7 ms·

> What a world when you can't even trust the spec sheet. What's next, 10 watt class drives that pull 20 watts? 3-year class warranties? Just like how internet

> What a world when you can't even trust the spec sheet. What's next, 10 watt class drives that pull 20 watts? 3-year class warranties? Just like how internet speeds are advertised ("Up to 300 Mb/s").

orbital-decay 6y ago
There's a solid technical reason for that though, as ISPs have no control over the performance of your connection's remote part. Sure, it leaves plenty of room for abuse, but this is a necessary disclaimer, not some slippery marketing.
- readams 6y ago
  It also includes the fact that their network may be oversubscribed.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    There's no "may" about it: they are oversubscribed for consumers so as to get the price points down. If anyone wants to have an unfettered pipe then call up a Tier 1/2/3 ISP and ask for a commercial connection via a single-mode fibre, and be ready to pay quite a bit for it.
    - ComputerGuru 6y ago
      > If anyone wants to have an unfettered pipe then call up a Tier 1/2/3 ISP and ask for a commercial connection via a single-mode fibre, and be ready to pay quite a bit for it. You might be surprised to find it surprisingly affordable. Cheaper than colocation, even.
      - erinnh 6y ago
        Only if you want a complete rack or more at a colo facility. If you get half a rack or less, that tends to be (quite a bit) cheaper.
        ComputerGuru 6y ago
        I have both, and I think the break even point is probably paying for around 7 or 8U.
      - throw0101a 6y ago
        > You might be surprised to find it surprisingly affordable. Assuming you can easily get hooked up at a residential address. Perhaps if you live in an apartment/condo tower, then fibre may have already been run: * https://www.fibrestream.ca/locations https://www.fibrestream.ca/locations Some random house, on some random street? Unlikely.
        ComputerGuru 6y ago
        If you get in touch with the right department, you would typically have to sign a multi year contract with the net value due upfront in case of termination to get them to run the fiber to you. Or else cover the cost of the run as an installation fee.
        throw0101a 6y ago
        > Or else cover the cost of the run as an installation fee. The community of Ammon, ID, built their own municipal fibre network because of this: > It all began about seven years ago when the city government, suffering from horrible upload speeds, wanted a dedicated 100Mbps circuit between City Hall and the Public Works building, less than a mile apart. Qwest (now CenturyLink) didn't want the project, while Cable One offered to do it for a start-up fee of $80,000 plus $1,000 a month, Patterson said. * https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-if-switching-fiber-isps-was-as-easy-as-clicking-a-mouse/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-... * https://www.ammonfiber.com https://www.ammonfiber.com At this year's (virtual) NLNOG there was presentation from a fellow who was fed up with slow Internet options in his rural Michigan county and so setup his own ISP by having fibre optic pulled to his house and then redistributing service to his neighbours: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg
    - causality0 6y ago
      This varies wildly by location and company. Approximately half my family is subscribed to Cox, and the other half mostly to Spectrum. The Cox connections never drop below 80% of their advertised speeds and the Spectrum ones rarely rise above 50%. Huge swaths of Spectrum's service area are so resource-starved they don't rise above 10% of their advertised speeds during daylight hours.
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        IMO, there should be some regulation where they should be forced to mention the current and maximum allocation that they are willing to make as well as the average/median bandwidth that the active users enjoy per hour.
        bleepblorp 6y ago
        The UK has a rule which requires ISPs to only advertise speeds achievable by 50% of users during peak periods. Customers are also allowed to leave contracts without penalty if ISPs are unable or unwilling to provide advertised speeds to the end user[0]. Such rules are not within the American Overton window for the usual reasons. [0] https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/ask-our-expert/broadband-speed-advertising-is-changing-but-how https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/ask-our-expert/broadband-...
        ATsch 6y ago
        Germany has a website that lets you automatically file a complaint if your provider doesn't reach 90% of the advertised speed in measurements over two days
- akhosravian 6y ago
  Does anyone in the US actually get the “up to” even plugging directly into the ISP provided modem at off peak times?
  - kop316 6y ago
