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A neat secret about these cache devices is ISPs that charge for usage. The data the customers use comes straight from the ISP's Central Office, not from "The in
by grecy 7y ago
A neat secret about these cache devices is ISPs that charge for usage. The data the customers use comes straight from the ISP's Central Office, not from "The internet" at all.
- dgemm 7y agoHow is that a secret?
- peterkelly 7y agoI didn't know it, and I'm guessing I'm not the only one. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- kbutler 7y agoHear, hear - celebrate learning, not membership in the "in-the-know" crowd.
- makapuf 7y agoC'mon, everyone knows that.
- FortCollinsDev 7y agoThanks for the share!
- grecy 7y agoThe ISP I worked for worked very, very hard to keep it a secret from customers, forcing everyone involved to sign an NDA, etc.
- dgemm 7y agoWell, as a subscriber everything beyond your cable modem is "the internet" and you don't care how the ISP's network is set up internally. CDNs, netflix, etc have all been embedding devices in carrier networks for years. Some of your ISP's connectivity probably comes via settlement-free peering, yet we pay for that too. None of this is a secret, it's just how the internet's plumbing works.
- wmf 7y agoWhat if the most expensive part of an ISP is the last mile? (Granted, this isn't true in cases like Australia.)
- gregmac 7y agoMy parents have a (crappy) wireless internet provider. During most evenings and weekend, they're lucky to get even 0.5Mbps. At the same time, Netflix works fine, and the speed on fast.com (Netflix-run) will be a few Mbps (I don't remember exactly). In the daytime on weekdays, they usually get a few Mbps from any speed test and generally everything feels fast. This lets me deduce the ISP is way over-subscribed on their upstream internet connection, but also has a Netflix appliance. What's frustrating is if they complain enough, the company will send a tech out who will "adjust" their antenna, or suggest it's a line-of-sight problem and they need a bigger tower, should cut down some trees, etc.
- Reason077 7y ago> "My parents have a (crappy) wireless internet provider. During most evenings and weekend, they're lucky to get even 0.5Mbps." Sounds like my experience on Three UK here in London. Just awful! Vodafone and O2 are at least 20X faster at peak times despite Three actually having a significantly stronger 4G signal at my flat. Absolute joke of a network. I'm so angry that I was basically tricked into a 12 month contract with them.
- martinald 7y agoThe problem with Three is they don't have enough spectrum especially in densely populated areas, they definitely have invested a lot in backhaul capacity. 99% of cellular data problems are nothing to do with backhaul or peering, it's spectrum usage. Some good news: they are aggressively rolling out SDL (supplementary downlink) which will really improve things. They also announced today their 5G network (which has by far the most spectrum of all UK carriers) has went live. I would expect insanely good speeds on that network. But yeah, turns out selling unlimited data/tethering/roaming/text/minutes for as low as £11/month isn't a good business strategy. Generally though: EE is good everywhere. Vodafone is good in North London, O2 better in South London. Three generally awful everywhere.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago> The problem with Three is they don't have enough spectrum especially in densely populated areas Isn’t this argument basically debunked? Places like South Korea and Japan have no issues whatsoever with extremely fast wireless internet at a fraction of the price.
- toast0 7y agoI've heard that in the olden days European ISPs would sometimes charge different rates for transatlantic traffic and other traffic and similar in Australia for local and overseas, but generally nobody breaks out traffic charges by destination; it's difficult to manage, it's confusing for customers, and it's hard for customers to find out which IPs will get preferred rates or how to direct their traffic there.
- lostlogin 7y agoCharging different rates for different traffic happens here in New Zealand. I generally see variation on a theme of ‘bonus free social media traffic’. It’s all very depressing. Eg: https://www.spark.co.nz/shop/mobile-plans/socialiser/ https://www.spark.co.nz/shop/mobile-plans/socialiser/
- exikyut 7y agoWhat that's... Good thing the net neutrality meme has died down, would be quite the interesting PR headscratch if not.
- n1c 7y agoYeah for a long time it was the case in South Africa too. You'd get packages with something like 1GB of international bandwidth and 10GB of local.