4 ms·

I live in the absolute arse end of nowhere Portugal - the nearest city is 60km away, over mountains, and the entire district (~50x50km) has a population of 3000

I live in the absolute arse end of nowhere Portugal - the nearest city is 60km away, over mountains, and the entire district (~50x50km) has a population of 3000. They have symmetric gigabit fibre in all of the villages, for €20 a month. In my apartment in the U.K., in a city of 300,000, the best I can get is 0.25/15Mbps - for £80 a month. It craps out completely every evening, down to 200kbps or so, as everyone streams netflix at potato quality.

bfz 5y ago
> They have symmetric gigabit fibre in all of the villages, for €20 a month. I often wonder at observations like this whether it's the result of massive subsidies or massive over-subscription of the infrastructure. How is actual bandwidth/jitter on that line? Romania also has bold claims about infrastructure penetration, it's a fair example of somewhere I'd have good reason to doubt their credibility. A stable loss/jitter-free FTTP connection at 50 GBP/mo. is very much value for money compared to an equivalent line featuring loss/latency/jitter at even a tenth of that price and with 10x the claimed line rate. Separately, I have put off gigabit installation numerous times over 6 years simply because I can't really benefit from it on contemporary WiFi. (Also yes, on re-reading my comment I realize I am a bit jealous of your setup in Portugal ;)
- Havoc 5y ago
  >whether it's the result of massive subsidies I think the key thing here is that probably yes, however it is essentially once off. Not that expensive to keep shooting photons down the fibre once its in the ground. So from a country perspective that's a pretty grand deal compared to say farming subsidies that you need to do annually.
- philjohn 5y ago
  Having worked with a remote dev team in Romania it was actually pretty solid. Fast to services locally peered, slower to elsewhere, but still miles better than what I had in the UK at the time. And for telecommunications, which are definitely in the "utility" category now, subsidies for the up-front capital costs are warranted IMHO, especially as it can act as an economic accelerator. As for contemporary wifi, that's why I had my house wired for Cat 6 a few months back - I've got 3 Wifi 6 access points as well (PoE powered, ceiling mounted) and can saturate my 500/70 FTTP connection.
- madaxe_again 5y ago
  Yeah, it was heavily subsidised - they’ve been on a big push over the last several years to get digital infrastructure into the boondocks. Contention is low, given the population - and I don’t directly use it, as I live quite a way off grid - but it’s the backbone for our LTE connection, which gets a comfortable and consistent 150 down and 50 up - plenty good enough.
- rasz 5y ago
  > result of massive subsidies very much. In early 2000 I consulted for small defense contractor trying to win bids providing internet to rural Spain. They made me cobble together an absolute garbage solution of slow early Sat (the ~1 second latency kind) internet with Wifi last mile. It barely worked for anything other than mail, browsing web was pure suffering, gaming was out of the question. Thankfully this venture went nowhere, but even with very expensive Satellite uplink finances still made some sense considering the remoteness of locations.
- simne 5y ago
