any wonder we are seeing more and more teenagers coming up with good app ideas on the news...The other thing that comes to mind is the infrastructure. I am paying $100 a month for a package that includes land line phone service with ADSL2+ (originally flogged with "upto 22Mbps!!) On a good day I get 4Mbps download 400kbps up load, whilst others get 20+Mbps. I can't simply change providers, its due to where I live and I don't get charged any less than those that get much higher speeds.So while it seems that high speed internet is what's being talked about there a much greater intricacies in its implementation, of which, my feeble short sited mind has touched on only a few

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 02:32:30 am
content: It's the upload speed on adsl which is a pain in the ass. 1mbit just isn't enough.It also means anyone on adsl connecting to anyone else on adsl always gets <1mbit in both direction.Once you get to around 5-10mbit of actual, true, available bandwidth pretty much everything will work flawlessly.But as others have pointed out. You may have a physical 10mbit/100mbit/1gbit connection to your ISP buy there are many other factors.You<- 50mbit VDSL2 connection->overloaded local telephone exchange which cant give you more than 6mbit<- 6mbit of 1gbit link from local exchange to ISP ->Overloaded ISP which is supplying 1000 cat videos to 10000 other people and cant give you more than 2mbit<- Links throughout the internet consisting of 5~20 other routers between you and destination all with massivebufferbloat->Overloaded ISP at the destination end.<- connection to the actual desination server hosting the file your getting. And its probably hosted on someones ADSL line with max 1mbit upload and you're sharing that with everyone else on the server! ->Destination serverResult? 50mbit connection but only 200kbit of bandwidth

author: Rufus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 02:57:52 am
content: Quote from: AlfBaz on September 08, 2013, 02:08:23 amAnd who would have thought a century ago that 100 years on the telephone system would still have about 3kHz bandwidth and effectively 8 bit and 8kHz sample rate? Reality is humans can't generate or consume voice data at higher rates.The same goes for all data, once they can get a HD video stream (or maybe 2) and can upstream enough for skype or equivalent (which doesn't really need HD the same way phones don't need 24bit 96kHz sampling) the majority will not see any benefit from higher connection speed and won't be prepared to pay extra for it.I don't see that changing significantly, there is a limit on how much data the majority of people can generate and consume. I don't foresee 'personal' computers generating or consuming large amounts of data either.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 03:19:00 am
content: Quote from: IanB on September 08, 2013, 12:55:05 amIt's for the stuff we haven't thought of yet. It's called building infrastructure for the future.Remote working and teleconferencing are two big obvious things. Those who think the current speeds are fine for something basic these days like streaming video and remote collaboration, then you have no idea of how these things work now, or will work in the future.

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 03:31:57 am
content: Quote from: Rufus on September 08, 2013, 02:57:52 amI don't agree with this point... low bandwidth, half duplex, overcompressed phone calls are really tiring, and sometimes unintelligible. I would definitely appreciate wider bandwidth, full duplex, low latency telephone calls. Maybe I could start a business offering "HD phone".

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 03:37:39 am
content: Quote from: Rufus on September 08, 2013, 02:57:52 amWe can argue about that until the cows come home but in either case it's irrelevant. The copper network is old and needs a lot of maintenance and/or replacement. Fibre seems to be "the way forward" and what ever data rates are needed be they small or large, mission critical applications will not be as viable on a flailing network. Surely you can agree that reliable connectivity is becoming a very important aspect ofeverythingand if high data rates come with it, all the better

