7 ms·

Are actual technical people reporting issues with internet bandwidth, or are these unjustified fears by politicians?

by jbob2000 7y ago

ldng 7y ago
Yes, I'm seeing issues and slowdown.
- rodiger 7y ago
  Like what? Is it an issue with specific services/providers? Or total internet bandwidth? Anyone know the bandwidth the submarine cables can handle in their current configuration? What's the real bottleneck here?
  - jrockway 7y ago
    I don't think the backbone of the Internet cares about this. ISPs get a box with all of Netflix's content in it, so you probably never go out to the Internet to watch something on Netflix. (YouTube also does this, though obviously they don't cache every video in every local ISP's cache, and I believe that Apple has a system like this as well.) If there is any slowdown, it is likely due to limitations in the last mile. Netflix isn't sending 4k video streams from California to everyone else in the world individually, assuming everything is working.
  - he_is_legend 7y ago
    > What's the real bottleneck here? ISPs overselling their last mile bandwidth.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    It is usually ISPs oversubscribing their nodes to too many customers. DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 are very fast. The video services that work the best leverage locality so that you aren't steaming westword over the ocean, but from a local cache much closer to you.
  - iptrans 7y ago
    As others have noted, the problems are with specific ISPs and their underdimensioned last mile network and/or backhaul. A modern submarine cable, like Google's new Dunant transantlantic cable, has 250 Tbps of bandwidth. For reference, the largest Internet Exchange in Europe, DE-CIX, just reported a new traffic record of 9 Tbps. So, no, anything using fiber isn'ta bottleneck. You can fit all of DE-CIX traffic on a single strand of fiber with off the shelf gear.
- 75central 7y ago
  Same here. I work from home and before this whole thing started, I'd generally get ~250 Mbps down. Over the last few days, since people started WFH and kids were out of school, I'm lucky to get maybe 15 Mbps. At one point yesterday, I was getting 1.2. Also have seen DNS resolution issues off and on for the past couple of days.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    None of the residential providers have enough interconnect capacity to actually support what they have been selling if customers start using even 10% peak bandwidth promised by the connections.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Yet another place where the pandemic calls companies on their bullshit.
      - reallydontask 7y ago
        This used to be far more prominent or maybe I used to pay more attention, but DSL offers around 2000 had the contention ratio, most residential were 50:1 but there were some that were 20:1 Most business were 10:1 but you could pay for up to 1:1
    - sgt101 7y ago
      Well - it depends on what they are using it for. For streaming content & downloads the caches should pick up the slack. Video conferencing is much harder.
      - notyourday 7y ago
        If under caches you mean caches in the end-AS then the only work that has that ability is Akamai which has a very large number of pops located inside eyeball networks. Cloud Flare does not. Cloud Front does not. Fastly does not. Google does not. Level3 does not. Even Limelight/Edgecast which used to have a decent footprint inside Verizon does not. That in turn means that all of the content cached by those networks still relies on the eyeball networks having interconnect capacity.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  My cable gets pretty slow in the afternoon. From usually 80mb/s to around 4. Ping is up from 15 to 80.
pilif 7y ago
depends on the provider. Netflix is pretty good at offering peering or local cache servers that can be installed inside of a providers network. But most providers don't take Netflix up on that offer and rather focus on hoping that crappy peering is forcing Netflix into paying them for connectivity.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  That's not the impression I get from Wikipedia. Do you have a source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_details_of_Netflix#Open_Connect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_details_of_Netflix#O...
  - isclever 7y ago
    Netflix is open to any peering, some ISPs are not: https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/netflix-and-att-sign-peering-agreement/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/netflix-and-att-sign-peeri...
zzzcpan 7y ago
Most ISPs have enough capacity to handle this, investments in capacity usually last many many years. I'm seeing like 10% growth of peak traffic consumption on lock down in my country which is nothing. I'd be surprised if anyone on FTTB experiences problems. I'm not talking about monopolies though that neglect and postpone investment into infrastructure upgrades as much as possible, plenty of their consumers probably already live with significant quality problems and routinely experience "slow internet".

