5 ms·

Interesting counterpoint to the "broadband is so much better in Europe" trope. Unless of course we are under strain here in the US as well....

rsynnott 7y ago
The US response has so far been fairly muted, with a few notable local exceptions. There are a lot more people stuck at home in Europe. In practice, though, at least in Ireland there's been little obvious problem, though you can definitely see an increase: https://www.inex.ie/ixp/statistics/ixp https://www.inex.ie/ixp/statistics/ixp
- monkpit 7y ago
  Does anyone know if something like this graph exists for the US? I tried googling for one but I’m not sure of the right search terms to use.
  - rsynnott 7y ago
    It's a neutral exchange. Note that it doesn't give the whole story; really big players like Netflix may have hardware directly in some of the ISPs and bypass the exchange completely. The US doesn't have many significant neutral exchanges, but here's one: https://www.seattleix.net/statistics/ https://www.seattleix.net/statistics/
    - trigger 7y ago
      Possibly, but Netflix do peer in INEX, https://www.inex.ie/ixp/customer/detail/103 https://www.inex.ie/ixp/customer/detail/103
      - rsynnott 7y ago
        They do, but they likely also have equipment in many of the ISPs.
- gonesilent 7y ago
  FCC is handing out extra radio spectrum as fast as it can. Took a bunch of white space channels gave them to TMobile. Letting some stay on 3.5ghz little longer before selling it off.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  Pretty much all of California is stuck at home, and California has 40 million people... that would be the 8th largest country in Europe.
  - rsynnott 7y ago
    Shelter in Place is basically just the Bay Area, right? And a lot of people still seem to be leaving the home for work there; notoriously, people are still making Teslas! Also, California is mostly fairly urbanised and well-off. If Germany was the only place in Europe where people were being discouraged from leaving the home, this would be less of a concern. This is really targeting places, especially rural places, with poor infrastructure.
    - cortesoft 7y ago
      I am in Los Angeles, and we have been told to stay home except for absolutely necessary trips to grocery stores or doctors. Also, there are very large parts of California that are rural.
      - rsynnott 7y ago
        > Census 2000 found California’s rural population totaled 1,876,753 persons That's about 5%, which is pretty low.
  - desas 7y ago
    It'd probably be the 6th largest in the eu. Smaller than Italy, France and Spain which all have lockdowns.
ketzu 7y ago
Isn't the trope "broadband is better somewhere else" for most places? Anecdotally, most people I know complain about the connection where they live.
- throwaway894345 7y ago
  Europeans seem pretty proud of their Internet, at least relative to the US, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22631036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22631036
  - Hamuko 7y ago
    As a European, I'm quite happy with my Internet connections.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    it's mostly the cost/quality ratio, it's not asia levels of modernity (they seemed to be the first on most things) but it's accessible and stable on the other hand the web is filled with horror stories emanating from C....st customers.
- jbarberu 7y ago
  Moving from Sweden to the US (Florida) I can't say I've noticed much of a difference in connectivity. 100, 200, 300 & 1000MBps is readily available in both places but usually around at 3x the price in the US. Rural America seems to be an entirely different story.
  - jcims 7y ago
    15M down / 768k up checking in from rural america. I have to stop my camera on video conferences if i want to talk.
    - jbarberu 7y ago
      Ouch :( Just checked, and at the address I left in Sweden I could have gotten a 1.2GBps for ~$60/mo, almost what I pay for 100MBps here...
bobthepanda 7y ago
I feel like when people are arguing that point, they are arguing about broadband competition. In most US markets your choices are not great and/or are expensive, and if you are in a market with limited competition there is often not a reason to invest in the network.
bilekas 7y ago
> "broadband is so much better in Europe" trope Interesting how ISP's outside of the EU are uncapping their data limits all of a sudden.. So when people (me included) say it's better in Europe, its because the vast majority of us are not capped.. In normal times. Sources : https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/12/21177538/att-broadband-internet-data-cap-coronavirus-suspend https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/12/21177538/att-broadband-in... https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-follows-optus-with-extra-mobile-data-in-virus-response-539389 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-follows-optus-with-ex...
refurb 7y ago
I had the exact same thought. I was under the impression that Europe had much more robust broadband infrastructure and a surplus of capacity, compared to the US.
- Hamuko 7y ago
  Finland at least has uncapped mobile connections up the wazoo. Also the highest amount of mobile data per head in 2016 at least: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/11448.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/11448.jpeg Edit: same for 2018 as well: https://www.statista.com/statistics/956188/monthly-mobile-data-usage-per-sim-worldwide-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/956188/monthly-mobile-da...
- rsynnott 7y ago
  On average, yes, probably. But both the US and Europe have areas (especially rural areas) with very poor coverage, and in much of Europe most people are staying at home at the moment, to a much greater extent than in the US.
bjoli 7y ago
I pay $30 for 250/100 and i live 20 minutes outside a town if 120k in a small community of 25 houses, about 7 km from the nearest store of any kind. Is that competitive? I have no idea. I could however chose from around 10 ISPs that all have to compete in the network, which I understand is quite rare on the other side of the pond.
- aembleton 7y ago
  Where are you? There are many different deals across Europe; many aren't as good as what you have.
  - bjoli 7y ago
    Sweden. Has I lived in an apartment in town it would probably have been 5-10 dollars less depending on where I lived. The city operates its own net with very low costs for large parts of the city
this_user 7y ago
Europe is not a single county, and Internet connections are widely different for a variety of reasons. On one end of the spectrum you have the Nordic countries where the average connection has > 20 Mb/s, and at the other end of the spectrum you have Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus where it is below 10.
alkonaut 7y ago
There are many aspects of good broadband (Competition, fiber access in rural areas etc). Europe is also a group of very different countries. There are many countries where most rural areas still rely on DSL connections, for example.
_jal 7y ago
'Better' can mean multiple things. I'm pretty sure you'd agree that paying 1/3rd of what you pay now for the same bandwidth is 'better'. Is there sufficient idle capacity to handle an nearly-overnight transition to whatever the load is now? I don't know, but suspect most ISPs are going to keep similar capacity buffers - nobody sells end consumers non-oversubscribed pipes.
unixhero 7y ago
You will
Avamander 7y ago
Such a blanket reduction is stupid, yes.
reallydontask 7y ago
I've just run four different speed tests and all say that I'm getting ~100/10 which is what my ISP advertises (Virgin Media in the UK) One of them shows a ping of 27 ms (I think it's normally ~ 10 ms)
Youden 7y ago
It's not a counterpoint. Netflix's actions, from a network perspective are not neccessary, at least not Europe-wide. My ISP is more than able to cope with it. I've been checking at peak times and I can consistently saturate my gigabit connection piping traffic to/from Amsterdam, about 800km away. Maybe Netflix feels the need for its own business reasons (e.g. it pays for some of its bandwidth and now users are using enough that they're unprofitable) but it's not needed to ensure the integrity of Europe's networks. Were it necessary, the ISPs can simply shape Netflix and let adaptive bitrate take care of the user experience, the same way mobile ISPs do in the US.
MrSouth 7y ago
This move is just a solution in search of a problem. We still have better internet than you in ALL places, including mobile connectivity, literally everywhere. I can say fiber to the home 250/250 & coax 500/500 dominate the market. There is pumped up ADSL everywhere country-side. This move is coming unilateraly from a person who doesn't understand internet and woke up and had to be busy with something. Many IX report a slight increase in capacity, from 10% to 20%.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  You can't generalise all of the European Union like that.
- aembleton 7y ago
  Fibre to the home definitely doesn't dominate the market in the UK! Maybe we're far behind the rest of Europe but as we are part of Europe, then it isn't that great 'literally everywhere'.