author: Rufus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 04:39:29 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 08, 2013, 03:19:00 amIt's called spending AU$ 37 billion (considered likely to be grossly underestimated) on something that you think might be useful? Seriously?Quote from: AlfBaz on September 08, 2013, 03:37:39 amI will agree that replacing significant amounts of copper with copper is dumb. I find it hard to believe that all the copper in Australia really needs replacing now. FTTN (or FTTC) can provide 25Mb to a 1km radius circle around the node/cabinet. It is vastly cheaper and quicker to install than FTTH because it doesn't require you to dig up all the roads, all the gardens, and fit new terminations in all the buildings in that 1km radius circle.The node sites mostly already exist as junction boxes for the copper and I assume it is relatively easy to lay or pull fibre from the exchange to them. It doesn't rule out later upgrade to FTTH, you throw away the guts of the cabinet and the modems. People get at least 25Mb which is more than most of them need sooner and much cheaper.I have had internet connection at 33k, 56k, 512k, 1M, 2M, 8M, then about 13M as much as ADSL2 would do on my line, then about 25M from bonded ADSL2 then back to 13M because the 25M wasn't worth paying extra for. I now have 80/20 on VDSL but it is a luxury, most of the time I wouldn't even notice if it had dropped back to 13M.I read NBN take up is at about 16%, that is 16% of the buildings it runs past have connected to it presumable because the rest don't want to pay for it. I don't understand the replace all the copper bit, unless you force the other 84% to take it so you can rip the copper out?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 05:18:37 am
content: Quote from: Rufus on September 08, 2013, 04:39:29 amCome on, you know I meant it as meaning a lot more than that!You asked what applications it will be good for, and there are countless examples available now, but I'm willing to bet the best ones are things we have not thought of yet.And these new "killer apps" will only be enabled by having the data infrastructure and bandwidth in place.$40BN-50BN is a lot of money, but not when you look at it in terms of long term investment and what it enables.Heck, if the NBN enabled vast numbers of people to work from home, you'd save that money in next to no time. Not to mention countless other things that will be enabled by EVERYONE having access to the high speed reliable internet.Ialreadyhave 100Mbps internet at home (2.4Mbps upload), and even that is alreadynot fast enoughto enable remote desktop working from home, let alone proper video conferencing and streaming, or the new fangled cloud applications. I have to carry my video between home and my lab on SD cards and super fast expensive USB sticks.What if everyone could remote video conference with their doctor?What if a to more people could work from home instead of driving hours every day in our congested cities?The list of applications if you actually sat down and thought about it would be huge.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 05:28:06 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 08, 2013, 05:16:50 amI was actually against the cost of the NBN when it was first proposed. I knew it would be game changing, but I didn't understand why they had to connect to everyones home regardless of if they wanted it or not. Why couldn't people just pay for it if they wanted it? e.g. what would every unit in my mums retirement village been a fibre for?But then I sat down and really thought about it, and it was obvious that the only sensible solution is to it once, do it right, and do it for everyone equally.Our communications infrastructure is now an absolutely essential part of our lives, right up there with our water, sewage, and electricity services.If you do it half arsed you end up with a society of haves and have nots, of those who can afford basic infrastructure and those who can't.That's no way to run a civil society, and this is why I do not support privatisation of our basic infrastructure.What if all new houses only got a really narrow sewage pipe, water pipe and electricity cables by default. And you had to only flush at certain times of the day, or had to only use X amount of electricity at certain times etc. Want more? no problem, just pay to get your house upgraded to bigger pipes.It's just stupid, just do it right to begin with.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 05:35:46 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 08, 2013, 05:16:50 amOh, I could certainly imagine the need for it. Every time I waited for the modem to negotiate and connect I knew I was trying to get at the fire hose through a drinking straw. It was painful. I would look at a file I wanted to download--"10 MB? Oh, that will take over half an hour!"--and decide not to download it. Anything graphical or interactive was right out. Web browsing sucked. So sure, I dreamed of how wonderful it would be to have broadband at home, to be plugged right into the internet.Now today, I don't have that experience. The only time I have thought my internet connection was slow was when I wanted to do a large upload and realized it would take a little while to complete. Symmetrical up/down connections would be good, as would guaranteed availability. But technology doesn't limit these, business and commercial considerations do.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 05:38:45 am
content: Quote from: IanB on September 08, 2013, 05:35:46 amTry remote desktop'ing into work some time.QuoteYes, technology does have an impact. Try doing any serious internet work via wireless internet connection.Try doing any serious internet work on a crusty ADSL2+ copper phone line.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 06:01:43 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 08, 2013, 05:38:45 amWhat I mean is, I have home broadband at 15/1 speeds, and all of your scenarios work fine for me. I work with WiFi all the time when it suits and remote desktop to the office is a breeze. I don't notice any problems because my home internet speeds are far faster than we have at work. At work we pay for business network links, with symmetrical up/down connections, guaranteed bandwidth availability (no sharing or caps), and immediate response to any outages. This is much more expensive than a home broadband connection, and the restriction is certainly one of business and commercial considerations. Technology could give us as much bandwidth as we are willing to pay for. Similarly at home, my ISP could provide higher upload speeds than 1 Mb if I paid for it. The infrastructure is not a limiting factor.Now I do agree with you that at least this level of service is important to a good experience, and a slow ADSL connection sucks. But in most countries the government has not paid directly for this infrastructure to be put in place, it has asked businesses to provide it, with subsidies perhaps in remote areas where there isn't enough population density to make a good business proposition.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 06:05:32 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 08, 2013, 05:51:28 amAre all the people who live in the Outback going to get fibre laid to their door? There are remoter parts of the relatively tiny UK where the government has in effect said, "you will never get broadband, you are too far away from any population centre". You can't lay fibre everywhere, the cost would be ridiculous.

author: perfect_disturbance
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 06:47:07 am
content: If you can't get a good remote desktop session on 100Mbps there may be something else at play that should be plenty. I can do a usable session with 10Mbps. What's your latency like?