Are actual technical people reporting issues with internet bandwidth, or are these unjustified fears by politicians?

ldng 7y ago

Yes, I'm seeing issues and slowdown.

rodiger 7y ago
Like what? Is it an issue with specific services/providers? Or total internet bandwidth? Anyone know the bandwidth the submarine cables can handle in their current configuration? What's the real bottleneck here?
- jrockway 7y ago
  I don't think the backbone of the Internet cares about this. ISPs get a box with all of Netflix's content in it, so you probably never go out to the Internet to watch something on Netflix. (YouTube also does this, though obviously they don't cache every video in every local ISP's cache, and I believe that Apple has a system like this as well.) If there is any slowdown, it is likely due to limitations in the last mile. Netflix isn't sending 4k video streams from California to everyone else in the world individually, assuming everything is working.
- he_is_legend 7y ago
  > What's the real bottleneck here? ISPs overselling their last mile bandwidth.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  It is usually ISPs oversubscribing their nodes to too many customers. DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 are very fast. The video services that work the best leverage locality so that you aren't steaming westword over the ocean, but from a local cache much closer to you.
- iptrans 7y ago
  As others have noted, the problems are with specific ISPs and their underdimensioned last mile network and/or backhaul. A modern submarine cable, like Google's new Dunant transantlantic cable, has 250 Tbps of bandwidth. For reference, the largest Internet Exchange in Europe, DE-CIX, just reported a new traffic record of 9 Tbps. So, no, anything using fiber isn'ta bottleneck. You can fit all of DE-CIX traffic on a single strand of fiber with off the shelf gear.
75central 7y ago
Same here. I work from home and before this whole thing started, I'd generally get ~250 Mbps down. Over the last few days, since people started WFH and kids were out of school, I'm lucky to get maybe 15 Mbps. At one point yesterday, I was getting 1.2. Also have seen DNS resolution issues off and on for the past couple of days.
- notyourday 7y ago
  None of the residential providers have enough interconnect capacity to actually support what they have been selling if customers start using even 10% peak bandwidth promised by the connections.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Yet another place where the pandemic calls companies on their bullshit.
    - reallydontask 7y ago
      This used to be far more prominent or maybe I used to pay more attention, but DSL offers around 2000 had the contention ratio, most residential were 50:1 but there were some that were 20:1 Most business were 10:1 but you could pay for up to 1:1
  - sgt101 7y ago
    Well - it depends on what they are using it for. For streaming content & downloads the caches should pick up the slack. Video conferencing is much harder.
    - notyourday 7y ago
      If under caches you mean caches in the end-AS then the only work that has that ability is Akamai which has a very large number of pops located inside eyeball networks. Cloud Flare does not. Cloud Front does not. Fastly does not. Google does not. Level3 does not. Even Limelight/Edgecast which used to have a decent footprint inside Verizon does not. That in turn means that all of the content cached by those networks still relies on the eyeball networks having interconnect capacity.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
My cable gets pretty slow in the afternoon. From usually 80mb/s to around 4. Ping is up from 15 to 80.

pilif 7y ago

depends on the provider. Netflix is pretty good at offering peering or local cache servers that can be installed inside of a providers network. But most providers don't take Netflix up on that offer and rather focus on hoping that crappy peering is forcing Netflix into paying them for connectivity.

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
That's not the impression I get from Wikipedia. Do you have a source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_details_of_Netflix#Open_Connect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_details_of_Netflix#O...
- isclever 7y ago
  Netflix is open to any peering, some ISPs are not: https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/netflix-and-att-sign-peering-agreement/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/netflix-and-att-sign-peeri...

zzzcpan 7y ago

Most ISPs have enough capacity to handle this, investments in capacity usually last many many years. I'm seeing like 10% growth of peak traffic consumption on lock down in my country which is nothing. I'd be surprised if anyone on FTTB experiences problems. I'm not talking about monopolies though that neglect and postpone investment into infrastructure upgrades as much as possible, plenty of their consumers probably already live with significant quality problems and routinely experience "slow internet".