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I don’t understand why everyone is supposing that an entire household should be fine with the ability to send at most a single video stream out. What if both my

I don’t understand why everyone is supposing that an entire household should be fine with the ability to send at most a single video stream out. What if both my wife and I have separate calls we need to be on? Or my kids want to play Fortnite while I’m uploading data for work? 10mbps up is 1990s-era tech.

alkonaut 5y ago
I don't think anyone suggests that. But if we compare a "modern" asymmetrical connection such as a 250/50 or a 500/100 or a 600/300 or a 1000/100 then the "one HD stream is sub 5mbps" still means an asymmetric connection fits lots of these streams! Obviously a 100/10 or 25/5 connection isn't going to cut it. I think really the gist of the article is "You need enough bandwidth in both directions". That's it. If you have a 100mbit, 200mbit or 500mbit or 1000mbit down with a 100+ mbit up, that's less important. "Symmetry" doesn't matter, it's enough bandwidth in both directions that matters. The fact that "enough in both directions" and "symmetric" have been conflated is that because for a part of history, only symmetric connections did have enough upload bandwidth. With the gigabit and multi-gigabit down bandwidths, there is less need for symmetry so long as you have a fast upload.
- topranks 5y ago
  On a technical level most of the asymmetric techniques just carve up the spectrum/bandwidth (in Mhz) to give more of it to downstream. Or timeslots or whatever. I fully agree with the EFF that you need a decent upload, to support the applications of today and next few years. But to go fully symmetric actually means to lower the download in favour of upload, allocating exactly half of the spectrum to each. So absolutely, once you reach a certain threshold I think most users are going to opt to carve up the spectrum in a way that favours download, just based on typical needs.
  - novok 5y ago
    A dynamically allocating bandwidth allotment from a fixed budget would probably be a great improvement. 5 seperate zoom call time? More upload! Netflix time? More download, less upload! 3am backup upload time, mostly upload!

alkonaut 5y ago

I don't think anyone suggests that. But if we compare a "modern" asymmetrical connection such as a 250/50 or a 500/100 or a 600/300 or a 1000/100 then the "one HD stream is sub 5mbps" still means an asymmetric connection fits lots of these streams! Obviously a 100/10 or 25/5 connection isn't going to cut it. I think really the gist of the article is "You need enough bandwidth in both directions". That's it. If you have a 100mbit, 200mbit or 500mbit or 1000mbit down with a 100+ mbit up, that's less important. "Symmetry" doesn't matter, it's enough bandwidth in both directions that matters. The fact that "enough in both directions" and "symmetric" have been conflated is that because for a part of history, only symmetric connections did have enough upload bandwidth. With the gigabit and multi-gigabit down bandwidths, there is less need for symmetry so long as you have a fast upload.

topranks 5y ago
On a technical level most of the asymmetric techniques just carve up the spectrum/bandwidth (in Mhz) to give more of it to downstream. Or timeslots or whatever. I fully agree with the EFF that you need a decent upload, to support the applications of today and next few years. But to go fully symmetric actually means to lower the download in favour of upload, allocating exactly half of the spectrum to each. So absolutely, once you reach a certain threshold I think most users are going to opt to carve up the spectrum in a way that favours download, just based on typical needs.
- novok 5y ago
  A dynamically allocating bandwidth allotment from a fixed budget would probably be a great improvement. 5 seperate zoom call time? More upload! Netflix time? More download, less upload! 3am backup upload time, mostly upload!