5 ms·

Unfortunately they don't discuss two of the biggest disparities I've seen in reporting on broadband internet access: 1) How do they define "Access"? Does it me

by jobu 9y ago

Unfortunately they don't discuss two of the biggest disparities I've seen in reporting on broadband internet access: 1) How do they define "Access"? Does it mean actual subscriptions? Does it mean the building/home is connected? Or does it mean a line passes the household, but there's actually no way to connect to it? (Look up New York City's lawsuit against Verizon's FIOS rollout.) 2) How do they define "Broadband"? In 2010 the FCC defined it as 4 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up. In 2015 they redefined it as 25 Mbit/s down, 3 Mbit/s up. Currently I have 50Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up which Comcast absolutely defines as "Broadband", but it doesn't meet the FCC definition.

danjoc 9y ago
>In 2015 they redefined it as 25 Mbit/s down, 3 Mbit/s up. How can that be? That's the same time we achieved net neutrality. That's not net neutral. That's fast lane on download, slow lane on upload. Asymmetric bandwidth is a prime reason why we all can't host our own clouds and social networks.
- ahupp 9y ago
  I have never seen anyone define net neutrality as including symmetric bandwidth. I am also skeptical that lack up upload bandwidth has much to do with the lack of success for self-hosted social networks.
  - narag 9y ago
    I've heard two theories about capped upload bandwith: making possible to upsell premium hosting services and P2P damage control.
    - ahupp 9y ago
      I think the simplest explanation is that the transport uses a fixed allocation of bandwidth between upstream and downstream flows, and they've chosen an allocation that matches typical workloads. It looks like full-duplex DOCSIS (data-over-coax protocol) was just announced last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
      - fjsolwmv 9y ago
        That's begging the question. The up/down ratios they choose determine what workloads are possible/typical. More upstream means there would be other workflows enabled.
        chimeracoder 9y ago
        > That's begging the question. The up/down ratios they choose determine what workloads are possible/typical. More upstream means there would be other workflows enabled. Not really, because the options exist at different tiers. If you have 5/1, 10/3, 25/5, and 100/20 as options, and you notice that people choose 10/3 and saturate their download but only use a third of their upload capacity, then turning that into a symmetric system would result in them having to pay more for the same usage. On the other hand, if you noticed that people were choosing the 100/20 but only peaking at 15 down and 15 up, then yes, it would be clear that customers would prefer a symmetric system. As it stands, P2P is a pretty rare use case for residential broadband, even when the capacity exists. Access to symmetric speeds is unlikely to increase P2P usage, because those aren't the main blockers.
        narag 9y ago
        Not really, because the options exist at different tiers. There are not so many options where I live, none in practice. Anyway, those tiers are, after all, commercial options. Is the cost for providers really different? If there isn't a substantial difference, then the upsell theory stands. If people doesn't want upload, why do they throttle it? It would be a nice selling point: you offer a plus that looks nice and costs you nothing. Access to symmetric speeds is unlikely to increase P2P usage, because those aren't the main blockers. That's backwards. What they're supposedly doing is discouraging usage. There is more usage than wanted (no matter if it's not common) so measures are put in place to shrink it even more. The measure does not affect most users so they can get away with it: "only those few freeloaders want more". Edit -> also consider this: upload limitation in P2P isn't obviously negative. You still can download at max speed so you could think the limitation as a bad thing for others. You need to think for a while to understand why it's also bad for you.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- w0m 9y ago
  But different technologies support different speeds. Fiber can do symmetric much easier than cable can as an example, and cable is much more ubiquitous.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Network neutrality has nothing to do with bandwidth. Network neutrality means if I purchase a pipe with x Mbps of potential bandwidth, my communication on that pipe to any destination should have equal priority. In other words, an ISP shouldn't be able to add rules that say, "When our pipe is congested and we need to slow or drop packets, Google has the highest priority, followed by Amazon, then x, y, z." You cannot shape or throttle traffic basted on where it comes and goes. You could still have congestion. Maybe the route to AWS has a shorter round trip than to Digital Ocean because of which backbones the ISP has decided to pay for and connect to. But the point of Network Neutrality is that ISPs cannot priorities one packet type over the other. They must try to deliver each payload from each customer evenly and, if they can't, slow or block those payloads evenly and without prejudice. The one exception to this is if the customer is on IPv6 and uses the prioritization available in the protocol. But even then, the customer is sending an indication to the ISP saying "this packet is not as important" or "this packet is very important."
