Comments on: Beware of broadband speed overkill
Cable operators and phone companies are increasing speeds of their broadband service, but the average consumer may not need the boost.
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I don't have time for a detailed, thorough fisking of this drivel, but suggest that the author do his/her homework before writing. But that's probably not gonna happen, because homework is "work" which is anathema to lazy journalists.
I don't need several megabits per second down. I simply don't need it. Not everybody's steaming video on an hourly basis.
Yea, some people do, and for those people the higher speed access is great and they should be able to go for it.
For me, if a 768kb service is ever available for less, I'll dump Comcast in a heartbeat.
Charles R. Whealton
chuck whealton @ don'tspam.net
> hyperventilating nonsense!
Uhhh... Is there such a thing as newspaper that writes articles based on facts? Didn't those go
out of style at 25 years ago?
> hyperventilating nonsense!
Uhhh... Is there such a thing as a newspaper that writes articles based on facts? Didn't those go
out of style about 25 years ago?
Verizon doesn't deal with LANs. Their networks are for WANs -- large geographic areas such as cities, and multiple cities (or metropolitans) are MANs. These guys typically have a backbone of less than 2Mbps if I'm not mistaken. Remember, the internet was built on old telephone systems.
I don't have time for a detailed, thorough fisking of this drivel, but suggest that the author do his/her homework before writing. But that's probably not gonna happen, because homework is "work" which is anathema to lazy journalists.
I don't need several megabits per second down. I simply don't need it. Not everybody's steaming video on an hourly basis.
Yea, some people do, and for those people the higher speed access is great and they should be able to go for it.
For me, if a 768kb service is ever available for less, I'll dump Comcast in a heartbeat.
Charles R. Whealton
chuck whealton @ don'tspam.net
> hyperventilating nonsense!
Uhhh... Is there such a thing as newspaper that writes articles based on facts? Didn't those go
out of style at 25 years ago?
> hyperventilating nonsense!
Uhhh... Is there such a thing as a newspaper that writes articles based on facts? Didn't those go
out of style about 25 years ago?
Verizon doesn't deal with LANs. Their networks are for WANs -- large geographic areas such as cities, and multiple cities (or metropolitans) are MANs. These guys typically have a backbone of less than 2Mbps if I'm not mistaken. Remember, the internet was built on old telephone systems.
Either he's confusing speed with capacity (and bits with bytes),
or this is a misquote.
Either he's confusing speed with capacity (and bits with bytes),
or this is a misquote.
Uh, not in my experience for games. Final Fantasy XI works pretty well at slowish speeds, and my cable company's speed increases have not made any difference in gameplay. Reliability on the other hand is extremely important, and my cablemodem provider has been very poor at this. Not having a good constant connection gets one kicked off the FFXI server. This happens a great deal in my house. My service provider has run a new line from their outside service box to the house, we've put in a dedicated modem line off the first (very high quality) splitter for best signal strength, and I've replaced the modem, router, gave them a good battery UPS power system, and it's all still questionable at times. While they keep saying they used to have server problems those were fixed and can;t be causing this, I simply don't believe them. There's nothing else on my end to be wrong, and all my new equipment (different brands even) has the same problems as the old stuff, so I believe the old stuff to be in good condition.
FIOS is being installed in my town, but I don't know when they might get to my particular neighborhood, and I'm holding off switching to DSL until there's some news about this. I hope Verizon's reliability is better than my cable company's. Heck, I'll bali out on cable TV to FIOSTV or satellite just to stop giving my cable guys any money at all after all this crap, even though the TV service hasn't been a problem, other than that month they had my house completely disconnected from any cable whatsoever during the rediculously drawn-out repair process... (OK, it was only 19 days disconnected, but still, it's rediculous)
Uh, not in my experience for games. Final Fantasy XI works pretty well at slowish speeds, and my cable company's speed increases have not made any difference in gameplay. Reliability on the other hand is extremely important, and my cablemodem provider has been very poor at this. Not having a good constant connection gets one kicked off the FFXI server. This happens a great deal in my house. My service provider has run a new line from their outside service box to the house, we've put in a dedicated modem line off the first (very high quality) splitter for best signal strength, and I've replaced the modem, router, gave them a good battery UPS power system, and it's all still questionable at times. While they keep saying they used to have server problems those were fixed and can;t be causing this, I simply don't believe them. There's nothing else on my end to be wrong, and all my new equipment (different brands even) has the same problems as the old stuff, so I believe the old stuff to be in good condition.
FIOS is being installed in my town, but I don't know when they might get to my particular neighborhood, and I'm holding off switching to DSL until there's some news about this. I hope Verizon's reliability is better than my cable company's. Heck, I'll bali out on cable TV to FIOSTV or satellite just to stop giving my cable guys any money at all after all this crap, even though the TV service hasn't been a problem, other than that month they had my house completely disconnected from any cable whatsoever during the rediculously drawn-out repair process... (OK, it was only 19 days disconnected, but still, it's rediculous)
What matters is your upload speeds. If you're using digital phone and/or online gaming with an upload of 256kps your experience with these technologies will be marginal. As these speeds increase you'll have less lag and fewer dropped games, your phone will have lost it's delay so you can have a real conversation without cutting each other off in mid sentence.
Sadly my only option in my area is Charter Communications and my upload is only 152kps according to speed check at Broadband Reports. My online gaming and telephone service is simply unusable. When I was with Comcast I was uploading at a little under 768Kps and it wasn't so bad.
