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posted by martyb on Saturday April 11 2020, @12:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the tell-me-again-what-bandwidth-caps-are-for dept.

Pandemic hasn't crushed broadband networks:

The sharp growth in residential-broadband traffic seen during the pandemic is starting to level off, new data shows. While Internet speeds have slowed somewhat in many parts of the United States, it turns out that even rural-broadband networks are holding up pretty well.

[...] To determine rural performance, BroadbandNow said it "aggregated speed-test results [from M-Lab] across all US ZIP codes in counties marked as non-metropolitan (Micropolitan and Noncore) under the CDC's Urban–Rural Classification Scheme."

This isn't a definitive measure of how rural-broadband networks are handling increased residential usage by people losing jobs or working at home. For one thing, there is "limited availability of speed-test data in rural communities," BroadbandNow said.

[...] The number of top cities suffering decreases in median download speeds rose to 117 last week. But the BroadbandNow report released today said things are turning around:

Internet performance in the US improved overall, with 97 cities (48.5 percent) recording download speed degradations this week (down from 117, or 59 percent last week). 139 cities (69 percent) have reported upload speed disruptions, which is also down from last week's 144, or 72 percent.

Problem areas include Baltimore, Maryland; Los Angeles, California; and Flushing, New York, where upload speeds were more than 40 percent lower than the range seen in the 10 pre-pandemic weeks.

[...] The FCC's nine-year-old Measuring Broadband America program could help in this regard, but the commission under Chairman Ajit Pai has rarely provided updated data from the in-home tests conducted by the program. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat on the Republican-majority agency, has been pushing for the commission to research broadband performance and provide public updates every day. Pai hasn't taken up her suggestion.

In a statement last week, Rosenworcel said:

As more Americans are told to stay home, the FCC should study how broadband networks are faring under the stress of more intensive use and publish these findings daily... The changes in broadband consumption may reveal weak points in the complex ecosystem of companies, services and products that make up the Internet. The FCC should use this opportunity to understand how our networks are performing and stay ahead of potential problems—because if we wait for those problems to be reported to us, it is already too late.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @05:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @05:33PM (#981207)

    If you're streaming in real-time, you have to elbow all others out of your way. Pre-buffer 30 seconds before starting to stream, then you can be friendly to the network for up to 30 seconds.