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 07:25:22 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 08, 2013, 05:38:45 amBack in 2000 I used to VNC into my work computer because I only had dial-up at home so I could virtually surf remotely. It was actually not bad.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 07:28:12 am
content: Quote from: IanB on September 08, 2013, 06:05:32 amThat's what I was thinking, what about the areas where there's just miles and miles of nothing before you reach a town?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 07:34:01 am
content: Quote from: IanB on September 08, 2013, 06:01:43 amAustralia isn't "most countries".The NBN was the #1 issue at the last federal election (the previous one, not the fiasco yesterday), the people demanded it and the two parties were forced to come up with policies. The people chose the NBN solution.That also prompted The Woz to famously say he wants to move to Australia, because we are the only ones taking the issue so seriously and building the infrastructure the right way and making it available to everyone.

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 07:35:50 am
content: NBN Co's Interim Satellite Service was launched on 1st July 2011 and is now available to eligible individuals, small businesses, not for profit organisations, Indigenous communities and educational, health and local government facilities in some of the most remote areas of mainland Australia. The first priority is given to those eligible customers who currently have no alternate access to commercial broadband services.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 07:43:19 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 08, 2013, 07:34:01 amThat's astonishing, actually. What about jobs, the economy, crime, health, education, immigration? If home internet service is the top priority of voters then Australia must be some kind of paradise...?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 07:44:09 am
content: Quote from: Stonent on September 08, 2013, 07:28:12 amWelcome to Australia. Miles and miles of nothing is our specialty.The NBN in fact is targeting the "black spot" areas for immediate improvement:http://www.nbn.gov.au/about-the-nbn/fixing-regional-blackspots/But yes, of course you can never get 100% coverage for every property in the country, that is not realistic, but you can get quite close.Just like not all properties in the country are currently serviced by water, sewage, and electricity.Also benefits of the NBN:http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-benefits/digital-economy-goals/for-households/http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-benefits/digital-economy-goals/for-business/http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-benefits/digital-economy-goals/environment/http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-benefits/digital-economy-goals/health-and-aged-care/http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-benefits/digital-economy-goals/education/http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-benefits/digital-economy-goals/telework/http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-benefits/digital-economy-goals/government-services/http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-benefits/digital-economy-goals/regional-australia/

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 07:56:33 am
content: Quote from: IanB on September 08, 2013, 07:43:19 amWe had a low jobless rate, IIRC about 5%.QuoteWe had and still have arguably the worlds strongest economy. Remember, we survived the GFC, almost everyone else did not.QuoteAlways pretty low. Almost never a federal debate issue.QuoteHealth was a big one too at the time, mental health actually.Education is always a big one.So was immigration, but actually "the illegal boats".Those (in NBN) were probably the 4 top issues at the last election.But NBN was arguably the most talked about and debated issue. The opposition at the time (Abbott, now our leader) was famously just as stupid then on the issue as he is now, but now he runs the country. Abbott didn't win this election because people liked his policies this time, the Labour government lost it because they were bickering in-fighting dickheads.QuoteNow you're getting it...

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 08:04:16 am
content: Dave means by surviving the GCF we remained in positive growth and kept Australia's credit rating intact.Some of Australia was hit harder than others, largely made it through unscathed though.

author: KJDS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 08:30:49 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 08, 2013, 07:56:33 amWhat's been happening with your sports teams? Seems like you've forgotten how to swim and play cricket. Is that an election issue?

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 08:55:33 am
content: It also isn't the fact that it's a broadband "speed race", it's the fact that this piece of infrastructure can replace other infrastructure, like copper landlines and cable television, potentially, also standard broadcast television, not just that though, it with *shudders* help with "the internet of things" *shudders*.Additionally, sure ADSL/VDSL has plenty of bandwidth, provided you live a reasonable distance from a DSLAM, but if you don't, you're in for a slow unreliable ride, generally though, with fiber, what you get is what you get, none of this "up to" bullshit.Part of the "broadband speed race" isn't just about the fiber, it's also about the satellite and fixed wireless, which of both, in Australia are pretty freaking miserable, at one farm we have a satellite service, which will eventually be migrated to the NBN satellite service, currently, we pay $50 a month for 400mb data, 512/64, simply because that's all that is available, without getting an ACMA license or a backhoe, on the other farm we have fixed wireless, which while being quite good (better speeds bandwidth than the ADSL available throughout the closest city), is unreliable and costs considerably more for a modest data cap ($60/9Gb).Now, I don't think we should get fiber laid to our farm, that's crazy talk, but at least give some subsidies to us to make other services more... normal? I mean, we will be some of the only primary producers left in Australia, as we are trying to severely cut back on mining ect.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 09:05:13 am
content: At the moment my internet speed is 0.12 mbs down. 0.33 up yesterday it was 0.13 up the day before 0.01 before that 0.11.I complain to BT and after an hour or two on the phone to someone in India and having been put through all the hoops they will eventually do a remote reset to the exchange where the problem is, next day it will be back to a crawl, you know you have a problem when the message reads on Daves election rant "remaining download time 3 days".

