The Internet Myth: Connection Quality and Speed (Europe vs US) *spawn*
- Thread starter joker454
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You know what I don't do after living in Mexico for 6 months and returning to the USA? Complain about the quality of my utility services. Just some perspective. 
I know its an old comment, but in prospects for houses, the owners put in what kind of BB you can get in the house here in Norway.
And I have friends that have choosen not to look at certain houses because they could not get the BB speed they required.
I bought my apartment 10/11 years a go, I did due dilligence and checked how far from the Exchange I was before deciding on the apartment
My requirements are lower these days, only got 40/10 VDSL2, but if I switch to cable I can get 200/10 (yes 10?!?!? zzz)
Sorry for off topic, there.
But EU has goals for 50mbps and 100Mbps connections to people with deadlines and according to the regulators in different countries, they are on a good track to meet those goals. Using GPON, PtP FTTH, FTTC/B and then VDSL2 with vectoring and now next summer maybe g.fast.
Currently the problem is that even if they supply 100Mbps or 50Mbps the end users are not buying it. So many are pushing the EU to accept that the goals should not be 70% (or what ever it is) of the people have 50Mbps, but that they can buy it if they want. According to ISP's/regulators I spoke to from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Ireland
Also my own country, Norway, is funny, due to a large country with low population density, FTTH is actually the best option for many. I think the number of households in this country is 2M and the number of BB subscribers are at about 1.3M or 1.4M households.
With Cable + FFTH (PtP & GPON) at around 500k ish, 600k-700k for DSL and the last 100K or so is a mix of technologies.
So nice to see that the US is catching up , if the people posting here are average US internet users..
I am on 15/5 connection, absolutely max unless i go out and get Cable, sure it's an option but not really worth the money just to serve my Internet needs.
Very happy that Microsoft dropped the always on DRM wouldn't have bought it if they didn't, even the 360 annoys me when there isn't a internet connection with it's ugly interface..
I am on 15/5 connection, absolutely max unless i go out and get Cable, sure it's an option but not really worth the money just to serve my Internet needs.
Very happy that Microsoft dropped the always on DRM wouldn't have bought it if they didn't, even the 360 annoys me when there isn't a internet connection with it's ugly interface..
When I was buying my house, I drew circles on the map around the telco exchanges to a distance of 2 miles or something, and I refused to look at houses falling outside those areas. At the time I ran servers, and Cable didn't have a product I could use, and it was 2001. Nowadays I just make sure it can get cable, and even that isn't a complete blocker anymore.
In South Africa, where I was prior to that, we would roll our own. Get the telco to mechanically bridge a dedicated line straight to the university and then run RS422 over it. I built a linux box that would terminate the connection on my side and bridge to ethernet. It was finicky and would often fail randomly and have to be restarted at both ends. I much prefer today's options
In South Africa, where I was prior to that, we would roll our own. Get the telco to mechanically bridge a dedicated line straight to the university and then run RS422 over it. I built a linux box that would terminate the connection on my side and bridge to ethernet. It was finicky and would often fail randomly and have to be restarted at both ends. I much prefer today's options
So nice to see that the US is catching up , if the people posting here are average US internet users..
I am on 15/5 connection, absolutely max unless i go out and get Cable, sure it's an option but not really worth the money just to serve my Internet needs.
Very happy that Microsoft dropped the always on DRM wouldn't have bought it if they didn't, even the 360 annoys me when there isn't a internet connection with it's ugly interface..
When i download from my XBOX Live i am nowhere close to my connections max, since i pretty much always get disc based games it's really not something that i usually pay attention to..
However, i bought just dance 2014.. and the download was slow.. i just wondered if this was common or if there are tips from fellow 360 owners?
Maybe these are interesting/useful:
http://www.broadbandcommission.org/documents/bb-annualreport2013.pdf
You might want to go at page 92 onward for quick info.
http://www.akamai.com/dl/documents/akamai_soti_q213.pdf?WT.mc_id=soti_Q213
http://www.broadbandcommission.org/documents/bb-annualreport2013.pdf
You might want to go at page 92 onward for quick info.
http://www.akamai.com/dl/documents/akamai_soti_q213.pdf?WT.mc_id=soti_Q213
But is the 5.66 Mbps enough upload for you? Especially if you want to use the sharing/streaming features of this new generation of consoles?
I feel limited with my 10Mbps upload at home, then I am a bit spoiled due to our network at work got 1 Gbps uplink.
