It's users consuming bandwidth the way they want to and are paying the ISP to provide on infrastructure the big telecom companies have gotten billions of dollars in loans, grants, and tax breaks to upgrade. Beyond that, they market smooth streaming media usage as part of selling their product.
The Internet Myth: Connection Quality and Speed (Europe vs US) *spawn*
- Thread starter joker454
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It's users consuming bandwidth the way they want to and are paying the ISP to provide on infrastructure the big telecom companies have gotten billions of dollars in loans, grants, and tax breaks to upgrade. Beyond that, they market smooth streaming media usage as part of selling their product.
All of the above mentioned. If verizomcast are unable to provide the services they claim in their ads they can charge consumers more to get that service. Of course they WILL start charging more but only after the leverage of monopolistic practices allow them to do it on their own schedule rather than the market doing so
Sort of...it's not all Internet users consuming bandwidth the way they want to, it's a small subset of internet users using it for Netflix which happen to be consuming a lions share of internet bandwidth. One could argue that this smaller percentage of internet users are negatively affecting the majority of internet users, does that seem fair? Or worded another way with a more extreme example, let's say I started a business that resulted in 2% of internet users taking 90% of all internet bandwidth and no one here used my business at all but you were all negatively affected by it with slower internet speeds. Would it bug you guys, or would you just roll with it and say hey that's how it goes, the 2% should get 90% of the internet? It's an extreme example to be sure, but then again I'd wager that years ago no one predicted that it would be possible for one entity to consume 34% of all internet bandwidth in an entire nation!
This is classic misdirection, fallacial and debunked since years. The internet backbone itself is nowhere near being overloaded by either file sharing or streaming video. Quite the opposite, it has a tremendous capacity for carrying data.
Whingeing ISPs blaming their own customers for percieved or self-created problems is just that; the ISPs could easily upgrade any congested endpoints of their networks, or if failing that (too miserly, most likely); stop overselling their own capacity. But, no. It's a huge revenue stream for them to sell overpriced, overspecced subscriptions, which of course is pure banditry and fraud. But is anyone punishing them for it? No.
Instead, ISPs get a free ticket to fool people like you into believing it's all Netflix' fault, which is simply untrue.
Well, I blame the ISP's for this, because I am using the bandwidth I am paying for.
If 2% of us do that and it affects the rest of you, who has not done their job?
When netflix came online in Norway, lots of ISP's got a big not so nice surprise,
What they ended up doing was telling Netflix, install a server in our network and your customers will have a good experience, if not, you are on best effort like everything else on our WAN/uplinks.
Which solved the issued of link congestion and did not breach net neutrality.
If 2% of us do that and it affects the rest of you, who has not done their job?
When netflix came online in Norway, lots of ISP's got a big not so nice surprise,
What they ended up doing was telling Netflix, install a server in our network and your customers will have a good experience, if not, you are on best effort like everything else on our WAN/uplinks.
Which solved the issued of link congestion and did not breach net neutrality.
Yeah my line of thinking stems from the idea that there are unresolvable bottlenecks in the countries network infrastructure someplace. If that's not the case then none of what I said applies. Right now it's hard to get to the source of the problem because everyone is blaming everyone else. I do suspect much of the bottlenecks are self imposed and hence justifying the need for overpriced plans...but we need concrete proof of that. On the internet it's common to blame companies for everything and maybe they are right, but then again much of this countries infrastructure in general is really old so maybe some parts of it are not keeping pace with demand.
What's the problem with Netflix? Its bitrate isn't that high is it, especially compared to these tens of megabit connections people are tooting. 7 Mbps according to Netflix themselves. Is it an issue of every household playing NF simultaneously and the core not being able to serve?
It's not really a capacity issue at all, because as you say, NF's bandwidth isn't very high compared to the pipe people are being led to believe they're actually paying for. It's more an issue of A: ISPs overselling their endpoint connection capacity, but that's not really a problem because netflix bandwidth is scaleable (quality goes down if the connection is slow), and ISPs could upgrade their hardware, except they don't want to spend the money. They prefer to just make money instead and not invest as much as they should have to, considering peoples' reliance and expectation of the internet keeps increasing.
And B - and this is the big one: ISPs do this because they CAN. Like I mentioned, they like to make money more than they like to invest, so if they can make money both from their customers (who are actually paying for everything they download - bandwidth over the internet is fking cheap these days), AND by taxing netflix, then they will do it. And nobody's stopping them. The american FCC even legally endorsed protection racketeering over the internet not long ago. That's extraordinary, and utterly offensive to anyone with an ounce of standards and integrity.
And B - and this is the big one: ISPs do this because they CAN. Like I mentioned, they like to make money more than they like to invest, so if they can make money both from their customers (who are actually paying for everything they download - bandwidth over the internet is fking cheap these days), AND by taxing netflix, then they will do it. And nobody's stopping them. The american FCC even legally endorsed protection racketeering over the internet not long ago. That's extraordinary, and utterly offensive to anyone with an ounce of standards and integrity.