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 09:24:46 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 08, 2013, 08:52:05 amSorry........... 38-12At least you are lucky to have anything close to fast. Here only the old copper has a chance of getting ADSL, the copper network is actually shrinking as most new builds are going to cellular data ( at the rate the 3 incumbents ( actually the one if you look at the shareholdings carefully) charge as if the bytes are hand carved out of platinum by skilled artisans who carefully make each packet perfectly uniform) as the rampant copper theft means they rarely replace stolen cable a third time and simply cut the areas out of the system.Offtopic rant...Deleted.

author: Things
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 09:42:12 am
content: It's not just speeds you need to consider, it's the reliability of the current network as a whole. I have a friend that lives in the Adelaide hills, and his ADSL drops every time it rains. Another 10 years and the lines will have degraded to the point where you can't even use a phone.And anyone in Central/North QLD will remember last year, where all internet and phone services (including 000 and mobiles) was taken out for over 24 HOURS due to flooding further South.Australia seriously needs a better internet backbone, but whether we'll get it now, who knows.All these people bitching in Australia about the same thing, "Why do we need faster internet??" I bet will be the first ones to complain when the current network crumbles, and there is absolutely no doubt it will. The old copper system just isn't going to keep up.PS: There is a petition going here:http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/the-australian-liberal-party-commit-to-building-the-nbn-as-a-majority-ftth-network

author: staxquad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 05:49:07 pm
content: Quote from: Things on September 08, 2013, 09:42:12 am99% of people want lower costs for their internet, not higher. That 1% want performance, and want the 99% to subsidize the upgrade. Let demand drive the market, not the 1%.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 08:16:13 pm
content: It's simple. It's the difference between a break/fix mentality and one of doing it right, even if the upfront cost is higher. In the long run, doing it right almost always wins out purely from a cost analysis. And in this case, it comes with a whole bunch of side benefits in stimulating technology industry and enabling modern and forward-thinking technology.Saying what we have now is enough is incredibly shortsighted. What we have now is enough because the services available now are designed around it. This is exactly why companies like Netflix do broadband surveys - to figure out the status quo so they can design their services around that. There's no justification for anyone to offer high-volume, low-cost consumer services requiring high bandwidth until high bandwidth is readily available. Your 15mbit connection won't be obviously too slow until you're substantially behind the status quo and the services have moved on to require faster connections.And already, for content producers, the people actually driving the technology community - people like Dave - the asymmetry built into the current systems is pretty painful. This extends pretty directly to small business outside of technology as well; people are needing to exchange larger and larger files to get work done; remote backup is a big problem on slow uplinks and etc.IMO over here in North America we are totally fucked if we don't get onboard with modernizing and democratizing our communications infrastructure pretty quickly. We'll be steamrolled by up and coming economies that did it right the first time and weren't stuck with a 100 year old infrastructure people just keep bodging on top of. Something like NBN is exactly what we need up here.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 10:07:46 pm
content: Quote from: Things on September 08, 2013, 09:42:12 amThat happened to me 10 years ago in my current house. ADSL2+ was almost unusable, as was the phone, and still is. I am forced to use VOIP and cable internet. Although I am not complaining about the 100Mbps cable internet speed (more upload would be great of course), and has gone down on several occasions due to water in the pit. It too might be unusable in several years.My house (and local estate) was only 5-7 years old at the time the cable was already rotted and almost unusable.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 10:09:57 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on September 08, 2013, 02:32:30 amThat's called overbooking. You got the same with POTS and it's based on usage statistics. But some ISPs are overdoing it to cut costs.QuoteOverbooking again.QuoteThe small SOHO routers and WLAN stuff got the bufferbloat problem (forwarding done in software & clueless software developers), not the ISP's access and core routers. Those perform forwarding in hardware and can't affort to buffer your packets. They got some small buffers/queues for QOS and mitigating short line overutilizations. The RAM is needed for routing and forwarding tables.QuoteGet a virtual server for 10 bucks/month :-) Sorry, but anyone hosting some larger amount of content should put his server into a datacenter. Anything else is plain stupid.QuoteOf course you can get 50Mbit/s bandwidth but it will be more expensive. The reality is that an ISP has some fixed average cost per GB which is depended on several factors. And it's not the same for all ISPs. Based on the local market the ISP might be forced to lower prices for DSL flatrates below what is required to make money. So the ISP has to cut costs by increasing the overbooking factor.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2013, 11:20:10 pm
content: QuoteUsed to do it all the time.....over a 64kbps ISDN linkIn fact managed it quite happily over a VNC connection at about 3Mbs-1on a 3G connection while on holiday, it was usable but not very nice at 300kbs-1- I think latency is more important than raw bandwidth in making it usable though.OK, seriously, I'm up for a fast internet link as much as the next man, I used to have ADSL but with a 5km line speeds were not that great. I did manage to tweak it up to about 3Mbs-1- I went to VDSL/FTTC the same day that I could place an order (which was the day after the service was enabled). I now get 40 down/10 up, however at 600m from the cabinet that's about as fast as it will go until vectoring comes along.There are several reasons why we need more bandwidth and will continue to do so. First, we're no longer connecting one device - I, my wife and my son all have desktop PCs, there are a couple of laptops, a couple of tablets, 3 phones and the TV connected, games consoles, the radio in the kitchen and probably a few other things.Secondly more media is being delivered over the 'net - we're watching more TV via the catchup services than "live". In fact I suspect that TV broadcast over the airwaves is probably already dead, it just doesn't quite know it yet. Add to that internet radio, games (not that we're big gamers), VoIP etc.I'm just thinking of sorting out a cloud backup service - that's another big chunk of data, and a good example of a service which isn't viable without a high speed connection.That said 40 megabits will do me for now, HD streams only need, say, 2bs-1sp that's 10 streams plus room for a couple of phone calls and some backup.I'm not surprised that there is a move to FTTC/N and using VDSL as it's cheaper than throwing the existing copper infrastructure away and it will probably do for the next 10-15 years which is comfortable longer than most politicians attention spanI'm slightly surprised at the asymmetry of some of the services though - 100/6 was mentioned and Dave said he had 100/2.4 - the offerings over FTTC in the UK are 40/2 (bargain basement stuff), 40/10 and 80/20 - if Dave is concerned with content creation rather than consumption I'd have thought 40/10 (or 80/20 even more so) would be much more use to him than 100/2.4