I feel limited with my 10Mbps upload at home, then I am a bit spoiled due to our network at work got 1 Gbps uplink.
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That's actually an interesting point. Upload remains a significant bottleneck and limits what internet functions devices can do. I'd argue we want faster uploads than downloads. I dare say 12 Mbps is ample for most ordinary use, and larger is only really of value for downloading massive files frequently, or media access by multiple persons. 30/10 down/up is probably a far better platform for networked computing than 100/5. The higher the upload, the better distributed computing becomes as an option.
Heh. Most servers i test with speedtest actually lack the bandwidth to fully maximize my connection.
For your info: i'm on 250/15Mbps - UPC Cablecom Switzerland.
And to all those of you out there with dedicated 1:1 download/upload bandwidth over some fancy glass fibre... I dont want to know!!! *lalala*
For your info: i'm on 250/15Mbps - UPC Cablecom Switzerland.
And to all those of you out there with dedicated 1:1 download/upload bandwidth over some fancy glass fibre... I dont want to know!!! *lalala*
Yes. I use a linux pc running gentoo as a gateway and have confirmed 255/15 bandwidth.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
Can't match the upload speeds, but ping is pretty good
Other than a bunch of benchmark screenies, I didn't see anyone really talk about the situation of broadband availability for the masses here in the States.
To be blunt: we're too damned big to be good at giving broadband for everyone today. There are still significant portions of the United States that don't have cell phone coverage, and I'm talking the most simplistic dial tone functionality rather than data transmission.
The contiguous 48 states have a landmass that's one and a half orders of magnitude larger than the UK (3,800 thousand miles^2, versus 98 thousand miles^2), so our ability to run fiber and copper to the far reaches of Hillbilly Hole in Bumfuck, Nowhere runs into serious issues of ROI. Sure, you could drop some 100mbit fiber into every house for a zillion dollars, but there's no way to recoup those costs (and the related maintenance) in a meaningful timeframe.
Which is why the far smaller countries (S. Korea, Japan as prime examples) can have absolutely killer wired and wireless infrastructure and seem to continually be moving the goalposts forward -- because they have a tiny landmass in combination with huge population density. In the places where there is no population density? There probably isn't electricity, either, along with most other utilities.
To be blunt: we're too damned big to be good at giving broadband for everyone today. There are still significant portions of the United States that don't have cell phone coverage, and I'm talking the most simplistic dial tone functionality rather than data transmission.
The contiguous 48 states have a landmass that's one and a half orders of magnitude larger than the UK (3,800 thousand miles^2, versus 98 thousand miles^2), so our ability to run fiber and copper to the far reaches of Hillbilly Hole in Bumfuck, Nowhere runs into serious issues of ROI. Sure, you could drop some 100mbit fiber into every house for a zillion dollars, but there's no way to recoup those costs (and the related maintenance) in a meaningful timeframe.
Which is why the far smaller countries (S. Korea, Japan as prime examples) can have absolutely killer wired and wireless infrastructure and seem to continually be moving the goalposts forward -- because they have a tiny landmass in combination with huge population density. In the places where there is no population density? There probably isn't electricity, either, along with most other utilities.
That doesn't explain why highly populated large cities here aren't blanketed with quality internet. Here in Los Angeles at my personal residence I get great upload speed of 35mbps which I need for my business use. But just 25 minutes west at a house i use for filming there is no fiber available, and thus I'm stuck using the appalling cable company which at most offers me 2mbps upload speed. I ran speedtest on my cell phone at that same location and got 8mbps upload speed, so 4x faster upload on my phone than what Time Warner cable can offer. That's in the densely packed San Fernando Valley! I can understand how remote locations would have issues but big cities should all offer high speed internet by now.
This. Well, except for no electricity bit, which really doesn't apply to most of the developed world.
Aside from population density I think there is another important factor in relatively healthy state of broadband availability in advanced economies outside of the US. Namely, their not too distant history of having (semi-)government monopolies in telecom, cable television, electricity and radio band distribution.
Generally these facilities were deployed comprehensively, with 'easy' higher population density compact areas subsidizing the more rural parts of the country as a general principle. Of course, there were always exceptions.
This has contributed to the current situation where many consumers in areas like core Europe and Scandinavia, as well as advanced Asia, have at least 2 and often more broadband technologies available that compete on price and performance.
But high local bandwidth availability is just one piece of the puzzle and high latency on services hosted far away (like say, in the United States) can still make for a poor experience.
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