2bitencryption 9y ago
small anecdote on down/up speeds: I recently signed with Comcast (it was that or DSL) for their 150Mbit/s down plan, and didn't even check the "up" speed, like a fool. I just assumed around 50Mbit/s, maybe 25Mbit/s at the worst. It's 5Mbit/s... so I'm downloading gigabytes of huge datasets in a minute, making a small change, then uploading... and uploading... and uploading... better get a coffee....
- ct0 9y ago
  FYI: A gigabit comcast connection is commonly only half that advertised speed. Upload speed included with their gigabit plan is 40mbit. 40mbit. And the upload is always 40mbit in my tests.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
    I'm just waiting for them to start advertising total speed. So your 50/5 connection would be advertised as 55Mbps!
- evv 9y ago
  Plus, your internet packets get de-prioritized behind phone and TV on the consumer internet plans. During peak usage hours, you won't even reach those high download speeds. I recently got a 75/15 package with Comcast Business for $150 monthly. The guaranteed bandwidth seems to be worth it.
  - nearengine 9y ago
    I don't think this is correct. From what I understand about DOCSIS, the video-related channels and Internet-related channels are completely separate frequency ranges on the coax line. The reason your bandwidth is reduced during peak usage hours is because you're sharing something like a 10gbps fiber line with hundreds of other people.
    - forgottenpass 9y ago
      But doesn't their VOD service use a DOCSIS packet connection?
tialaramex 9y ago
Subscriptions is not generally a very useful metric. I would expect "Access" to mean that you would be able to sign up for and receive service, which might involve just a package arriving and you plug it in, but might mean people show up with a digger and spend a day running cable. As illustration: The UK has some community owned projects which supply Internet access to otherwise under-served rural areas. The government ensures commercial suppliers don't run "spoiler" projects (e.g. when a community project announces they're coming to some village, the incumbent Telco can't suddenly remember they decided to run ultra-fast Internet to that village with a free introductory offer) B4RN (Broadband For the Rural North but pronounced "Barn") is the most famous. They run dedicated fibre near to all the properties in a rural area, if you own some cottage in a little country village they're serving, the fibre probably runs in the grass outside your fence. But people (probably volunteers since it's B4RN) need to come dig up your lawn and run cable to your cottage before you can actually use the service. B4RN charges a fair amount of money for this setup, although it's waived if you instead pay even more money to become a shareholder in their corporate entity. But still, the cottage would have "Access" once that fibre is outside, because B4RN have a commitment to do the install if you pay for it. It's silly to say one cottage in a row doesn't have "Access" to B4RN's 1000Mbps symmetric Internet just because the old lady who lives there doesn't need the Internet. If you bought that cottage you could fork over the price of a Nintendo Switch and get Gigabit within a week or so. Subscription _could_ be a good metric if we were arguing that Internet service is unacceptably expensive in specific regions and thus prices out the lower middle classes or working classes, but that's clearly not the focus of Vox's investigations. You're right that it's important to classify "Broadband" and give some idea how fast that actually is. Certainly that's something that needs to be in the footnotes for such an article.
- jobu 9y ago
  > Subscription _could_ be a good metric if we were arguing that Internet service is unacceptably expensive in specific regions and thus prices out the lower middle classes or working classes, but that's clearly not the focus of Vox's investigations. Affordability is actually the main point of 538's second article: "Lots Of People In Cities Still Can’t Afford Broadband" ( https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lots-of-people-in-cities-still-cant-afford-broadband/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lots-of-people-in-citie... ) However, that article is centered around the data for Washington D.C. and their retraction specifically talks about the data for D.C being incorrect.
outsidetheparty 9y ago
> How do they define "Broadband"? There's a footnote in the article which says that the FCC data uses the 2016 redefinition of broadband back down to 10mbps: > The FCC has two data sets on broadband connections. For our analysis, we used the data specifying connections with at least 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.