    Yes, I do. I have lived in several different areas where I had no problems getting the full advertised speed at any given time (on peak, off peak, etc.). I think the biggest reason they say "up to" is because a lot of poeple get a cheap $40 router that can't support that the advertised speed. Heck, I just moved into a new place that gives symmetric gigabit speeds. I had to replace my router to actually get one that can handle the advertised speeds (I had an APU1d4 with realtek ethernet ports that saturated at 300 Mb/s). My older laptop does not even have wired nor wireless speeds that can handle the connection. So while I am no fan of a lot of ISPs, I completely understand why they say "up to", they don't want to deal with folks who say they don't get their advertised speeds while using a $200 laptop and a $40 router.
  - wmf 6y ago
    Many ISPs provide that level (or more) of performance, even during peak hours. https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/mba/images/2018/chart1.png https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/mba/images/2018/chart1.png https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-america/measuring-fixed-broadband-eighth-report https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broad...
  - xoa 6y ago
    Yes, absolutely. On all 5 different sites I manage in fact, two on a local ISP ADSL, third on local ISP fiber, fourth on Comcast Business cable modem, and even the fifth on a small regional WISP. All of them are reliably within a few percent of their expected speed with about the frequency that one would reasonably expect from that connection class. "Up-to" is fuzzy but quite justified with many technologies. Proper fiber of course is rock solid and essentially never has issues short of a backhoe. But ADSL falls off hard with distance, and a lot of the in-house wiring it's forced through is ancient garbage phone line. Sometimes one can get a huge practical boost just from shortening/replacing line with cat 5. And WISPs obviously have to deal with inclement weather fade as well as any additional obstacles for subpar sites that customers can't/won't rectify. Cable is more of a shared resource though you get much better support and less bullshit with business class even though Comcast are bastards. Now, I absolutely would love to see it mandated by law that somewhere upfront in ISP info to consumers it's required to have a standardized SLA. A consumer-level SLA for sure, but still have it formalized and cover all of the basics. So not just absolute max bandwidth, but 90%/50%/whatever bandwidth, any guaranteed floor, 90% latency, any data caps, any throttling criteria, etc. All categories the same and measured in a mandated standardized way so universally comparable. I don't expect data center level SLAs at all, but there isn't any reason there can't be that level of clarity. But residential/SOHO and such service inherently has more uncertainty and more compromises and capacity multipliers to meet lower prices. I think that's ok, just that it should be laid out and not buried in some fine print or support page in the disused lavatory defended by a leopard either.
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  The ISP is also in the best position to publish the p50, p90 and p99 speeds their customers reach. But why bother, when they can feign ignorance and just talk about what the boffins in the Science Lab say it should be. Perhaps, with tongue in cheek, we could call this the p0 speed — as in it doesn’t make sense and it’s guaranteed that 0% of customers achieve it.
  - dirkt 6y ago
    Percentiles are not helpful, because at least in my home country what degrades the maximum potential speed is the influence that parallel copper cables have on each other. So my internet speed depends on how much my neighbours are using the internet. It's really really difficult to predict this statistically. OTOH, there's a guaranteed minimum speed the ISP has to deliver.
    - gorgoiler 6y ago
      This is really interesting, thank you. Do you have a link to some good info on the phenomenon?
- aidenn0 6y ago
  They have total control over your connection's speed, particularly when they mandate you use their equipment.
  - ac29 6y ago
    Only as far as the first bottleneck though - if 1000 customers in a neighborhood pay for 1Gbps connections, that doesnt mean the neighborhood actually has 1Tbps of capacity to the wider internet. Its probably a tenth of that at best, even in well connected areas.
sellyme 6y ago
That's illegal where I live, the primary connection speed figure used in advertisements must be the average speed users in the real world experience. Turns out that consumer protection laws are pretty useful.
PeterStuer 6y ago
The worst case ever: Long ago an ISP sold me on VDSL for the office as "up to 55/3 Mbit/s". After install I notice they had deployed ADSL equipment with a theoretical maximum throughput of 12/1.3 Mbit/s. They claimed that this was ok and tried to hide behind the "up to" clause.