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 09, 2013, 09:13:08 am
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on September 08, 2013, 11:20:10 pmMe too, but just for on-call. It was a Citrix platform and with a reduced number of colors and 800x600 resolution is was quite usable.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 09, 2013, 11:49:43 am
content: Quote from: madires on September 08, 2013, 10:09:57 pmYeah, its called the 'contention ratio' over here.Total bandwidth sold to customers vs actual bandwidth purchasedSome ISPs have a terrible ratioQuote from: madires on September 08, 2013, 10:09:57 pmYeah, i agree, but it still happens. Lots of stuff is hosted on overloaded connections.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 09, 2013, 07:30:38 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on September 09, 2013, 11:49:43 amThe ratio isn't really important. All that really matters is that maximum peak utilization is under the available upstream bandwidth. There are only issues if congestion occurs, which is more dependent on the use pattern than contention ratio. It's really just a matter of good monitoring and capacity planning, and keeping enough headroom for peak events like the Olympics. Not to say all ISPs are good at this or don't oversell to the point where they are causing problems, but there's more to it than how many sold mbit / available mbit there are.In my experience the local telco very rarely has any issues with congestion. The cable company on the other hand is constantly having congested nodes which drop packets. For months at a time (while they continue adding new customers of course) while waiting to build new infrastructure. It's much more difficult for the cable companies to manage, mind you, but they still seem to care less.Also 100/2.4 is absurd. The 2.4mbit is barely enough for the ACKs.Source: Work at a reseller ISP / NSP

author: Kempy
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 10, 2013, 12:10:00 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on September 08, 2013, 06:05:32 amA bunch of people in the north of the UK got a similar response - so they decided to do it themselves.Have a look here:http://b4rn.org.uk/learn-moreI quote:"B4RN is a community owned fibre network offering fibre to every home providing 1000 megabit (1 gigabit) futureproof connection for £30 a month. Broadband Rollout Phase 2 end of 2012 start of 2013 This is a community-wide, co-operative, and collaborative initiative to do the job once, and do it right."This is actually happening - these people have given themselves a 1 gigabit symmetrical connection to their homes.http://youtu.be/NP14y4yLYjs

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 10, 2013, 12:17:05 pm
content: Quote from: ve7xen on September 09, 2013, 07:30:38 pmThe typical bottlenecks are oversea links and backhaul links of access nodes in the evening. Another important thing most forget about is that the servers providing the content are bottlenecks too. All users accessing the same server have to share the bandwidth the server is capable of providing.QuoteLet's see. Assuming a window size of 64k we have to send a single (S)ACK for 64k/1.5k = 42 packets. 100MBit/s / 1.5kByte = 8k frames/s. 8k frames/s / 42 packets = 190 64k-windows/s. That means 190 (S)ACK/s * 1.5kByte = 2.3MBit/s for a MTU of 1500 Bytes. And that's just the best case scenario for IP (and worst case for the network, see post below).

