3 ms·

Well if they were selling "burst" speeds, then why are the bandwidth limits so low? My cable modem is locked at >600Mbits of bandwidth of which I get a tiny fra

Well if they were selling "burst" speeds, then why are the bandwidth limits so low? My cable modem is locked at >600Mbits of bandwidth of which I get a tiny fraction, against a small subset of the channels available (totaling a few Gb/sec), and the node is split about two blocks away. The upstream numbers are even uglier. Worse, the cable companies have had actual burst traffic shaping abilities for at least a decade. They could sell you 100Mbit, and run it at 600Mbit when the line was idle for a few seconds. That would make people pretty happy at long as they were getting the advertised minimum... In fact if someone were to actually put real regulation down, I would expect that the plans were sold with a minimum guaranteed/sustained bandwidth (up and down, because I can't tell you how many advertisements I've seen that never mention the connection is asymmetric) and an "up to" burst metric. It would be pretty simple, buy a (50/20 plan, that is up to 500/200 during off peak). What it would do though is guarantee that the company isn't selling 1000000x oversubscribed plans because they haven't upgraded the infrastructure in 20 years.

rayiner 9y ago
> Well if they were selling "burst" speeds, then why are the bandwidth limits so low? My cable modem is locked at >600Mbits of bandwidth of which I get a tiny fraction, against a small subset of the channels available (totaling a few Gb/sec), and the node is split about two blocks away. The upstream numbers are even uglier. Because the medium is shared with hundreds of other houses? Because regardless of the amount of bandwidth on the medium, users are sharing a limited number of ports on upstream routers? Because the ISP wants to price discriminate, and make more money from people who want faster speeds? > In fact if someone were to actually put real regulation down, I would expect that the plans were sold with a minimum guaranteed/sustained bandwidth (up and down, because I can't tell you how many advertisements I've seen that never mention the connection is asymmetric) and an "up to" burst metric. Regulation has to have some sort of economic point. What's the economic point of preventing ISPs from practicing price discrimination, which is generally beneficial to less intensive users? > What it would do though is guarantee that the company isn't selling 1000000x oversubscribed plans because they haven't upgraded the infrastructure in 20 years. The factual premise of this is false. There's been massive upgrades over the past decade to support newer DOCSIS versions: http://www.lightreading.com/cable/ccap-next-gen-nets/cable-nodes-becoming-a-choke-point/d/d-id/728754 http://www.lightreading.com/cable/ccap-next-gen-nets/cable-n.... Your desktop CPU is maybe 2-3x as fast today than it was in 2008 (quad core Nehalem to quad core Coffee Lake). Less than 2x for single-threaded workloads. Your internet connection is probably 20-50x faster, at least in a large-ish metro area.
- StillBored 9y ago
  Ok... #1: Price discrimination, because you know you have to reserve >75% of the bandwidth to assure that the guy with the 100mbit plan isn't being pushed out by the dozen or so users with the 20mbit plan, on a docsis 3.0 network with 16 channels bonded... Really, ever wonder why the cable industry won't actually tell you the line utilization on your node? What they have been really successful at is selling people service and modems that barely give you line quality information, knowing what your modem is actually capped at, or what current activity on the line is privileged information available to only the select few. And finally, the article you linked mentioned that the amps haven't been upgraded in 12-15 years... you may be in a market getting a docsis 3.1 upgrade, but in many markets docsis 3.0 is barely rolled out, and it rolled out at speeds achievable with docsis 2, a standard that is 17 years old. Never mind the insane garbage peddled by the DSL providers in many markets. So I maybe I exaggerated a bit with 20 years, 15..

rayiner 9y ago

> Well if they were selling "burst" speeds, then why are the bandwidth limits so low? My cable modem is locked at >600Mbits of bandwidth of which I get a tiny fraction, against a small subset of the channels available (totaling a few Gb/sec), and the node is split about two blocks away. The upstream numbers are even uglier. Because the medium is shared with hundreds of other houses? Because regardless of the amount of bandwidth on the medium, users are sharing a limited number of ports on upstream routers? Because the ISP wants to price discriminate, and make more money from people who want faster speeds? > In fact if someone were to actually put real regulation down, I would expect that the plans were sold with a minimum guaranteed/sustained bandwidth (up and down, because I can't tell you how many advertisements I've seen that never mention the connection is asymmetric) and an "up to" burst metric. Regulation has to have some sort of economic point. What's the economic point of preventing ISPs from practicing price discrimination, which is generally beneficial to less intensive users? > What it would do though is guarantee that the company isn't selling 1000000x oversubscribed plans because they haven't upgraded the infrastructure in 20 years. The factual premise of this is false. There's been massive upgrades over the past decade to support newer DOCSIS versions: http://www.lightreading.com/cable/ccap-next-gen-nets/cable-nodes-becoming-a-choke-point/d/d-id/728754 http://www.lightreading.com/cable/ccap-next-gen-nets/cable-n.... Your desktop CPU is maybe 2-3x as fast today than it was in 2008 (quad core Nehalem to quad core Coffee Lake). Less than 2x for single-threaded workloads. Your internet connection is probably 20-50x faster, at least in a large-ish metro area.

StillBored 9y ago
Ok... #1: Price discrimination, because you know you have to reserve >75% of the bandwidth to assure that the guy with the 100mbit plan isn't being pushed out by the dozen or so users with the 20mbit plan, on a docsis 3.0 network with 16 channels bonded... Really, ever wonder why the cable industry won't actually tell you the line utilization on your node? What they have been really successful at is selling people service and modems that barely give you line quality information, knowing what your modem is actually capped at, or what current activity on the line is privileged information available to only the select few. And finally, the article you linked mentioned that the amps haven't been upgraded in 12-15 years... you may be in a market getting a docsis 3.1 upgrade, but in many markets docsis 3.0 is barely rolled out, and it rolled out at speeds achievable with docsis 2, a standard that is 17 years old. Never mind the insane garbage peddled by the DSL providers in many markets. So I maybe I exaggerated a bit with 20 years, 15..