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Our cable internet is sold as "up to 100mbps", so the joke at our house is that if we ever get 101mbps we will sue them for breach of contract. Edit: I realiz

Our cable internet is sold as "up to 100mbps", so the joke at our house is that if we ever get 101mbps we will sue them for breach of contract. Edit: I realize it isn't a good joke.

Chris2048 9y ago
I found the edit funny though.
dboreham 9y ago
If I may balance things a little here : we have "100Mbit" Charter/Spectrum and for the vast majority of the time we get ...120Mbits/s. True, there are times, usually a Sunday evening, when things go topot on their network and QoS goes down the pan, but those times are rare and the problem seems to get resolved quickly. Measured at the demarc Ethernet segment, L2 throughput including framing overhead, with a single TCP stream to a server I control that is about 1000 miles away.
- wmf 9y ago
  Yes, I get 70 on a 50 plan from Spectrum. This is less awesome once you realize why they're doing it: in some places they have serious congestion during peak hours so they are giving extra performance during off-peak hours to make the average daily throughput of FCC speed measurements equal 100%. This was uncovered in the New York lawsuit.
bgirard 9y ago
Would be an interesting defense against a bandwidth overage charge.
hrrsn 9y ago
The New Zealand Commerce Commission got grumpy when ISPs started selling gigabit plans as 1000mbit, as it's not realistically possible for consumers to reach those speeds. So, instead of gigabit, we get "up to 900/400Mbps" or more realistically about 800/400, which, you know what, I can live with. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/87071149/spark-warned-off-marketing-new-fibre-plans-as-gigabit-plans-says-spokesman http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/87071149/spark-wa... http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6671498802.png http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6671498802.png
- Cyph0n 9y ago
  Are internet packages better in NZ than in Australia? I'm assuming the connection is heavily metered?
  - UberMouse 9y ago
    I have an unlimited gigabit connection that I pay $120NZD per month for. And for content on good CDNs or hosted in the country I do get near the advertised speed. It took me just under 4 minutes to download the Star Wars Battlefront 2 beta from Origin which had a size of 23.78GB, averaging 90+ MB/s. I probably use around 5TB of data per month as well.
    - Cyph0n 9y ago
      Damn, that's not bad at all! For comparison, I pay 40 USD for a 20 Mbit connection with Xfinity here in the US. Oh, and I only get 1 TB of data per month.
      - chrisper 9y ago
        I am so glad I moved out of Comcast territory.
    - krzyk 9y ago
      Nice, do you have also uplink with gigabit? In Poland I ave 300/30 Mbit (they connected fiber to my house recently) for 50 PLN (it is about 19 NZD, or 13 USD) per month. They offer 600/60 in some cities (where there is more competition), but I don't know the price, I think is is more in 80PLN range. And plan to start also 1 gbit plan (probably with 100 Mbit uplink).
      - chrisper 9y ago
        In Switzerland I have gbit up and down and pay like 90 CHF (92 USD) in a month. I use the G Suite Google Drive and get nearly full gbit while up and downloading.
tialaramex 9y ago
The article is about the UK. Previous OFCOM rules told providers they must advertise only a speed that at least 10% of customers can reach. So yes, people got faster than the advertised speed, about 10% of people. It makes no difference to the whining unfortunately. The effect is, for say 40MBps VDSL (the service most UK households with "broadband" use, almost always ultimately delivered through a copper telephone cable from BT's Openreach last mile subsidiary) all the ISPs will advertise that as "up to 38Mbps" because at least 10% of their customers can get 38Mbps out of that link. Nobody gets 50Mbps, the link layer is throttled because they're on a 40Mbps product, but plenty of people absolutely will get 40Mbps even though the advert said "up to 38Mbps". That includes my very tech-savvy ISP which is obliged to say "up to 38Mbps" in big print everywhere even though it explains that you're buying the 40Mbps VDSL service and talks about deep network internals, and even though its customers usually know exactly what speed they'll get (I get 40Mbps) because they're technical people and know how to measure. Now, suppose you're one of the people getting 30Mbps from the 40Mbps VDSL product. Should you upgrade? There's an "up to 76Mbps" product advertised by your supplier, surely that would be faster? No. All the "up to 76Mbps" product does is change the throttle to 80Mbps, and you aren't impacted by the throttle so the product will simply cost more and achieve nothing. Now, in fact under those rules an ISP had an incentive NOT to sell you the expensive product, because if they give you the 80Mbps product then you hurt their "up to 76Mbps" averages and make it harder to sell the product. The result of _that_ change to the market was ISPs would have a headline product advertised heavily e.g. "Guaranteed at least 60Mbps for £24.99 per month" and then if they couldn't meet the guarantee for a particular customer they wouldn't magically fix things to go faster, they would simply say "Ah, you don't qualify for that offer, you can have a refund and the service stops, or pay £9.99 per month for our other product "Guaranteed 10Mbps" which we're meeting. The ideology behind all this stuff is that our old friend the "invisible hand" will fix it. But er, no. There is actually only one last mile technology involved (for people in most cities there is a competitor, Cable TV cables, but that's a whole separate ball of wax) and it's VDSL offered at speeds set by the wholesaler. It will perform exactly the same whether you buy your "service" from an ISP with a call centre staff in India that uses a purple logo and has a chimp mascot, or you buy "service" from two blokes named James who work out of a rented office in Liverpool, because the "ISP" part is trivial and largely irrelevant except for branding, and the last mile part is a natural monopoly provided always by the exact same engineers, same copper cables, same everything.

