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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

by 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.
    - jnordwick 9y ago
      +1 for proper use of begging the question

by ahupp 9y ago

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.
  - jnordwick 9y ago
    +1 for proper use of begging the question