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 10, 2013, 08:19:06 pm
content: QuoteACKs don't have to be 1500 bytes, they can go in a minimum sized packet (40 bytes) if there's no data in the reverse direction

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 10, 2013, 10:04:49 pm
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on September 10, 2013, 08:19:06 pmYep, a TCP ACK is just a packet with 40 bytes. I used 1500 (worst case for the network) to simplify the calculation because we actually need to add the overhead of all the involved protocols and we don't know which optimizations the network elements support. PPPoE means IP in PPP in ethernet in ATM (RFC1483, AAL5). Might be also repacked from ATM into L2TP (in IP). In the best case it might be around 100 bytes, i.e 190 (S)ACK/s * 100 Bytes = 150kbit/s which looks much nicer. But in reality we have a mix of small and large packets, each one with the complete overhead of all the other layers. TCP's window size could be less than 64k and more ACKs are required. I'd expect something roughly around 500kbit/s.

author: Phaedrus
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 10, 2013, 10:29:56 pm
content: In southern California I get 50/5 for $70/mo. If I go to Verizon I can get 75/25 for the same price, but their customer service is literally run by Satan (my personal theory anyway).These prices are ridiculous, seeing as how I get no cable TV or phone service from them.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 08:17:01 am
content: Overbooking, in the UK its called "contention ratio" by the isp's in reality it's obtaining a pecuniary advantage or fraud, selling what you know you don't have and cannot supply or never intend to supply.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 08:58:15 am
content: QuoteI don't think it's as simple as that. As an ISP you do notneedSigma 1-n (customer connection speed) of bandwidth because not all of your customers will be trying to download at full speed all of the time. Also the bandwidth that ISPs buy for their interconnects isn't cheap so to buy more than they need would drive up costs to the end users (and it's a price sensitive game).Contention in the access network is also frequently not controlled by the ISP - it should be for LLU services but (eg) for FTTC everyone has to use BT backhaul at the moment which offers a few different "priorities"but that's it.The ISP I use claims that it sizes it's internal network and interconnects so as never to be the bottleneck - that seems reasonable.Edit: BTW, it's perfectly possible to buy an uncontended connection at pretty much any bandwidth that you wish but they aren't cheap.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 12:53:31 pm
content: 72/16 (sold as 71/20) for approx $55/month (£35 GBP/month) here. Unlimited download and no throttling on any protocols.It is the fastest internet I have ever had; to be honest, while faster would be nicer, I doubt I could use it all.BT engineer that installed it mentioned that 160/40 should be available soon, and 300/30 but that requires FTTH (rather than FTTC as present.)

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 01:56:00 pm
content: QuoteBT sell the FTTC product as variously "up to" 38/9.5 or 76/19 although the sync speeds are either 40/2, 40/10 or 80/20.Not sure I've seen anyone selling it as a 71/20 service.72Mbs-1down and 16 up is pretty good though. I get 40/10 - the 80/20 product wasn't available when I switched from ADSL but I'm about 600m from the cabinet and when I last looked the line was only capable of 42/12 or thereabouts. Consequently I haven't bothered going for the faster service.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 02:47:38 pm
content: That was the speed they predicted, and we're getting 72.5 Mbit down from a 71 Mbit estimate - the first time I've bought broadband service and am getting the promised speeds! Upload is a little slower than predicted, but still 2MB/s upload isn't bad for Youtube etc.I am about 5 houses down from the cabinet, so it really is fast here. Then again, BT Openreach want to please the students (very student-y neighbourhood). Interesting war between BT and Virgin Media; a Virgin affiliate has been plastering the area with banners and leaflets and they are even sending some guys around to promote it. As Virgin Media are the devil's incarnate, I would never go with them.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 03:11:59 pm
content: QuoteOK, well the speed guestimator can usually be taken with a pinch of salt. It tends to be slightly pessimistic (probably this is deliberate).Are the speeds you quote actual sync speeds or throughput tests from one of the speedtest sites?It's possibly a bit academic given the speeds youaregetting but if you really are only 5 doors from the cabinet I would expect a solid 80/20 sync and close to 76Mbs-1download/19Mbs-1upload (FTTC uses ethernet framing so the overhead is quite low). Anything else is a bit suspect.If you have the standard BT Huawei EchoLife modem it can be modded so that you can see the line stats quite easily - seehttp://huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com/about/for details.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 03:20:22 pm
content: I am with BT and they predict in the region 2.5/55 but over the past month I have been keeping records and and it averages 0.287/0.27 yesterday it was 0.03/0.00.Most weeks we get at least one mail shot from BT trying to sell us internet TV. at the present time I am finding it hard to watch Daves videos let alone films, you know there is a problem when the download of a 20 minute video brings up a notice that it will be completed in five days.All this is due to BT and the equipment they have in the exchange they have just oversold what they have and people who live next to the exchange get to watch the films and free sport that BT are now pushing while people like me who are a bit further away (3KM) get zilch and are charged at the same rates for the internet.BT know that there is a major capacity problem at the exchange but are not proposing to upgrade it for the foreseeable future but are still pushing the free sports and their film service to people on the exchange, to deliberately sell what you know you cannot supply is fraud.

author: baljemmett
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 03:28:06 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on September 11, 2013, 02:47:38 pmWhen I ordered FTTC the estimate was 8Mbps, with a note that they might not even be able to provide it given that estimate (my ADSL2+ was only managing somewhere around 1Mbps). The Openreach installer dude scarpered sharpish before I could do a speed test, otherwise he would have got one hell of a tip when it actually clocked in at 21Mbps...