Our cable internet is sold as "up to 100mbps", so the joke at our house is that if we ever get 101mbps we will sue them for breach of contract. Edit: I realize it isn't a good joke.

Chris2048 9y ago

I found the edit funny though.

dboreham 9y ago

If I may balance things a little here : we have "100Mbit" Charter/Spectrum and for the vast majority of the time we get ...120Mbits/s. True, there are times, usually a Sunday evening, when things go topot on their network and QoS goes down the pan, but those times are rare and the problem seems to get resolved quickly. Measured at the demarc Ethernet segment, L2 throughput including framing overhead, with a single TCP stream to a server I control that is about 1000 miles away.

wmf 9y ago
Yes, I get 70 on a 50 plan from Spectrum. This is less awesome once you realize why they're doing it: in some places they have serious congestion during peak hours so they are giving extra performance during off-peak hours to make the average daily throughput of FCC speed measurements equal 100%. This was uncovered in the New York lawsuit.

bgirard 9y ago

Would be an interesting defense against a bandwidth overage charge.

hrrsn 9y ago

The New Zealand Commerce Commission got grumpy when ISPs started selling gigabit plans as 1000mbit, as it's not realistically possible for consumers to reach those speeds. So, instead of gigabit, we get "up to 900/400Mbps" or more realistically about 800/400, which, you know what, I can live with. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/87071149/spark-warned-off-marketing-new-fibre-plans-as-gigabit-plans-says-spokesman http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/87071149/spark-wa... http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6671498802.png http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6671498802.png

Cyph0n 9y ago
Are internet packages better in NZ than in Australia? I'm assuming the connection is heavily metered?
- UberMouse 9y ago
  I have an unlimited gigabit connection that I pay $120NZD per month for. And for content on good CDNs or hosted in the country I do get near the advertised speed. It took me just under 4 minutes to download the Star Wars Battlefront 2 beta from Origin which had a size of 23.78GB, averaging 90+ MB/s. I probably use around 5TB of data per month as well.
  - Cyph0n 9y ago
    Damn, that's not bad at all! For comparison, I pay 40 USD for a 20 Mbit connection with Xfinity here in the US. Oh, and I only get 1 TB of data per month.
    - chrisper 9y ago
      I am so glad I moved out of Comcast territory.
  - krzyk 9y ago
    Nice, do you have also uplink with gigabit? In Poland I ave 300/30 Mbit (they connected fiber to my house recently) for 50 PLN (it is about 19 NZD, or 13 USD) per month. They offer 600/60 in some cities (where there is more competition), but I don't know the price, I think is is more in 80PLN range. And plan to start also 1 gbit plan (probably with 100 Mbit uplink).
    - chrisper 9y ago
      In Switzerland I have gbit up and down and pay like 90 CHF (92 USD) in a month. I use the G Suite Google Drive and get nearly full gbit while up and downloading.

tialaramex 9y ago

The article is about the UK. Previous OFCOM rules told providers they must advertise only a speed that at least 10% of customers can reach. So yes, people got faster than the advertised speed, about 10% of people. It makes no difference to the whining unfortunately. The effect is, for say 40MBps VDSL (the service most UK households with "broadband" use, almost always ultimately delivered through a copper telephone cable from BT's Openreach last mile subsidiary) all the ISPs will advertise that as "up to 38Mbps" because at least 10% of their customers can get 38Mbps out of that link. Nobody gets 50Mbps, the link layer is throttled because they're on a 40Mbps product, but plenty of people absolutely will get 40Mbps even though the advert said "up to 38Mbps". That includes my very tech-savvy ISP which is obliged to say "up to 38Mbps" in big print everywhere even though it explains that you're buying the 40Mbps VDSL service and talks about deep network internals, and even though its customers usually know exactly what speed they'll get (I get 40Mbps) because they're technical people and know how to measure. Now, suppose you're one of the people getting 30Mbps from the 40Mbps VDSL product. Should you upgrade? There's an "up to 76Mbps" product advertised by your supplier, surely that would be faster? No. All the "up to 76Mbps" product does is change the throttle to 80Mbps, and you aren't impacted by the throttle so the product will simply cost more and achieve nothing. Now, in fact under those rules an ISP had an incentive NOT to sell you the expensive product, because if they give you the 80Mbps product then you hurt their "up to 76Mbps" averages and make it harder to sell the product. The result of _that_ change to the market was ISPs would have a headline product advertised heavily e.g. "Guaranteed at least 60Mbps for £24.99 per month" and then if they couldn't meet the guarantee for a particular customer they wouldn't magically fix things to go faster, they would simply say "Ah, you don't qualify for that offer, you can have a refund and the service stops, or pay £9.99 per month for our other product "Guaranteed 10Mbps" which we're meeting. The ideology behind all this stuff is that our old friend the "invisible hand" will fix it. But er, no. There is actually only one last mile technology involved (for people in most cities there is a competitor, Cable TV cables, but that's a whole separate ball of wax) and it's VDSL offered at speeds set by the wholesaler. It will perform exactly the same whether you buy your "service" from an ISP with a call centre staff in India that uses a purple logo and has a chimp mascot, or you buy "service" from two blokes named James who work out of a rented office in Liverpool, because the "ISP" part is trivial and largely irrelevant except for branding, and the last mile part is a natural monopoly provided always by the exact same engineers, same copper cables, same everything.