by jobu 9y ago

danjoc 9y ago

>In 2015 they redefined it as 25 Mbit/s down, 3 Mbit/s up. How can that be? That's the same time we achieved net neutrality. That's not net neutral. That's fast lane on download, slow lane on upload. Asymmetric bandwidth is a prime reason why we all can't host our own clouds and social networks.

ahupp 9y ago
I have never seen anyone define net neutrality as including symmetric bandwidth. I am also skeptical that lack up upload bandwidth has much to do with the lack of success for self-hosted social networks.
- narag 9y ago
  I've heard two theories about capped upload bandwith: making possible to upsell premium hosting services and P2P damage control.
  - ahupp 9y ago
    I think the simplest explanation is that the transport uses a fixed allocation of bandwidth between upstream and downstream flows, and they've chosen an allocation that matches typical workloads. It looks like full-duplex DOCSIS (data-over-coax protocol) was just announced last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS
    - fjsolwmv 9y ago
      That's begging the question. The up/down ratios they choose determine what workloads are possible/typical. More upstream means there would be other workflows enabled.
      - chimeracoder 9y ago
        > That's begging the question. The up/down ratios they choose determine what workloads are possible/typical. More upstream means there would be other workflows enabled. Not really, because the options exist at different tiers. If you have 5/1, 10/3, 25/5, and 100/20 as options, and you notice that people choose 10/3 and saturate their download but only use a third of their upload capacity, then turning that into a symmetric system would result in them having to pay more for the same usage. On the other hand, if you noticed that people were choosing the 100/20 but only peaking at 15 down and 15 up, then yes, it would be clear that customers would prefer a symmetric system. As it stands, P2P is a pretty rare use case for residential broadband, even when the capacity exists. Access to symmetric speeds is unlikely to increase P2P usage, because those aren't the main blockers.
        narag 9y ago
        Not really, because the options exist at different tiers. There are not so many options where I live, none in practice. Anyway, those tiers are, after all, commercial options. Is the cost for providers really different? If there isn't a substantial difference, then the upsell theory stands. If people doesn't want upload, why do they throttle it? It would be a nice selling point: you offer a plus that looks nice and costs you nothing. Access to symmetric speeds is unlikely to increase P2P usage, because those aren't the main blockers. That's backwards. What they're supposedly doing is discouraging usage. There is more usage than wanted (no matter if it's not common) so measures are put in place to shrink it even more. The measure does not affect most users so they can get away with it: "only those few freeloaders want more". Edit -> also consider this: upload limitation in P2P isn't obviously negative. You still can download at max speed so you could think the limitation as a bad thing for others. You need to think for a while to understand why it's also bad for you.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
w0m 9y ago
But different technologies support different speeds. Fiber can do symmetric much easier than cable can as an example, and cable is much more ubiquitous.
djsumdog 9y ago
Network neutrality has nothing to do with bandwidth. Network neutrality means if I purchase a pipe with x Mbps of potential bandwidth, my communication on that pipe to any destination should have equal priority. In other words, an ISP shouldn't be able to add rules that say, "When our pipe is congested and we need to slow or drop packets, Google has the highest priority, followed by Amazon, then x, y, z." You cannot shape or throttle traffic basted on where it comes and goes. You could still have congestion. Maybe the route to AWS has a shorter round trip than to Digital Ocean because of which backbones the ISP has decided to pay for and connect to. But the point of Network Neutrality is that ISPs cannot priorities one packet type over the other. They must try to deliver each payload from each customer evenly and, if they can't, slow or block those payloads evenly and without prejudice. The one exception to this is if the customer is on IPv6 and uses the prioritization available in the protocol. But even then, the customer is sending an indication to the ISP saying "this packet is not as important" or "this packet is very important."