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 03:57:18 pm
content: QuoteAh, I see why you are frustrated.QuoteHow are they pushing it? If by mailshot then that's probably centrally administered with no cross-reference to exchange problems (I know, I know...). Even the irritating habit of trying to sell you extra services every time you contact them aboutanythingis going to be some relatively non-technical bod who doesn't have information specifically about your exchange.Doubless you've looked into what the problems are but if not it might be worth making sure there isn't a fixable issue. The BT speed guestimator will only give an indication of sync speed - it's probably worth checking that you are getting sync at roughly that rate. If not I would investigate that. Assuming that you are getting decent sync are there any LLU providers at the exchange - since they will have their own backhaul thay might be a better bet if the problemiscontention in the BT backhaul (that said I justknowyou're going to say it's a BT 20CN exchange with no LLU).There's a knowlegable crowd over atthinkbroadbandwho might be able to help.Edit:QuoteI've just re-read your post and noticed this comment - really that suggests the problem is with the line rather than the exchange (because if the problem were with the exchange backhauleveryonewould be affected close in and far out alike). Are you able to post line stats? Is FTTC available at the exchange?

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 05:15:06 pm
content: Well to be truthful I do not know if any one can watch the films on the exchange I am on, I do know that the broadband issue has been brought up repeatedly by the parish council's for the various villages on the exchange.I went to BT due to broadband problems that were directly related to the exchange and the reluctance of various other iSP's to call out openreach to the exchange as only openreach personnel can work on the equipment there, I have learned that the equipment is actually owned by Mitsubishi.The problems according to an openreach tech are due to the age of the equipment and the contention ratio being to high, I did not have any problems until five years ago when a large barn complex was converted to holiday accommodation and all of them put onto the same phone cable as I am on the barns are only about 500 meters from me.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2013, 07:07:59 pm
content: QuoteOK having dug out a possible location for where you live I suspect that the aboveistrue and there is, in fact, no LLU or FTTC availability in your location which sucks big time.Also the VP status for your exchange is "Amber" so there are certainly problems with exchange capacity.It is still worth checking that your sync speed. You appear to be just under 4km as the crow flies from your exchange as long as the line doesn't take too many detours 2.5 to 3 Mbps would be reasonable, if it is less it might be possible to achieve some improvement.Can you post line stats? Seehttp://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.phpfor hints as to how to do this if unsure.Given the dire speeds you were reporting is 3G an alternative?

author: madsci
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2013, 05:33:54 am
content: The primary driver is entertainment...let's talk numbers. Remember that we are talking about the technology that will be the death of cable TV. The endisnear....your TV is merely a monitor in my vision of the future.In the near future, your TV company will disappear and become just an ISP that provides special boxes that connect to the Internet to grab what you want to watch, when you want it. It's just a computer in a box and your TV is just a monitor. Perhaps you'll opt for bare Internet and get Netflix and stream your local network news from a local site. Either way, your TV source is just another IP address.In my house, that future arrived years ago but the picture quality leaves something to be desired; clearly, more bandwidth is required to get the picture up to snuff.The maximum data rate for A/V data on Blu Ray is 48Mbps. Netflix uses considerably less but it looks considerably worse and this fact is widely known among movie buffs. The customer wants his streaming movies and shows in glorious 1920x1080 with 7.1 multichannel audio and he wants it to look as good as his disc based movies in regards to artifacts he can't have that at the moment due to technology constraints.Fast forward just 2-3 years. Our customer's ISP comes knocking at his door offering to sell him the new "Super Ultra Mega Turbo Bandwidth" package. They offer it, with IP based TV to him for $100USD/mo.So the customer buys a "Cinematic HD" IPTV package as part of his "super ultra mega turbo bandwidth" Internet. Now we're going to have to deliver it to him; the question is how much are we going to need to deliver? Delivering a higher quality picture takes bandwidth.Lets allow for a little extra compression over Blu-Ray at the cost of CPU time because his IPTV box will probably be awesome in that regard due to an SoC that packs as much floating point and memory bandwidth as a supercomputer from 15 years ago....20Mbps is my rough figure here. His IPTV box might even be an app for his PC, XBox One or PlayStation 4.So 20Mbps to give him the best TV experience of his life.....But wait...he's in America, the land of the TV and there are 4 screens in his home. Each TV has a different person wanting to watch a different show.....now we're up to 80Mbps!Uh oh! They've got a dual channel TiVo recording other shows too. 120Mbps....not even fast Ethernet is cutting it at this point. (we could possibly record in a non realtime fashion to reduce this)We have a couple of video game devices....maybe PCs, maybe consoles or perhaps a mix of both. Games have ballooned to 35-60GB in size each and are available primarily from places like Steam. The customer wants these to be delivered in under 1 hour. For a 40GB game, that's a little over 80Mbps.200Mbps. Granted, that's a pretty high end household but such usage scenario isn't too hard to imagine just a few years out.Now think about 10+ years out with the push to 4K video or add telecommuting to work with large files, etc and the needs become apparent. There is a market for it.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 25, 2013, 06:00:35 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on September 11, 2013, 02:47:38 pmI get almost precisely the claimed speed on my Bigpond cable. 100Mb down, and 2.4Mbit up. Presumably because it is software limited somewhere along the line. I'm not magically right next to a node.QuoteMy 2.4Mb at home doesn't help me with youtube. My youtube uploads are limited to around 700-800kbps both at home and at the lab with my 1Mb ADSL2+ connection. Both using Bigpond.No other site or service is uploaded limited like that. For example, I get the full 2.4Mb upload to my crappy shared server in the US no problem.Youtube claim they don't limit anything, but something to do with youtube is being limited somewhere. Maybe Telsta/Bigpond.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2013, 04:03:33 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 25, 2013, 06:00:35 amThe argument is that ISPs want YouTube/Google to pay for eyeballs, rather than peering unilaterally, so are either imposing artifical restrictions or not building out additional peering capacity to Google to handle the traffic. This makes the experience bad for the user, who blames Google (they think so anyway).Ars did a good article on this:http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/why-youtube-buffers-the-secret-deals-that-make-and-break-online-video/Also keep in mind that your upload traffic likely has to go all the way back to a Google datacentre, which could be a congested link, while much of your playback content can be served from "closer" caches.