  We in Ukraine have cheapest home internet in Europe, normal something like 5$ for 100mbit copper, with 20mbit to abroad; 10$ gigabit, with 300mbit abroad. But this is on "home-network" technologies - they have their equipment distributed over buildings and have not central core, so this is cheaper, but lacks some things which seem normal for telecoms. It is very reliable, easy achieve less than 5 hours of downtime per month. Most downtime because somebody steal equipment from attic, or somebody tried to steal fiber cables, thinking it is copper. Example trace (skipped not necessary info): traceroute -q 2 -w 1 --resolve-hostnames www.amazon.com traceroute to d3ag4hukkh62yn.cloudfront.net (52.84.115.95), 64 hops max 2 94.244.0.210 (rusanovka-uaix.elan-ua.net) 0.519ms 0.432ms 3 193.239.72.201 (ae2-166-gw0.g50.kv.dataline.ua) 0.556ms 0.550ms 4 10.204.215.47 (10.204.215.47) 45.048ms 8.404ms 5 193.239.74.62 (amazon.dataline.ua) 27.452ms 27.259ms 6 * * 7 * * 8 150.222.27.44 (150.222.27.44) 41.083ms 41.283ms 9 150.222.27.197 (150.222.27.197) 40.665ms 40.495ms Example ntpq -np remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ============================================================================== ua.pool.ntp.org .POOL. 16 p - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000 *62.149.0.30 .GPS. 1 u 353 1024 377 0.702 0.063 0.105 +91.236.251.13 105.240.56.33 2 u 40 1024 377 3.825 -0.068 0.466 -195.78.244.50 91.198.10.4 3 u 171 1024 377 17.445 3.617 0.251 -162.159.200.1 10.132.8.165 3 u 615 1024 377 0.460 2.218 0.115 -162.159.200.123 10.132.8.165 3 u 806 1024 377 0.489 2.212 0.104 -91.236.251.12 105.240.56.33 2 u 46 1024 377 3.879 -0.522 1.551 -91.236.251.129 118.188.39.164 2 u 58 1024 377 5.025 -0.056 0.293 -193.106.144.7 31.28.161.68 2 u 368 1024 377 6.991 1.203 0.120 +31.28.161.68 .GPS. 1 u 961 1024 377 0.543 0.152 0.134 BTW could somebody give link, on what template engine uses HN, so I will post structured text. Thanks in advance!
- simne 5y ago
  In Ukrainian rural areas people use mostly ADSL, 3G, and pay much more than usual for city area 5$ per unlimited 20/100mbit. remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ============================================================================== ua.pool.ntp.org .POOL. 16 p - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000 *62.149.0.30 .GPS. 1 u 353 1024 377 0.702 0.063 0.105 +91.236.251.13 105.240.56.33 2 u 40 1024 377 3.825 -0.068 0.466 -195.78.244.50 91.198.10.4 3 u 171 1024 377 17.445 3.617 0.251 -162.159.200.1 10.132.8.165 3 u 615 1024 377 0.460 2.218 0.115 -162.159.200.123 10.132.8.165 3 u 806 1024 377 0.489 2.212 0.104 -91.236.251.12 105.240.56.33 2 u 46 1024 377 3.879 -0.522 1.551 -91.236.251.129 118.188.39.164 2 u 58 1024 377 5.025 -0.056 0.293 -193.106.144.7 31.28.161.68 2 u 368 1024 377 6.991 1.203 0.120 +31.28.161.68 .GPS. 1 u 961 1024 377 0.543 0.152 0.134
ricardobayes 5y ago
In Romania you can get for 3€ a month and you have overpaid then. I think it's no wonder why so many bright tech talent comes from the Cental Eastern European region. Accessible fast connections must have played a huge role.
- simne 5y ago
  > Accessible fast connections... Must admit, your suggestion is very close to reality. In reality, need complex - good basic education + accessible from early school computers + low level of income in country, so smart people must figure out, how to flee out of poor. For example, in Brasilia, all people play football (soccer) at least once per week (many play every day), and they have best football team in world. Another example, China was so poor, they have not seen home computers before late 2000s, so now they have not hackers culture at all, and so their startup system looks weird. Another example, I grow in Ukraine, with access to ZX Spectrum, and now I'm here :)