rsynnott 7y ago

The US response has so far been fairly muted, with a few notable local exceptions. There are a lot more people stuck at home in Europe. In practice, though, at least in Ireland there's been little obvious problem, though you can definitely see an increase: https://www.inex.ie/ixp/statistics/ixp https://www.inex.ie/ixp/statistics/ixp

monkpit 7y ago
Does anyone know if something like this graph exists for the US? I tried googling for one but I’m not sure of the right search terms to use.
- rsynnott 7y ago
  It's a neutral exchange. Note that it doesn't give the whole story; really big players like Netflix may have hardware directly in some of the ISPs and bypass the exchange completely. The US doesn't have many significant neutral exchanges, but here's one: https://www.seattleix.net/statistics/ https://www.seattleix.net/statistics/
  - trigger 7y ago
    Possibly, but Netflix do peer in INEX, https://www.inex.ie/ixp/customer/detail/103 https://www.inex.ie/ixp/customer/detail/103
    - rsynnott 7y ago
      They do, but they likely also have equipment in many of the ISPs.
gonesilent 7y ago
FCC is handing out extra radio spectrum as fast as it can. Took a bunch of white space channels gave them to TMobile. Letting some stay on 3.5ghz little longer before selling it off.
cortesoft 7y ago
Pretty much all of California is stuck at home, and California has 40 million people... that would be the 8th largest country in Europe.
- rsynnott 7y ago
  Shelter in Place is basically just the Bay Area, right? And a lot of people still seem to be leaving the home for work there; notoriously, people are still making Teslas! Also, California is mostly fairly urbanised and well-off. If Germany was the only place in Europe where people were being discouraged from leaving the home, this would be less of a concern. This is really targeting places, especially rural places, with poor infrastructure.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    I am in Los Angeles, and we have been told to stay home except for absolutely necessary trips to grocery stores or doctors. Also, there are very large parts of California that are rural.
    - rsynnott 7y ago
      > Census 2000 found California’s rural population totaled 1,876,753 persons That's about 5%, which is pretty low.
- desas 7y ago
  It'd probably be the 6th largest in the eu. Smaller than Italy, France and Spain which all have lockdowns.

ketzu 7y ago

Isn't the trope "broadband is better somewhere else" for most places? Anecdotally, most people I know complain about the connection where they live.