orbital-decay 6y ago

There's a solid technical reason for that though, as ISPs have no control over the performance of your connection's remote part. Sure, it leaves plenty of room for abuse, but this is a necessary disclaimer, not some slippery marketing.

readams 6y ago
It also includes the fact that their network may be oversubscribed.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  There's no "may" about it: they are oversubscribed for consumers so as to get the price points down. If anyone wants to have an unfettered pipe then call up a Tier 1/2/3 ISP and ask for a commercial connection via a single-mode fibre, and be ready to pay quite a bit for it.
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    > If anyone wants to have an unfettered pipe then call up a Tier 1/2/3 ISP and ask for a commercial connection via a single-mode fibre, and be ready to pay quite a bit for it. You might be surprised to find it surprisingly affordable. Cheaper than colocation, even.
    - erinnh 6y ago
      Only if you want a complete rack or more at a colo facility. If you get half a rack or less, that tends to be (quite a bit) cheaper.
      - ComputerGuru 6y ago
        I have both, and I think the break even point is probably paying for around 7 or 8U.
    - throw0101a 6y ago
      > You might be surprised to find it surprisingly affordable. Assuming you can easily get hooked up at a residential address. Perhaps if you live in an apartment/condo tower, then fibre may have already been run: * https://www.fibrestream.ca/locations https://www.fibrestream.ca/locations Some random house, on some random street? Unlikely.
      - ComputerGuru 6y ago
        If you get in touch with the right department, you would typically have to sign a multi year contract with the net value due upfront in case of termination to get them to run the fiber to you. Or else cover the cost of the run as an installation fee.
        throw0101a 6y ago
        > Or else cover the cost of the run as an installation fee. The community of Ammon, ID, built their own municipal fibre network because of this: > It all began about seven years ago when the city government, suffering from horrible upload speeds, wanted a dedicated 100Mbps circuit between City Hall and the Public Works building, less than a mile apart. Qwest (now CenturyLink) didn't want the project, while Cable One offered to do it for a start-up fee of $80,000 plus $1,000 a month, Patterson said. * https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-if-switching-fiber-isps-was-as-easy-as-clicking-a-mouse/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-... * https://www.ammonfiber.com https://www.ammonfiber.com At this year's (virtual) NLNOG there was presentation from a fellow who was fed up with slow Internet options in his rural Michigan county and so setup his own ISP by having fibre optic pulled to his house and then redistributing service to his neighbours: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg
  - causality0 6y ago
    This varies wildly by location and company. Approximately half my family is subscribed to Cox, and the other half mostly to Spectrum. The Cox connections never drop below 80% of their advertised speeds and the Spectrum ones rarely rise above 50%. Huge swaths of Spectrum's service area are so resource-starved they don't rise above 10% of their advertised speeds during daylight hours.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      IMO, there should be some regulation where they should be forced to mention the current and maximum allocation that they are willing to make as well as the average/median bandwidth that the active users enjoy per hour.
      - bleepblorp 6y ago
        The UK has a rule which requires ISPs to only advertise speeds achievable by 50% of users during peak periods. Customers are also allowed to leave contracts without penalty if ISPs are unable or unwilling to provide advertised speeds to the end user[0]. Such rules are not within the American Overton window for the usual reasons. [0] https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/ask-our-expert/broadband-speed-advertising-is-changing-but-how https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/ask-our-expert/broadband-...
        ATsch 6y ago
        Germany has a website that lets you automatically file a complaint if your provider doesn't reach 90% of the advertised speed in measurements over two days
akhosravian 6y ago
Does anyone in the US actually get the “up to” even plugging directly into the ISP provided modem at off peak times?
- kop316 6y ago
