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And that speed should be symmetrical. We are continuing to push the boundaries are content going out.
by notyourwork 3y ago
And that speed should be symmetrical. We are continuing to push the boundaries are content going out.
- AussieWog93 3y agoThat's what gets me. Is there a technical reason why symmetrical connections would be more expensive than asymm?
- epx 3y agoAFAIK, PON (Passive Optical Network) has inherent reasons to be asymetric
- wmf 3y agoNot really. I'm sure asymmetric PON is cheaper but there are plenty of symmetric EPON modes.
- paxys 3y agoThe technical reason is that by restricting upload speed they can offer a higher download speed, and that is what most users care about.
- andersa 3y agoThis is nonsense. Fiber cables are always capable of the same speed in both directions at once. The actual reason is so they can sell you an overpriced "business" plan if you need upload speeds from the current decade.
- paxys 3y agoA very small part of the country is connected by fiber, and fiber connections are always symmetrical. The vast majority of consumers still get internet via coax cables, and bandwidth is very much an issue on those.
- derefr 3y agoNo, a very small part of the last mile is connected by fiber. Trunking is always fiber these days. As are local neighbourhood branch points, if your provider evolved from a telephone company. (If you live in an apartment building served by an ex-telephone ISP, you likely have fiber run all the way to the network closet of your building, with only the per-subscriber in-wall wiring switching over to copper.) ISPs that evolved from cable companies might still be using cable hubs with a common collision domain, but only a relatively small number of subscribers will be riding the same copper — it’s just cheaper these days to convert the signal to fiber as early in the signal path as possible. Plastic wires are cheaper than metal wires, and you need fewer of them (and so fewer switches.)
- 0x0000000 3y agoFiber is not ubiquitous. Many of us are still on DOCSIS over copper, in which case the person you are replying to is exactly correct: upload speed can be reduced for additional download speed.
- aidenn0 3y agoTrue FTTH is naturally symmetric; PON is not nor is Cable.
- dylan604 3y agoNo, I think you might be confused. We all know that the fiber for the download link is at least 10x wider than the fiber for the upload channel. There's just no way to squeeze the same number of bits through the smaller "tube" /s
- IntelMiner 3y agoYes, *fiber* can. But the majority of Americans use Cable/HFC (DOCSIS) technologies. These were designed as a one-to-many closed loop TV broadcast on a coax line. Except with the incoming DOCSIS 4.0 deployments it's always been asymmetric as a limitation of the technology
- aaronax 3y agoThough the fiber system as a whole may not be capable of symmetry. For example GPON with 2.5gbps/1.25gbps up/down and 10G-PON at 10/2.5 up/down.
- wing-_-nuts 3y agoI find that reasoning suspicious. Ever notice how most of the muni and coop internet providers offer a symmetrical speed while att and comcast don't? My bet is that there's no real technical limitation, it's simply price segmentation.
- paxys 3y agoFiber is symmetric, coax is not. This isn't some grand conspiracy, just how the underlying engineering works.
- orra 3y agoIn the UK, Openreach FTTP is heavily asymmetric. Network operators aren't entirely at the whims of asymmetric standards: network operators want asymmetric services.
- wmf 3y agoThere is a technical limitation on cable and DSL networks but not on other techs like fiber or wireless.
- vel0city 3y agoAT&T does offer symmetrical speeds. Most PON-based FTTH ISPs I've encountered do. There are technical reasons for offering asymmetrical speeds when it comes to coax connections. There's only so many channels on the wire, a lot are still dedicated to television, people mostly only care about download, so they prioritize it. PONs don't carry television and are just fundamentally different in design, so its easier for them to support symmetrical bandwidth.
- godzillabrennus 3y agoMy assumption is torrents are a threat to streaming services already and potentially a death blow if uplink speeds are too fast.
- RajT88 3y agoWhen I worked at a small ISP, this was indeed a threat. We offered symmetric speeds though and dealt with it via traffic shaping. It really was just the odd teenager torrenting here and there.
- hhh 3y agowhy would uplink speeds being fast contribute to torrents outside of the first few seeders?... you would just have more peers contributing smaller amounts
- callalex 3y agoAlso new media (streamers and tubers) rely on uploads and are eating cable’s lunch. It’s just extortion through monopoly.
- aidenn0 3y agoAssuming we are talking about Cable internet: If they were starting from scratch all possibilities are equally expensive, but they have installed equipment in your neighborhood which assumes a specific channel allocation. They have increased the channel allocation for upstream in recent years and DOCSIS 4.0 allows symmetric connections, but the demand is for downstream, and the fewer channels they allocate to upstream the bigger number they can advertise.
- seany 3y agoIt depends on the layer 1 medium. In a shared RF environment (dialup, cable, wifi, p2p RF) you normally have a shared bandwidth space. This is typically "channelized" and you can pick how many channels you want for "up" and how many for "down". This isn't normally dynamic, it needs to be fixed by the standard or at the very least by the head end equipment. It's more expensive in the above RF spaces because cabling is expensive the more home runs you want to do. With fiber it's a little easier, 1:32 pon splits still give a _lot_ of bandwidth for upstream because it's easier to isolate the adjacent wavelengths (you can pack them in tighter), and the normal noise floor is lower. With 1:1 fiber DIA it's a total non issue and you can do what ever is the limit of the noise of the fiber and the limits of the transceivers (typically optical packages in sfp/sfp+ packaging these days)
- yadaeno 3y agoAnd throw in an availability requirement so my gigabit connection doesn't drop to 10kbps every Friday night when everyone is using the internet.
- Astronaut3315 3y agoAdd in some moderate packet loss and you’ve got CenturyLink fiber.
- kulahan 3y agoA huge portion of people don't need a massive upstream. This sounds more expensive for basically no benefit (for most)
- ceejayoz 3y agoA lot of people need enough for at least a steady Zoom/FaceTime call, and that's only going to increase over time.
- dylan604 3y agopotentially multiple simultaneously if mom&dad have separate jobs with kids attending classes. asymmetrical is as antiquated as dial-up. there's no reason for it in 2023.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoYou don't need more than 10 mb for that though. How often are people uploading 1+ GB? For me at least the answer is never.
- ceejayoz 3y agoNot many are using gigabit upstream, but Spectrum’s 300 megabit down plans in my area come with like 20 megabit up. I’d get noticeable stutter in calls if I browsed the web during one. Thankfully synchronous gigabit fiber came this year.
- zerd 3y agoIf I take a video on my phone and sync it to the cloud that's easily more than that. And if that takes up the whole 10 Mbit, video calls get unusable.
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- RajT88 3y agoAsymmetric speeds let ISP's oversell their network (more).
- LoganDark 3y agoMy upload speed is a mere 35th of my download. Affordable symmetrical needs to be a thing. Especially with a certain ISP monopoly.
- sokoloff 3y agoI don't care if it's symmetrical. I care that I have enough upstream. I'd obviously rather have a useful 500/200 than a 100/100 or 50/50, even though the latter is symmetrical. (I think my service now is around 400/20. I'm way happier with that than I would be with 50/50.)