Not exactly on topic, but would anyone know why my ~70Mbps down/20Mbps up varies so much that sometimes when I run the test I get 70Mb down, sometimes 20 - but upload speed is always around 20Mbps? How can the download speed differ so much, while retaining that rather high upload speed?
Maybe your bandwidth is shared? With my Fios internet provider I get dedicated bandwidth so I always get 35/35 no matter what, whereas some cable companies share bandwidth with others on the block meaning sometimes you can get your max speed, other times you won't.
Most definitely not. I live alone and I don't share my toys. That's why it's weird.
I should specify that I'm with BT which are renowned for being shit, but I'd have thought these things got better with fiber optic.
How are you doing your "speed tests"? For me it makes a huge difference which servers I connect to. I just did some speed tests a few minutes ago and on some servers I get 115Mbps on others I get 60-70Mbps. Ironically the slower speeds are from closer servers located only about 20 miles away while the faster speeds are from servers located about 50 miles away.
Uploads are the same regardless of server location for me.
Uploads are the same regardless of server location for me.
I was also under the impression that ISPs were throttling Netflix in the US.
And the FCC is ran by a former ISP lobbyist, Wheeler. Personally appointed by our present administration.
Regulatory capture is rampant in the US. My country has legalized or obsfucated all serious corruption, as to lend credence to the idea that we are a nominally fair and responsible nation. But we're not.
You should be thinking of it in terms of hops. When doing anything in the internet really, your computer crosses various points that add latency and potential bottlenecks along the way. The closer your "messuring" device is, usually, the better (less within the chain that could cause a bottleneck). Also, when going above a certain threshold (50-1000Mbps) it becomes more difficult to messure effectively, because there might be various components within the change that are limited to 100Mbps, are under load (lots of small pakets) etc.
The most likely scenario is that perhaps one of your own devices might be on the limit. This could be your modem, your router, or even your computer. It's usually best to do this tests with as little as possible running and always over a dedicated cable connection (not wireless). Also, it could also be that the speedtest you're doing is equally under load and/or doesn't have the full capacity to measure your link.
For that reason, it's easier to messure 1Mbps than 10Mbps, or 10Mbps than 100Mbps etc. I wouldn't think too much of it.
An easy example; When doing a speedtest using my PS4, I rarely get over 20-40Mbps downstream, but that's simply because PSN doesn't offer more bandwidth per connection here.
On the contrary, I think that with fiber, the cables have so much bandwidth that most hosting companies typically bottleneck on the server end. Eventually they'll balance out the subscription plans to their average capacity better, but likely you're now suffering from teething problems.
(Unless of course you've got a virus)
steveOrino
Regular
Its a scary thought. Take Comcast for example. They are trying to buy up all the cable competition.
They are mega conglomerate since its really Universal/NBC/Comcast and they offer Internet/TV/Phone/Security. So they own the content and the infrastructure to many consumer's televisions. I mean NetFlix is paying them not to throttle their services after all. Comcast I guess doesn't have to worry about their own streaming service Streampix meeting the same fate
. Since the FCC is determined to rid of any regulation regardless of which administration is in power I can foresee a world where the companies owing the pipe can charge and limit whatever they want. I guess Google foresaw this long ago which is why they bought up all that fiber.
Anyway this is a real knee to the balls to content providers and consumers. When people talk of disc-less game consoles in this part of the forums I have to wonder where they live because in the US downloading multiple 50 gig games when many ISPs have caps doesn't sound realistic any time soon.
doesnt the problem also can be in their contract and network condition with international network backbone? and contract with other ISP?
sorry this is different country but in indonesia, long time ago, the connection inside indonesia itself is great (i get about 100KB/s for 1Mbps subscribsion) but if i connect to international, the speed drop like a rock to tens of KB/s.
its easily fixed by running download through proxy server that my ISP left alone since bygone era (ehm, dial-up). By using that proxy, 100KB/s downloding from anywhere in the world.
the network itself able to sustain more than 50Mbps (according to my modem status) in some area, and some other area to 20Mbps or lower (according to my friend modem status). According to my ISP, this is due to their last mile connection still not 100% converted to FO.
then the international connection got better after they annouched that they buy more international bandwidth
sorry this is different country but in indonesia, long time ago, the connection inside indonesia itself is great (i get about 100KB/s for 1Mbps subscribsion) but if i connect to international, the speed drop like a rock to tens of KB/s.
its easily fixed by running download through proxy server that my ISP left alone since bygone era (ehm, dial-up). By using that proxy, 100KB/s downloding from anywhere in the world.
the network itself able to sustain more than 50Mbps (according to my modem status) in some area, and some other area to 20Mbps or lower (according to my friend modem status). According to my ISP, this is due to their last mile connection still not 100% converted to FO.
then the international connection got better after they annouched that they buy more international bandwidth
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