ISP Slows Access To High Bandwidth Services 12 Hours Every Day
from the time-to-find-a-new-ISP dept
Over and over again we've seen folks on the tech side of ISPs admit that basic network upgrades can handle whatever traffic growth is happening on the network, without resorting to draconian efforts to slow down traffic. Apparently, there's an ISP in the Netherlands that didn't get the message. Broadband Reports is noting that Dutch ISP, UPC is slowing down all traffic to "high bandwidth services" from noon to midnight every single day. They're cutting bandwidth to these services by 2/3. So, apparently, if you have to do high bandwidth stuff, get it done in the morning.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: bandwidth, isps, traffic shaping
Companies: upc
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Not that I don't believe you, but do you have references? I would like some. Thanks.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Sure... was a pain to look up earlier, but should have included in the post.
CTO from Qwest: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060328/1859213.shtml
CTO from BT: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070413/011103.shtml
There are some others as well. But they all basically say that basic upgrades should handle any issues. Meanwhile, folks like Andrew Odlyzko who monitor traffic growth claim that growth is slowing down and not posing any real networking threat. It's a myth to make gov'ts feel they need to hand over large chunks of change to telcos.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
The BT article you (didn't) link actually does address the point - the CTO indicates that the new "21CN" network they're (still) building will have enough bandwidth to handle the traffic. These "basic" upgrades are slated to take only five years and cost a mere 10 billion GBP (that's a short-scale billion: one-thousand million), so only $16 billion (USD).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Mike, I get your point, but as the good doctor points out, you are way oversimplifying the cost and complexity of keeping up with bandwidth demands. This is capital and engineering-intensive work. Not say that it shouldn't or can't be done, but bandwidth management is expensive and complex, requiring that technology and capacity bets be placed well in advance. Of course, the way this ISP is dealing with their limitations is amateurish at best and deserves ridicule.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070405/190255.shtml
and there is indeed a lack of competition being that the government unethically grants government sanctioned monopolies on the infrastructure and monopolies almost always lead to less aggregate output (ie: less bandwidth) at a higher price. So it does seem that a lack of competition does substantially lower bandwidth and higher prices.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You get what you paid for
You see, Mike, this "broadband connection" you have at home is result of awfully oversubscribed network. About 1/1000 or even more. Since your "degree" is MBA and not engineering, I will explain you what those numbers mean. They mean, that for every 1 bps in outgoing (from ISP) line, there's 1000 bps (or more) coming down to subscribers (users).
So, when ISP cells you 5Mbps line, this never meant to be guaranteed bandwidth. This is _maximum_ _allowed_ speed from your endpoint to ISP's inner ring.
Moreover, it also mean, that on 1 out of 1000 users can utilize uplink connection in any given time.
This model built upon assumption that majority of users care about "momentary" speed (how fast www pages are coming) and not care about sustained transfer rate (ftp session for example). With P2P programs and HD streaming this model is less and less true.
And since consumers are not willing to pay more - the result for them will be throttling.
So, no - "basic updates" will not fix this. You need rework underlying network.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: You get what you paid for
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: You get what you paid for
Also helps them avoid penetration from things like AT&T, dish companies, etcetera.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: You get what you paid for
Gigabit ethernet, lighting up dark fiber and fat pipes mean that, changing that 1-to-1000 ratio to 1-to-100 isn't that expensive. So yes, they could do that right now.
But you know what ... doing nothing and throttling the connection is EVEN CHEAPER. It's called CORPORATE GREED, and it's not an evil plot, it's a natural reaction of execs such as myself to shareholders bashing us about wanting more and more profit. Which is why you need a regulatory agency to step in.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: You get what you paid for
This is only true for ISPs that don't do the right thing.