So let them open the flood gates it doesn't matter. Just make sure your getting what they're selling you!
What matters is your upload speeds. If you're using digital phone and/or online gaming with an upload of 256kps your experience with these technologies will be marginal. As these speeds increase you'll have less lag and fewer dropped games, your phone will have lost it's delay so you can have a real conversation without cutting each other off in mid sentence.
Sadly my only option in my area is Charter Communications and my upload is only 152kps according to speed check at Broadband Reports. My online gaming and telephone service is simply unusable. When I was with Comcast I was uploading at a little under 768Kps and it wasn't so bad.
So let them open the flood gates it doesn't matter. Just make sure your getting what they're selling you!
We've had Time-Warner cable for about 3 years. All I hear from my wife is how slow it is and how pissed off she gets waiting for stuff to load.
She uses it to work often from home, and she would really appreciate it if it was about 5x as fast as it is now.
I would also appreciate it being much faster.
Cliff
Green Bay
We've had Time-Warner cable for about 3 years. All I hear from my wife is how slow it is and how pissed off she gets waiting for stuff to load.
She uses it to work often from home, and she would really appreciate it if it was about 5x as fast as it is now.
I would also appreciate it being much faster.
Cliff
Green Bay
pay for a phone line/phone number, and those charges add about
$15/month to the cost! Talk about deceptive advertising! It used
to be that you could JUST get a DSL line with NO phone number!
advertising DSL at $15 a month.
When I checked the company's website, I noticed two things
that made the offer less attractive than it sounded at first:
1) The $15 was just for the ISP, and I would have to pay
another $15 a month to the local phone company.
2) This was only for the lowest speed service, and if your
local telco is Qwest this is only 256 kb/s !!!
pay for a phone line/phone number, and those charges add about
$15/month to the cost! Talk about deceptive advertising! It used
to be that you could JUST get a DSL line with NO phone number!
advertising DSL at $15 a month.
When I checked the company's website, I noticed two things
that made the offer less attractive than it sounded at first:
1) The $15 was just for the ISP, and I would have to pay
another $15 a month to the local phone company.
2) This was only for the lowest speed service, and if your
local telco is Qwest this is only 256 kb/s !!!
Whew, anyway we're lagging behind in broadband speeds compared to the rest of the world. Bring on the higher speeds because IMO they'll be much appreciated as we move forward.
Whew, anyway we're lagging behind in broadband speeds compared to the rest of the world. Bring on the higher speeds because IMO they'll be much appreciated as we move forward.
The only guy in this talkback who had a clue was the guy who said its all about the upload speed.
The ******* author did not even talk about QoS and how it actually help fix a lot of this perceived problem.
The big problem is the telcos and their adherence to PPPoE which basically allows them to rape you for $$$ while not really having a well built network to start with.
If you are currently with a ISP who is using PPPoE, LEAVE THEM ASAP!!! There are plenty of alternatives which are using regular old DHCP on backbones which are not part of a major telco.
Networks just dont work the way this author thinks they do.
Do you think that all connections are asynchronous to the point a home connection is? How does someone with your enlightment think Google or Microsoft handles their connections? They have nice, wide synchronous pipes.
The reason the average home connection is hobbled is to make sure the average home user is not going to need it. All to make sure he/sh is not running an ISP or server farm on connections not designed to handle the traffic. It comes down to money in the end, you want fast uploads, they will sell you business service.
and, uh, if you use a cable modem (aka hybrid fiber-coaxial access network), how much of the pipe you use does in fact effect everyone on your fiber node. No, it doesn't effect the overall Internet speed (capital I) but it does effect you and your neighbors' connection to the Internet.
As for QoS... this is not a corporate LAN or MAN, we're talking about home ISP's... not much in the way of QoS besides throttling.... not the same idea there.
The only guy in this talkback who had a clue was the guy who said its all about the upload speed.
The ******* author did not even talk about QoS and how it actually help fix a lot of this perceived problem.
The big problem is the telcos and their adherence to PPPoE which basically allows them to rape you for $$$ while not really having a well built network to start with.
If you are currently with a ISP who is using PPPoE, LEAVE THEM ASAP!!! There are plenty of alternatives which are using regular old DHCP on backbones which are not part of a major telco.
Networks just dont work the way this author thinks they do.
Do you think that all connections are asynchronous to the point a home connection is? How does someone with your enlightment think Google or Microsoft handles their connections? They have nice, wide synchronous pipes.
The reason the average home connection is hobbled is to make sure the average home user is not going to need it. All to make sure he/sh is not running an ISP or server farm on connections not designed to handle the traffic. It comes down to money in the end, you want fast uploads, they will sell you business service.
and, uh, if you use a cable modem (aka hybrid fiber-coaxial access network), how much of the pipe you use does in fact effect everyone on your fiber node. No, it doesn't effect the overall Internet speed (capital I) but it does effect you and your neighbors' connection to the Internet.
As for QoS... this is not a corporate LAN or MAN, we're talking about home ISP's... not much in the way of QoS besides throttling.... not the same idea there.
The faster the better....
- What About Downloading DVDs, TV, CDs, etc?
- by richto May 20, 2006 5:06 AM PDT
- How daft to say there is no use for bandwidth. There are many thing that benefit greatly from increased speed. e.g. already a DVDR is 9 GB, presumably when new HD DVD movies become available to download on the Internet then these will be up to 45 GB.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 2 of 3 pages (203 Comments)The faster the better....