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posted by martyb on Saturday January 23 2016, @08:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-speed-is-their-connection? dept.

In an absolute surprise to nobody, six Senators came out today saying something along the lines of 5Mbps should be enough for anybody:

Today's letter from Steve Daines (R-MT), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Cory Gardner (R-CO) is almost hilarious in its deep misunderstanding about how people actually use the internet and what they need. The senators say that the 25Mbps standard is unnecessary because, for example, Netflix only recommends a download speed of 5Mbps for HD video, and Amazon only 3.5Mbps. (The recommendation for 4K video from Netflix is actually 25Mbps, but we suppose lawmakers agree that nobody should enjoy Ultra HD content yet.)

The senators say they are "concerned that this arbitrary 25/3 Mbps benchmark fails to accurately capture what most Americans consider broadband," and that "the use of this benchmark discourages broadband providers from offering speeds at or above the benchmark." If these sound exactly like talking points from Verizon, Comcast, and other major ISPs, that's because they are: Comcast loves to tell Americans that they don't need faster internet, and ISPs join together every time they are about to be regulated to say that regulations will chill their future investments. Ars Technica reported that Republicans in Congress echoed ISP spin about network investments in hearings over net neutrality, but then just three months after the net neutrality rules took effect last year, Comcast posted earnings that showed its capital expenditures actually increased by 11 percent. So the idea that creating a standard will discourage ISPs from meeting that standard is total nonsense.

What about you lot? Does your connection meet the new broadband definition? Mine matches the download side but fails by two thirds on the upload side.


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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:03AM

    by anubi (2828) on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:03AM (#293556) Journal

    Be careful of what you ask for because you might just get it.

    Already, with a pretty sluggish AT&T link, I can be owned before I know what hit me.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:16AM (#293562)

    Yeah! That's right! Faster consumer Internet means faster hackers! Thank you, citizen, for giving all the evidence the authorities need to cap everyone at 500kbps. None of this Mbps. It's a national security risk now!

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday January 24 2016, @03:39AM

      by anubi (2828) on Sunday January 24 2016, @03:39AM (#293798) Journal

      I was thinking more down the line of matching a transmission to an engine and differential.

      When they are mismatched, one takes all the burden and breaks. Usually the transmission. Expensive.

      We have been going all-a-gaga over high data transmission speeds, however our internet security and knowing exactly how our stuff works has been sorely lagging, to be exacerbated by all sorts of piss-ass laws restricting public knowledge of how stuff works in the name of "protecting intellectual property".

      There was a time, once, I felt I knew everything needed to run a secure network. There were only a few protocols, and I was privy to the source code of the stack I had - as I usually wrote it. I did not implement ALL of the protocol stack... just the parts I needed to make my datagrams and submit/retrieve them from the router. This is old-school... Jeremy Bentham has a book out there "TCPIP Lean" that shows exactly how to do it.

      When something did not work, it was obvious where it was, as nothing was hidden or protected by "electronic lock" that I was forbidden to probe and some other party, protected by "hold harmless" clauses was supposedly responsible for.

      But things got real complicated real fast, and security went out the window as long as what came back looked pretty to management. One thing they loved is they could have the same thing everyone else had, computer expertise was an off-the-shelf trade-school commodity where race-to-the-bottom mentality was easy to foment, and any concerns for security would fall under someone else's "hold harmless" businesstalk.

      We have all seen the cost of ignorance, whether it be in maintaining your car or maintaining your computer. The computer is far more difficult as there are factions out there who are deliberately trying to break in.

      I stand corrected as my intent was that we really need to - in the worst way - pay a helluva lot more attention to internet security and the spread of malware if we are going to enable faster paths for it to spread.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday January 23 2016, @10:10PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 23 2016, @10:10PM (#293733)

    Ah, that happens when you live down in a valley. You need an internet pressure reducer installed.

    --
    SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday January 24 2016, @07:04AM

      by mhajicek (51) on Sunday January 24 2016, @07:04AM (#293841)

      Wouldn't that overpressure give him really fast downloads but really slow uploads?

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek