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That's been a sore point for a long time, hence the discussion we're having today. But even with the weasel words, there are misleading practices going on. For

That's been a sore point for a long time, hence the discussion we're having today. But even with the weasel words, there are misleading practices going on. For example, if an ISP is offering several levels of service with speeds up to X, Y and Z (in increasing order), it's clearly unexpected from a customer's point of view for an ISP to move them from X to Y or Y to Z if the customer is already getting below the upper bound speed on their current plan and has no prospect of getting a faster speed in return for the presumably higher charge for a "faster" plan. Likewise, if there is no realistic prospect of a customer achieving anywhere near the X in "up to X", it's misleading for the ISP to offer them service on that basis.

Spivak 9y ago
> there are misleading practices going on. I don't really know how you fix it though. Would selling priority be enough? Priority 1: "For gaming and other high performance needs. Typical ping: Xms, Typical throughput: Y/Mbps" Priority 2: "Perfect for causal streaming and general internet usage..." Priority 3: "Affordable internet and good performance on off-peak hours..."
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  A good starting point wold be the speed that's available at least 95% of the time.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    Right, but then customers are going to be either really disappointed at that number or the price is going to skyrocket when basically every internet package becomes dedicated. Under your rule there would really be no way to sell 'best effort, capped at X' internet packages.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      You can oversell by quite a lot and still meet an advertised speed with 90 or 95% reliability. If you want to sell 'best effort, no promises' then don't make promises. Or promise something low, like "2mbps" or "2-20mbps". The real disappointment comes when you can't reach the advertised speed for multiple hours every day. There is much less disappointment in the end if the advertised speed matches a state of moderate, everyday congestion.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Just as every other service that uses oversold networks? The electricity grid is oversold. Do you normally notice that? No! The flight network is oversold. Do you normally notice that? Not really. And if you do, they have to pay you for failure to perform, cover your costs ... So, they get to decide whatever bandwidth they want to advertise, possibly they could reserve the right to cancel the contract if the line turns out to be too bad after all (in which case you obviously don't have to pay anything), and then they have to make sure that you never notice that the network is actually oversold by monitoring load and adding capacity to their network as needed to avoid congestion. Up to three minutes of congestion per month is acceptable. Beyond that, they have to reimburse your payment for the month because of failure to perform. Obviously, it is perfectly fine to advertise different speeds for different times of the day, as long as you don't advertise "1 Gb/s" and then a footnote saying "from 3 am to 4 am, otherwise 10 Mb/s". Or you could advertise burstable service ("100 Mb/s, 10 minutes burstable to 1 Gb/s").
  - Spivak 9y ago
    Sure, but if every internet company started advertising their internet packages more transparently as 'best effort, capped at $speed' would you suddenly be happy with your terrible internet? I don't thing changing the marketing rules will suddenly bring about the sweeping infrastructure changes you imagine.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      "best effort, capped at $speed" is not transparent, it's just different wording for "up to $speed". "Best effort" is a completely meaningless term in this context, as it is completely up to the ISP to decide how much infrastructure they build, and thus what speed you can achieve. There is no fundamental reason why an ISP could not provide you full 100 Gb/s duplex 24/7 at any point whatsoever on this planet--it is all a matter of how much money they decide to spend on it, which is not your problem as a customer. So, wording of that kind in effect simply means "we don't owe you anything in particular, we will decide after the fact what you get in exchange for the payments that you owe us." The point of actually transparent marketing is not to directly improve the connectivity you get, but to enable a market to actually work. If customers cannot know what service they will be getting for their money, then competition cannot possibly work. Imagine all packages in the grocery store were labeled with "up to 1 liter" or "up to 1 kg", and no way to weigh them yourself before you buy them ... how would that possibly allow the better product to win out? What if someone truthfully labeled their product "100 g" ... how could people figure out whether that's the better product than the "up to 1 kg" package right next to it? Nothing guarantees that better products would actually happen, but at least, if they do get offered, customers would have some chance to actually know, and thus for the better product to gain customers.
rayiner 9y ago
I agree that if you simply can’t get the advertised speed, that’s misleading (though, at least on cable or DSL systems it can be very hard to tell a priori what speeds a given chstomer’s line will be capable of). But whenever this discussion comes up, people push back on the very idea of oversubscription or best-effort service.