author: TMM
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2013, 01:14:46 pm
content: I live in the suburbs about 20km out from the Melbourne CBD and get an earth shattering 5.8Mbps on ADSL2+. I have no other choice for internet, my street is only serviced by 3.5Km Telstra copper phone lines. No cable internet, no Optus copper.The problem i have isn't that 5.8Mbps prevents me from streaming HD video - hell if youtube is behaving i can still stream 1080p without buffering. The problem is that if anyone in my house starts downloading something, the majority of servers are fast enough to saturate my downstream bandwidth rendering the connection almost unusable for anything else until the download finishes.I'm one of the people who stands to benefit from a 25Mbps national broadband network but that still doesn't make it any less of a retarded proposal.

author: Fsck
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2013, 01:35:31 pm
content: You guys will be amused at the packages in my hometown in northern Canada.50/2, 150GB = 111$16/0.768, 90GB = 80$5/0.384, 30GB = 63$1/0.256, 5GB = 42$ <-gotta love this one.And.. what I get ~1000km south (or 1500km of roadway), at university... 50/10 (70/11 effective, CO [central office] is next door) = 40$, technically 400GB/month allowed, but it isn't enforced.. I regularly push more than 1TB/month

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2013, 03:43:45 pm
content: Quote from: TMM on September 26, 2013, 01:14:46 pmThat can be solved by a router which supports traffic shaping.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2013, 05:21:44 pm
content: Quote from: mojo-chan on September 26, 2013, 03:58:12 pmOver 15 years ago is was the same but more web designers paid attention to it. Today a lot of webpages are so huge in size they actually could send a large PDF instead :-(

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2013, 11:16:20 pm
content: Quote from: madires on September 26, 2013, 05:21:44 pmTell me about it! Have you ever done a "view source" on the google home page?

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2013, 12:58:24 pm
content: Quote from: AlfBaz on September 26, 2013, 11:16:20 pmThe HTML with embedded javascript is just a small part of the whole package with pictures, flash, java, ads, css and so on. A good example iswww.telekom.deor the webpages of car manufactures. Another cause for slow webpages is the inclusion of external stuff like ads, trackers and analytic tools, i.e. any delay by one of those external servers slows down the webpage. Some webpages are written so badly that an outage of an external server will block the whole page. This can be simulated easily with one of those privacy browser add-ons.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 28, 2013, 12:35:51 am
content: My provider just doubled the speed from 200/200 Mbit for ~$40 to 400/400 Mbit, no traffic limits . You may think that this is overkill but I must say that using internet somewhere when on trip, now became real PITA for me. I already get used that things just happen instantly. And good upload is must have, starting to understand when you have it. Sending huge HD file to someone is no longer a problem.http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/2996705646thats speed to nearby country, not home network.

author: senso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 28, 2013, 04:40:20 am
content: Check my bad ass internet, almost 2Mb/s, it is really a good day(nigh in fact, during the day its much slower):http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/2996990228Almost 30€ for this crap, and if I consider the phone rental it goes to around 40€..