bfz 5y ago

> They have symmetric gigabit fibre in all of the villages, for €20 a month. I often wonder at observations like this whether it's the result of massive subsidies or massive over-subscription of the infrastructure. How is actual bandwidth/jitter on that line? Romania also has bold claims about infrastructure penetration, it's a fair example of somewhere I'd have good reason to doubt their credibility. A stable loss/jitter-free FTTP connection at 50 GBP/mo. is very much value for money compared to an equivalent line featuring loss/latency/jitter at even a tenth of that price and with 10x the claimed line rate. Separately, I have put off gigabit installation numerous times over 6 years simply because I can't really benefit from it on contemporary WiFi. (Also yes, on re-reading my comment I realize I am a bit jealous of your setup in Portugal ;)

Havoc 5y ago
>whether it's the result of massive subsidies I think the key thing here is that probably yes, however it is essentially once off. Not that expensive to keep shooting photons down the fibre once its in the ground. So from a country perspective that's a pretty grand deal compared to say farming subsidies that you need to do annually.
philjohn 5y ago
Having worked with a remote dev team in Romania it was actually pretty solid. Fast to services locally peered, slower to elsewhere, but still miles better than what I had in the UK at the time. And for telecommunications, which are definitely in the "utility" category now, subsidies for the up-front capital costs are warranted IMHO, especially as it can act as an economic accelerator. As for contemporary wifi, that's why I had my house wired for Cat 6 a few months back - I've got 3 Wifi 6 access points as well (PoE powered, ceiling mounted) and can saturate my 500/70 FTTP connection.
madaxe_again 5y ago
Yeah, it was heavily subsidised - they’ve been on a big push over the last several years to get digital infrastructure into the boondocks. Contention is low, given the population - and I don’t directly use it, as I live quite a way off grid - but it’s the backbone for our LTE connection, which gets a comfortable and consistent 150 down and 50 up - plenty good enough.
rasz 5y ago
> result of massive subsidies very much. In early 2000 I consulted for small defense contractor trying to win bids providing internet to rural Spain. They made me cobble together an absolute garbage solution of slow early Sat (the ~1 second latency kind) internet with Wifi last mile. It barely worked for anything other than mail, browsing web was pure suffering, gaming was out of the question. Thankfully this venture went nowhere, but even with very expensive Satellite uplink finances still made some sense considering the remoteness of locations.
simne 5y ago
We in Ukraine have cheapest home internet in Europe, normal something like 5$ for 100mbit copper, with 20mbit to abroad; 10$ gigabit, with 300mbit abroad. But this is on "home-network" technologies - they have their equipment distributed over buildings and have not central core, so this is cheaper, but lacks some things which seem normal for telecoms. It is very reliable, easy achieve less than 5 hours of downtime per month. Most downtime because somebody steal equipment from attic, or somebody tried to steal fiber cables, thinking it is copper. Example trace (skipped not necessary info): traceroute -q 2 -w 1 --resolve-hostnames www.amazon.com traceroute to d3ag4hukkh62yn.cloudfront.net (52.84.115.95), 64 hops max 2 94.244.0.210 (rusanovka-uaix.elan-ua.net) 0.519ms 0.432ms 3 193.239.72.201 (ae2-166-gw0.g50.kv.dataline.ua) 0.556ms 0.550ms 4 10.204.215.47 (10.204.215.47) 45.048ms 8.404ms 5 193.239.74.62 (amazon.dataline.ua) 27.452ms 27.259ms 6 * * 7 * * 8 150.222.27.44 (150.222.27.44) 41.083ms 41.283ms 9 150.222.27.197 (150.222.27.197) 40.665ms 40.495ms Example ntpq -np remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ============================================================================== ua.pool.ntp.org .POOL. 16 p - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000 *62.149.0.30 .GPS. 1 u 353 1024 377 0.702 0.063 0.105 +91.236.251.13 105.240.56.33 2 u 40 1024 377 3.825 -0.068 0.466 -195.78.244.50 91.198.10.4 3 u 171 1024 377 17.445 3.617 0.251 -162.159.200.1 10.132.8.165 3 u 615 1024 377 0.460 2.218 0.115 -162.159.200.123 10.132.8.165 3 u 806 1024 377 0.489 2.212 0.104 -91.236.251.12 105.240.56.33 2 u 46 1024 377 3.879 -0.522 1.551 -91.236.251.129 118.188.39.164 2 u 58 1024 377 5.025 -0.056 0.293 -193.106.144.7 31.28.161.68 2 u 368 1024 377 6.991 1.203 0.120 +31.28.161.68 .GPS. 1 u 961 1024 377 0.543 0.152 0.134 BTW could somebody give link, on what template engine uses HN, so I will post structured text. Thanks in advance!
simne 5y ago
In Ukrainian rural areas people use mostly ADSL, 3G, and pay much more than usual for city area 5$ per unlimited 20/100mbit. remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ============================================================================== ua.pool.ntp.org .POOL. 16 p - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000 *62.149.0.30 .GPS. 1 u 353 1024 377 0.702 0.063 0.105 +91.236.251.13 105.240.56.33 2 u 40 1024 377 3.825 -0.068 0.466 -195.78.244.50 91.198.10.4 3 u 171 1024 377 17.445 3.617 0.251 -162.159.200.1 10.132.8.165 3 u 615 1024 377 0.460 2.218 0.115 -162.159.200.123 10.132.8.165 3 u 806 1024 377 0.489 2.212 0.104 -91.236.251.12 105.240.56.33 2 u 46 1024 377 3.879 -0.522 1.551 -91.236.251.129 118.188.39.164 2 u 58 1024 377 5.025 -0.056 0.293 -193.106.144.7 31.28.161.68 2 u 368 1024 377 6.991 1.203 0.120 +31.28.161.68 .GPS. 1 u 961 1024 377 0.543 0.152 0.134

ricardobayes 5y ago

In Romania you can get for 3€ a month and you have overpaid then. I think it's no wonder why so many bright tech talent comes from the Cental Eastern European region. Accessible fast connections must have played a huge role.

simne 5y ago
> Accessible fast connections... Must admit, your suggestion is very close to reality. In reality, need complex - good basic education + accessible from early school computers + low level of income in country, so smart people must figure out, how to flee out of poor. For example, in Brasilia, all people play football (soccer) at least once per week (many play every day), and they have best football team in world. Another example, China was so poor, they have not seen home computers before late 2000s, so now they have not hackers culture at all, and so their startup system looks weird. Another example, I grow in Ukraine, with access to ZX Spectrum, and now I'm here :)