Verizon FIOS is not oversubscribed. Even if they get 100% uptake in every neighborhood, that will limit each house to about 17Mbps guaranteed, but upgrades that are mostly done are raising that limit to 81Mbps. With just a few houses not subscribing (or a few subscribing to lower speed plans), you end up with everyone having guaranteed bandwidth 24/7.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
ISP's screwing customers in India as well
Not to mention, the broadband speeds a extremely low to begin with - 256/284/512 Kbps - yes Kbps. If they cant handle these speeds, they probably shouldnt be in the ISP business
Aparently, a petition is being made at the India broadband Forums against Airtel's (un)fair usage policy. (PS: either the site id down or Airtel is blocking it - here is the google cache version)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
sorry :(
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not to mention, the broadband speeds a extremely low to begin with - 256/284/512 Kbps - yes Kbps. If they cant handle these speeds, they probably shouldnt be in the ISP business Aparently, a petition is being made at the India broadband Forums against Airtel's (un)fair usage policy. (PS: either the site id down or Airtel is blocking it - here is the google cache version)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not sure it has been implemented or that it will go ahead at all
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yosi is an idiot
really, i think he is. blabing on about something he has know knowledge of. I feel sick when idiots like that post, when they think they know how crap works
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Here's real-word representing example (not from US):
* some $ISP have about 1M subscribers.
* Typical connection speed is 2-5 Mbps
* Bandwidth of uplink (under-see cable) is about 3Gbps according to ISP's own statement.
Let's calculate a approximate ratio: 3*1M/3G = 1/000. See my point?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Required reading on this topic
One of the (many) great ironies of this discussion is that much of the bandwidth that the duopolies whine about is being used by the prolific abuse flowing in and out of their own networks. Their failure to grasp -- decades after the principle was well-established -- that egress filtering is just as important as ingress filtering, is in large part responsible for their own problems.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bandwidth
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
stop and think about that. in japan (among other countries) the telcos can afford to provide 100meg cheaply and aren't having problems while other telcos are saying that they need to reduce the bandwidth by 5-10 megs to handle the load, there's something wrong there.
Also, I can't find the source right now, but there are people who have gone on record saying that most telcos have not spent the money in maintaining a standard upgrade model to phas out old hardware and keep current and that those who have haven't been using most of their network.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Those countries are significantly smaller than the United States. Upgrading a network for a country smaller than california costs almost nothing when you compare it to upgrading the entirety of the US.
I'm not saying our ISP's aren't douchebags and don't need to upgrade, because they are and need to, but you can't compare japan to the US when it comes to infrastructure they are in entirely different leagues.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
If you need an example, consider the cost of text messaging, which is several orders of magnitude above the actual cost of transmitting the bits.
So the reason we in the US pay far too much for far too little has nothing to do with the size of the country or demographics or underlying economics: it has everything to do with the desire by the duopoly to extract as much revenue as possible.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
The money that most telcos are making by gouging their customers more then offsets the cost of upgrading their portion of the physical network.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Internet must be RATIONED
Perfect economic sense.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
no speed no value
a red light with your foot on the accelerator while
you're in neutral
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I tested my 12mb connection the other day and it was running at closer to 2 - wtf is the point?
I appreciate that the advertised speed is a max, but it should surely be atleast close to what you're actually getting!
It's like when you order a Big-Mac - the pictures and box look so pretty and then you're presented with a bite-size mess...lock the fuckers up!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
internet access/rationing/etc
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Internet data caps and throttling are standard in other countries
All our ISPs, every one, every plan, bar none, has a data cap or a billing system that charges for the amount of data you use. There are 'limitless' plans but they throttle your traffic at peak times and have restrictions on fair use.
If you want to peruse the plans try
http://www.vodafone.co.nz/home-phone-and-broadband/
https://www.telecom.co.nz/broadband/select/ 1,10627,205728-204466,00.html
Data caps start at 1Gb. Some are around 40Gb. Speeds are not yet up to ADSL2 standards. Its good enough to get work done but the concept of fast unlimited internet is alien to us. Your situation in the US is pretty good in comparison. By the way, recording data usage accurately doesn't seem to be a problem either, with accurate usage meters down to the hour available through the ISP web page.
The reason this is so is due is partly due to a long term telco monopoly (which is no longer the case, unbundling has recently happended), but more importantly the overhead of getting data out of nz and into the US or Australia. There are only a couple of cables over the Tasman or Pacific, so bandwidth is scarce, hence the cost of internet traffic.
So while it appears some believe that unlimited internet is a right its not even available in some parts of the world.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
THROTTLING
this is nothing new. they do it all the time....
from 4pm to 12pm.....300Kbps......
You live with it, or cancel it!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
fmeh
- Monthly quota (always less then 10 gb, unless you are paying 3 digit figures)
- double speed at night
- 18 h/day electricity
Come here!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]