28 ms·

It doesn't change the fact that you pretty much need cable for internet access of any decent speed.

• mindslight 13y ago
  At least for the first few seconds while you're in "turbo boost" before the throttling starts. And of course if you actually use this bandwidth for any length of time, you'll run over your quota and they'll extort you or cancel your service anyway. More than anything, I blame the poor ISP market in the US on this exact attitude that nothing besides cable is sufficient. Infrastructure is just not at the point where we have the class of connection you're trying to take for granted, and continually choosing only the absolute fastest provider while whining about their policies and prices is being willfully out of touch with the realities of current technology. $55/mo will get you 12M/1M ADSL2+ from an ISP like Sonic.net, which is owned by a real person who even makes crazy statements like "We delete user logs after two weeks. Your Internet provider should, too". You can double that by easily bonding two lines, and/or enable Annex M for increased upload bandwidth. And they aren't particularly concerned with how much traffic you generate, either. While these nameplate speeds are a bit slower than what you're used to seeing in cable companies' large print, keep in mind that 12Mb/sec will let you download 100GB/day, and 5Mb/sec (dual Annex M) will let you upload 42GB/day. When you compare these numbers to the usage caps and expectations of cable companies, you can see they're mostly selling an illusion.