  Yes, I do. I have lived in several different areas where I had no problems getting the full advertised speed at any given time (on peak, off peak, etc.). I think the biggest reason they say "up to" is because a lot of poeple get a cheap $40 router that can't support that the advertised speed. Heck, I just moved into a new place that gives symmetric gigabit speeds. I had to replace my router to actually get one that can handle the advertised speeds (I had an APU1d4 with realtek ethernet ports that saturated at 300 Mb/s). My older laptop does not even have wired nor wireless speeds that can handle the connection. So while I am no fan of a lot of ISPs, I completely understand why they say "up to", they don't want to deal with folks who say they don't get their advertised speeds while using a $200 laptop and a $40 router.
- wmf 6y ago
  Many ISPs provide that level (or more) of performance, even during peak hours. https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/mba/images/2018/chart1.png https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/mba/images/2018/chart1.png https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-america/measuring-fixed-broadband-eighth-report https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broad...
- xoa 6y ago
  Yes, absolutely. On all 5 different sites I manage in fact, two on a local ISP ADSL, third on local ISP fiber, fourth on Comcast Business cable modem, and even the fifth on a small regional WISP. All of them are reliably within a few percent of their expected speed with about the frequency that one would reasonably expect from that connection class. "Up-to" is fuzzy but quite justified with many technologies. Proper fiber of course is rock solid and essentially never has issues short of a backhoe. But ADSL falls off hard with distance, and a lot of the in-house wiring it's forced through is ancient garbage phone line. Sometimes one can get a huge practical boost just from shortening/replacing line with cat 5. And WISPs obviously have to deal with inclement weather fade as well as any additional obstacles for subpar sites that customers can't/won't rectify. Cable is more of a shared resource though you get much better support and less bullshit with business class even though Comcast are bastards. Now, I absolutely would love to see it mandated by law that somewhere upfront in ISP info to consumers it's required to have a standardized SLA. A consumer-level SLA for sure, but still have it formalized and cover all of the basics. So not just absolute max bandwidth, but 90%/50%/whatever bandwidth, any guaranteed floor, 90% latency, any data caps, any throttling criteria, etc. All categories the same and measured in a mandated standardized way so universally comparable. I don't expect data center level SLAs at all, but there isn't any reason there can't be that level of clarity. But residential/SOHO and such service inherently has more uncertainty and more compromises and capacity multipliers to meet lower prices. I think that's ok, just that it should be laid out and not buried in some fine print or support page in the disused lavatory defended by a leopard either.
gorgoiler 6y ago
The ISP is also in the best position to publish the p50, p90 and p99 speeds their customers reach. But why bother, when they can feign ignorance and just talk about what the boffins in the Science Lab say it should be. Perhaps, with tongue in cheek, we could call this the p0 speed — as in it doesn’t make sense and it’s guaranteed that 0% of customers achieve it.
- dirkt 6y ago
  Percentiles are not helpful, because at least in my home country what degrades the maximum potential speed is the influence that parallel copper cables have on each other. So my internet speed depends on how much my neighbours are using the internet. It's really really difficult to predict this statistically. OTOH, there's a guaranteed minimum speed the ISP has to deliver.
  - gorgoiler 6y ago
    This is really interesting, thank you. Do you have a link to some good info on the phenomenon?
aidenn0 6y ago
They have total control over your connection's speed, particularly when they mandate you use their equipment.
- ac29 6y ago
  Only as far as the first bottleneck though - if 1000 customers in a neighborhood pay for 1Gbps connections, that doesnt mean the neighborhood actually has 1Tbps of capacity to the wider internet. Its probably a tenth of that at best, even in well connected areas.

sellyme 6y ago

That's illegal where I live, the primary connection speed figure used in advertisements must be the average speed users in the real world experience. Turns out that consumer protection laws are pretty useful.

PeterStuer 6y ago

The worst case ever: Long ago an ISP sold me on VDSL for the office as "up to 55/3 Mbit/s". After install I notice they had deployed ADSL equipment with a theoretical maximum throughput of 12/1.3 Mbit/s. They claimed that this was ok and tried to hide behind the "up to" clause.