2bitencryption 9y ago

small anecdote on down/up speeds: I recently signed with Comcast (it was that or DSL) for their 150Mbit/s down plan, and didn't even check the "up" speed, like a fool. I just assumed around 50Mbit/s, maybe 25Mbit/s at the worst. It's 5Mbit/s... so I'm downloading gigabytes of huge datasets in a minute, making a small change, then uploading... and uploading... and uploading... better get a coffee....

ct0 9y ago
FYI: A gigabit comcast connection is commonly only half that advertised speed. Upload speed included with their gigabit plan is 40mbit. 40mbit. And the upload is always 40mbit in my tests.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
  I'm just waiting for them to start advertising total speed. So your 50/5 connection would be advertised as 55Mbps!
evv 9y ago
Plus, your internet packets get de-prioritized behind phone and TV on the consumer internet plans. During peak usage hours, you won't even reach those high download speeds. I recently got a 75/15 package with Comcast Business for $150 monthly. The guaranteed bandwidth seems to be worth it.
- nearengine 9y ago
  I don't think this is correct. From what I understand about DOCSIS, the video-related channels and Internet-related channels are completely separate frequency ranges on the coax line. The reason your bandwidth is reduced during peak usage hours is because you're sharing something like a 10gbps fiber line with hundreds of other people.
  - forgottenpass 9y ago
    But doesn't their VOD service use a DOCSIS packet connection?

tialaramex 9y ago

Subscriptions is not generally a very useful metric. I would expect "Access" to mean that you would be able to sign up for and receive service, which might involve just a package arriving and you plug it in, but might mean people show up with a digger and spend a day running cable. As illustration: The UK has some community owned projects which supply Internet access to otherwise under-served rural areas. The government ensures commercial suppliers don't run "spoiler" projects (e.g. when a community project announces they're coming to some village, the incumbent Telco can't suddenly remember they decided to run ultra-fast Internet to that village with a free introductory offer) B4RN (Broadband For the Rural North but pronounced "Barn") is the most famous. They run dedicated fibre near to all the properties in a rural area, if you own some cottage in a little country village they're serving, the fibre probably runs in the grass outside your fence. But people (probably volunteers since it's B4RN) need to come dig up your lawn and run cable to your cottage before you can actually use the service. B4RN charges a fair amount of money for this setup, although it's waived if you instead pay even more money to become a shareholder in their corporate entity. But still, the cottage would have "Access" once that fibre is outside, because B4RN have a commitment to do the install if you pay for it. It's silly to say one cottage in a row doesn't have "Access" to B4RN's 1000Mbps symmetric Internet just because the old lady who lives there doesn't need the Internet. If you bought that cottage you could fork over the price of a Nintendo Switch and get Gigabit within a week or so. Subscription _could_ be a good metric if we were arguing that Internet service is unacceptably expensive in specific regions and thus prices out the lower middle classes or working classes, but that's clearly not the focus of Vox's investigations. You're right that it's important to classify "Broadband" and give some idea how fast that actually is. Certainly that's something that needs to be in the footnotes for such an article.

jobu 9y ago
> Subscription _could_ be a good metric if we were arguing that Internet service is unacceptably expensive in specific regions and thus prices out the lower middle classes or working classes, but that's clearly not the focus of Vox's investigations. Affordability is actually the main point of 538's second article: "Lots Of People In Cities Still Can’t Afford Broadband" ( https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lots-of-people-in-cities-still-cant-afford-broadband/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lots-of-people-in-citie... ) However, that article is centered around the data for Washington D.C. and their retraction specifically talks about the data for D.C being incorrect.

outsidetheparty 9y ago

> How do they define "Broadband"? There's a footnote in the article which says that the FCC data uses the 2016 redefinition of broadband back down to 10mbps: > The FCC has two data sets on broadband connections. For our analysis, we used the data specifying connections with at least 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.