Spivak 9y ago

> there are misleading practices going on. I don't really know how you fix it though. Would selling priority be enough? Priority 1: "For gaming and other high performance needs. Typical ping: Xms, Typical throughput: Y/Mbps" Priority 2: "Perfect for causal streaming and general internet usage..." Priority 3: "Affordable internet and good performance on off-peak hours..."

Dylan16807 9y ago
A good starting point wold be the speed that's available at least 95% of the time.
- Spivak 9y ago
  Right, but then customers are going to be either really disappointed at that number or the price is going to skyrocket when basically every internet package becomes dedicated. Under your rule there would really be no way to sell 'best effort, capped at X' internet packages.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    You can oversell by quite a lot and still meet an advertised speed with 90 or 95% reliability. If you want to sell 'best effort, no promises' then don't make promises. Or promise something low, like "2mbps" or "2-20mbps". The real disappointment comes when you can't reach the advertised speed for multiple hours every day. There is much less disappointment in the end if the advertised speed matches a state of moderate, everyday congestion.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
Just as every other service that uses oversold networks? The electricity grid is oversold. Do you normally notice that? No! The flight network is oversold. Do you normally notice that? Not really. And if you do, they have to pay you for failure to perform, cover your costs ... So, they get to decide whatever bandwidth they want to advertise, possibly they could reserve the right to cancel the contract if the line turns out to be too bad after all (in which case you obviously don't have to pay anything), and then they have to make sure that you never notice that the network is actually oversold by monitoring load and adding capacity to their network as needed to avoid congestion. Up to three minutes of congestion per month is acceptable. Beyond that, they have to reimburse your payment for the month because of failure to perform. Obviously, it is perfectly fine to advertise different speeds for different times of the day, as long as you don't advertise "1 Gb/s" and then a footnote saying "from 3 am to 4 am, otherwise 10 Mb/s". Or you could advertise burstable service ("100 Mb/s, 10 minutes burstable to 1 Gb/s").
- Spivak 9y ago
  Sure, but if every internet company started advertising their internet packages more transparently as 'best effort, capped at $speed' would you suddenly be happy with your terrible internet? I don't thing changing the marketing rules will suddenly bring about the sweeping infrastructure changes you imagine.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    "best effort, capped at $speed" is not transparent, it's just different wording for "up to $speed". "Best effort" is a completely meaningless term in this context, as it is completely up to the ISP to decide how much infrastructure they build, and thus what speed you can achieve. There is no fundamental reason why an ISP could not provide you full 100 Gb/s duplex 24/7 at any point whatsoever on this planet--it is all a matter of how much money they decide to spend on it, which is not your problem as a customer. So, wording of that kind in effect simply means "we don't owe you anything in particular, we will decide after the fact what you get in exchange for the payments that you owe us." The point of actually transparent marketing is not to directly improve the connectivity you get, but to enable a market to actually work. If customers cannot know what service they will be getting for their money, then competition cannot possibly work. Imagine all packages in the grocery store were labeled with "up to 1 liter" or "up to 1 kg", and no way to weigh them yourself before you buy them ... how would that possibly allow the better product to win out? What if someone truthfully labeled their product "100 g" ... how could people figure out whether that's the better product than the "up to 1 kg" package right next to it? Nothing guarantees that better products would actually happen, but at least, if they do get offered, customers would have some chance to actually know, and thus for the better product to gain customers.

rayiner 9y ago

I agree that if you simply can’t get the advertised speed, that’s misleading (though, at least on cable or DSL systems it can be very hard to tell a priori what speeds a given chstomer’s line will be capable of). But whenever this discussion comes up, people push back on the very idea of oversubscription or best-effort service.