throwaway894345 7y ago
Europeans seem pretty proud of their Internet, at least relative to the US, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22631036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22631036
- Hamuko 7y ago
  As a European, I'm quite happy with my Internet connections.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  it's mostly the cost/quality ratio, it's not asia levels of modernity (they seemed to be the first on most things) but it's accessible and stable on the other hand the web is filled with horror stories emanating from C....st customers.
jbarberu 7y ago
Moving from Sweden to the US (Florida) I can't say I've noticed much of a difference in connectivity. 100, 200, 300 & 1000MBps is readily available in both places but usually around at 3x the price in the US. Rural America seems to be an entirely different story.
- jcims 7y ago
  15M down / 768k up checking in from rural america. I have to stop my camera on video conferences if i want to talk.
  - jbarberu 7y ago
    Ouch :( Just checked, and at the address I left in Sweden I could have gotten a 1.2GBps for ~$60/mo, almost what I pay for 100MBps here...

bobthepanda 7y ago

I feel like when people are arguing that point, they are arguing about broadband competition. In most US markets your choices are not great and/or are expensive, and if you are in a market with limited competition there is often not a reason to invest in the network.

bilekas 7y ago

> "broadband is so much better in Europe" trope Interesting how ISP's outside of the EU are uncapping their data limits all of a sudden.. So when people (me included) say it's better in Europe, its because the vast majority of us are not capped.. In normal times. Sources : https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/12/21177538/att-broadband-internet-data-cap-coronavirus-suspend https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/12/21177538/att-broadband-in... https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-follows-optus-with-extra-mobile-data-in-virus-response-539389 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-follows-optus-with-ex...

refurb 7y ago

I had the exact same thought. I was under the impression that Europe had much more robust broadband infrastructure and a surplus of capacity, compared to the US.

Hamuko 7y ago
Finland at least has uncapped mobile connections up the wazoo. Also the highest amount of mobile data per head in 2016 at least: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/11448.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/11448.jpeg Edit: same for 2018 as well: https://www.statista.com/statistics/956188/monthly-mobile-data-usage-per-sim-worldwide-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/956188/monthly-mobile-da...
rsynnott 7y ago
On average, yes, probably. But both the US and Europe have areas (especially rural areas) with very poor coverage, and in much of Europe most people are staying at home at the moment, to a much greater extent than in the US.

bjoli 7y ago

I pay $30 for 250/100 and i live 20 minutes outside a town if 120k in a small community of 25 houses, about 7 km from the nearest store of any kind. Is that competitive? I have no idea. I could however chose from around 10 ISPs that all have to compete in the network, which I understand is quite rare on the other side of the pond.

aembleton 7y ago
Where are you? There are many different deals across Europe; many aren't as good as what you have.
- bjoli 7y ago
  Sweden. Has I lived in an apartment in town it would probably have been 5-10 dollars less depending on where I lived. The city operates its own net with very low costs for large parts of the city

this_user 7y ago

Europe is not a single county, and Internet connections are widely different for a variety of reasons. On one end of the spectrum you have the Nordic countries where the average connection has > 20 Mb/s, and at the other end of the spectrum you have Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus where it is below 10.

alkonaut 7y ago

There are many aspects of good broadband (Competition, fiber access in rural areas etc). Europe is also a group of very different countries. There are many countries where most rural areas still rely on DSL connections, for example.

_jal 7y ago

'Better' can mean multiple things. I'm pretty sure you'd agree that paying 1/3rd of what you pay now for the same bandwidth is 'better'. Is there sufficient idle capacity to handle an nearly-overnight transition to whatever the load is now? I don't know, but suspect most ISPs are going to keep similar capacity buffers - nobody sells end consumers non-oversubscribed pipes.

unixhero 7y ago

You will

Avamander 7y ago

Such a blanket reduction is stupid, yes.

reallydontask 7y ago

I've just run four different speed tests and all say that I'm getting ~100/10 which is what my ISP advertises (Virgin Media in the UK) One of them shows a ping of 27 ms (I think it's normally ~ 10 ms)

Youden 7y ago

It's not a counterpoint. Netflix's actions, from a network perspective are not neccessary, at least not Europe-wide. My ISP is more than able to cope with it. I've been checking at peak times and I can consistently saturate my gigabit connection piping traffic to/from Amsterdam, about 800km away. Maybe Netflix feels the need for its own business reasons (e.g. it pays for some of its bandwidth and now users are using enough that they're unprofitable) but it's not needed to ensure the integrity of Europe's networks. Were it necessary, the ISPs can simply shape Netflix and let adaptive bitrate take care of the user experience, the same way mobile ISPs do in the US.

MrSouth 7y ago

This move is just a solution in search of a problem. We still have better internet than you in ALL places, including mobile connectivity, literally everywhere. I can say fiber to the home 250/250 & coax 500/500 dominate the market. There is pumped up ADSL everywhere country-side. This move is coming unilateraly from a person who doesn't understand internet and woke up and had to be busy with something. Many IX report a slight increase in capacity, from 10% to 20%.

Symbiote 7y ago
You can't generalise all of the European Union like that.
aembleton 7y ago
Fibre to the home definitely doesn't dominate the market in the UK! Maybe we're far behind the rest of Europe but as we are part of Europe, then it isn't that great 'literally everywhere'.