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The thing that annoys me about the FCC, besides that they are generally impotent here or at least unwilling to actually do their job, is that the focus is alway
by tristor 3y ago
The thing that annoys me about the FCC, besides that they are generally impotent here or at least unwilling to actually do their job, is that the focus is always on speed as structured by maximum throughput for the link. I pay for a gigabit cable connection, not because I need gigabit, but because of how tiered connections and QoS are implemented by cable / broadband ISPs, and this is the only way I can reasonably guarantee that my traffic will experience low latency during business hours for things like video conferencing.
Also, from a service quality perspective, broadband ISPs have horrible problems with small amounts of persistent packet loss, largely due to physical issues because the actual physical infrastructure is old/shit and they do nothing to maintain/improve it.
Internet performance and digital experience is about a lot more than just how much maximum throughput you get for X dollars, it's about service reliability, QoS, transit quality, and and loss, latency, jitter, all of which have heavy impacts on specifically video and voice calls which are common for those of us working from home.
- buu700 3y agoIt sounds like bandwidth is somewhat analogous to the way MHz/GHz used to be treated.
- tristor 3y agoTechnically speaking, wired connections use physical RF bandwidth on the wire, rated in MHz/GHz to specify channel width, and bond these channels together (usually some variation of QAM) to provide you the ability to serve a particular amount of throughput (rated in bits per second/Mbps).
- freedomben 3y agoYep, and they don't see a difference between a company that provides a simple straightforward connection, and one that does all sorts of ridiculous traffic shaping, throttling, multiple levels of NAT, and things that make it hard to run your own router.
- brigade 3y ago> because of how tiered connections and QoS are implemented by cable / broadband ISPs It took months and multiple visits before one of techs unintentionally gave me the hint that with node congestion, Comcast will throttle all connected subscribers to the same X% of their rated speed. Annoying that the only way to reliably get even a 500kbps uplink out of them during peak videoconferencing hours was to pay for an 800/20mbps connection, but even more annoying that it took months of them blaming my cables and equipment.
- tristor 3y agoI have Comcast, and this is exactly why I have the highest tier of service, so I can guarantee that most of the time my video calls are fine, since I am permanent WFH.
- ectospheno 3y agoYeah. I pay for 1200/35mbps from comcast just for the 35.