4 ms·

Unfortunately, "just find another ISP" is no longer an option for plenty of people. I can appreciate the sentiment, but the risk of being kicked off of your loc

Unfortunately, "just find another ISP" is no longer an option for plenty of people. I can appreciate the sentiment, but the risk of being kicked off of your local internet mono/duopoly is a lot higher for a lot of people than it was in 2008.

ZenPro 12y ago
Can you explain? In the UK we have 6 prominent providers with over 100+ niche providers who must (by law) be given rental agreements on the existing infrastructure.
- jdsnape 12y ago
  That's because the Ofcom regulation of BT has lead to one of the world's most competitive broadband/telecoms industry In other countries, e.g. the US, there tends to be one Telco per region which both owns the infrastructure and provides service.
  - ZenPro 12y ago
    I had no idea the infrastructure in the US was so prohibitive. Thanks for the insight. I have upvoted because the comment deserved it not because the US is getting telecommunicationsly-screwed.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      In areas where cable companies had much build out, there is usually at least 2 choices (the incumbent cable player + the incumbent telco). In lots of areas, there will be more than 2 big players (you can pretty much predict this based on how wealthy the area is). More remote areas are probably gaining high speed wireless faster than they are gaining other infrastructure. It's expensive, slower and has more limitations, but it compares pretty favorably to dial up, which may be the existing option.
- Nanzikambe 12y ago
  Given the various changes in policies in the UK of late, how many of these actually provide complete Internet access? (as opposed to "Some" Internet access) I travel frequently to the UK, I use a torrent based sync solution to sync between laptop <> desktop (outside UK) <> VPS ("oh shit backup") - and I've found it absolutely astonishing how many ISPs throttle bittorrent and in some cases any traffic to a host known to run a tracker. I've tried to resolve this by putting my torrent sync within SSH (poor speed) and inside a full VPN (OpenVPN) and found several throttle VPNs too! I've subsequently moved my VPN to port 443 which seems to work, for now. Then there's ridiculously strick fair use policies despite terms like "Unlimited" and "High Speed" etc being bandied about. Seems bizarre to me, I expect that when I pay for 100mbit cable Internet, I get what I pay for, all the time, every day.
  - Nanzikambe 12y ago
    Don't get the down votes really. Just reacting to the parent with my experiences with UK ISPs, and pointing out that despite the competition, there seems to be a trend towards degraded service. Anyhoo nbd
    - ZenPro 12y ago
      The downvotes were because the throttling en masse that you speak of is largely non-existent. There are problems in the UK with achieving advertised speeds (you are correct it's misleading) but it is not because of ISP throttling traffic. Normally it is that the UK infrastructure outside of London and the South West is plagued by huge distances to the exchange (> 6 kilometres) making the advertised speeds nothing but a dream. Most ISPs in the UK are extremely tolerant of torrenting as a fact of life. It was only when a court order forced them to do so that they blocked access to kickasstorrents et al. When the mirrors sprung up the ISPs refused to block access since the court order was very specific what they had to do to comply. You said kat.ph specifically Judge nothing to do with katph.eu... The Talk Talk CEO actually blogged about the ridiculousness of the legislation and stated they absolutely would not send letters to users of the service accused of illegal piracy. The throttling you think you are seeing is normally caused by legitimate issues. Although you are correct some ISPs have a fair use limit but that is becoming rare to non-existent (even across our mobile spectrum - most plans are all you can eat data).

ZenPro 12y ago

Can you explain? In the UK we have 6 prominent providers with over 100+ niche providers who must (by law) be given rental agreements on the existing infrastructure.

jdsnape 12y ago
That's because the Ofcom regulation of BT has lead to one of the world's most competitive broadband/telecoms industry In other countries, e.g. the US, there tends to be one Telco per region which both owns the infrastructure and provides service.
- ZenPro 12y ago
  I had no idea the infrastructure in the US was so prohibitive. Thanks for the insight. I have upvoted because the comment deserved it not because the US is getting telecommunicationsly-screwed.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    In areas where cable companies had much build out, there is usually at least 2 choices (the incumbent cable player + the incumbent telco). In lots of areas, there will be more than 2 big players (you can pretty much predict this based on how wealthy the area is). More remote areas are probably gaining high speed wireless faster than they are gaining other infrastructure. It's expensive, slower and has more limitations, but it compares pretty favorably to dial up, which may be the existing option.
Nanzikambe 12y ago
Given the various changes in policies in the UK of late, how many of these actually provide complete Internet access? (as opposed to "Some" Internet access) I travel frequently to the UK, I use a torrent based sync solution to sync between laptop <> desktop (outside UK) <> VPS ("oh shit backup") - and I've found it absolutely astonishing how many ISPs throttle bittorrent and in some cases any traffic to a host known to run a tracker. I've tried to resolve this by putting my torrent sync within SSH (poor speed) and inside a full VPN (OpenVPN) and found several throttle VPNs too! I've subsequently moved my VPN to port 443 which seems to work, for now. Then there's ridiculously strick fair use policies despite terms like "Unlimited" and "High Speed" etc being bandied about. Seems bizarre to me, I expect that when I pay for 100mbit cable Internet, I get what I pay for, all the time, every day.
- Nanzikambe 12y ago
  Don't get the down votes really. Just reacting to the parent with my experiences with UK ISPs, and pointing out that despite the competition, there seems to be a trend towards degraded service. Anyhoo nbd
  - ZenPro 12y ago
    The downvotes were because the throttling en masse that you speak of is largely non-existent. There are problems in the UK with achieving advertised speeds (you are correct it's misleading) but it is not because of ISP throttling traffic. Normally it is that the UK infrastructure outside of London and the South West is plagued by huge distances to the exchange (> 6 kilometres) making the advertised speeds nothing but a dream. Most ISPs in the UK are extremely tolerant of torrenting as a fact of life. It was only when a court order forced them to do so that they blocked access to kickasstorrents et al. When the mirrors sprung up the ISPs refused to block access since the court order was very specific what they had to do to comply. You said kat.ph specifically Judge nothing to do with katph.eu... The Talk Talk CEO actually blogged about the ridiculousness of the legislation and stated they absolutely would not send letters to users of the service accused of illegal piracy. The throttling you think you are seeing is normally caused by legitimate issues. Although you are correct some ISPs have a fair use limit but that is becoming rare to non-existent (even across our mobile spectrum - most plans are all you can eat data).