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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.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @01:10PM (2 children)
When this is over with, someone should have a good talking-to with those broadband executives.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @02:14PM (1 child)
Bandwidth caps where always about how can we (the ISPs) increase our profits at your expense.
always
This is just bringing to light that the bandwidth caps were simply artificial scarcity for the sole purpose of increasing profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @02:32PM
Yes, they have a certain amount of capacity at any longer, whether some of it is used or all of it is used, makes relatively little difference in terms of the costs. There's no good reason why they couldn't just throttle the connections of individuals that are using the most bandwidth during periods where they're getting close to their limits.
One of the reasons why we're not seeing the kind of growth in capacity that we used to is simply that it's profitable to charge people for exceeding the caps.
And we absolutely need to rake the execs over the coals as there's plenty of people in areas where it's quite literally take it or leave it. All the local ISPs have caps and there may only be 1 option.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @01:45PM
... by kicking anyone using a VPN off their network.
That'll save some of the pipes from bursting, right?
(Score: 2) by Revek on Saturday April 11 2020, @02:16PM (6 children)
Lets face it usage is up but it skyrockets every winter when people are shut in. I know this from having been the one man sysadmin for a small ISP for ten years. The joke is that they are blaming people playing video games when 4k streaming is a data sink that could be corrected with a little local caching on devices. None of these steaming companies ever try to make their products bandwidth friendly and want others to sacrifice so they can keep hogging all the bandwidth.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @02:28PM (5 children)
How do you cache new content? Are we talking about ISP-local caching?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @05:33PM
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.
(Score: 2) by Revek on Saturday April 11 2020, @10:34PM (1 child)
No I'm talking about the end point clients caching content Nand is cheap and many times people especially kids will watch something multiple times. It won't be a immediate fix for people that use limited appliances to view content but for mobile devices and desktops it would cut their bandwidth almost immediately. It takes forethought though and we know most execs of companies don't do much of that.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2020, @01:22AM
Unfortunately that directly clashes with many consumers irrational need to close all background apps and clear out their caches. Android 10 now has this functionality built in and will nag you about it occasionally.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Sunday April 12 2020, @06:21PM (1 child)
Netflix used to, probably still does, offer a big box to be co-located at ISP local office.
The box caches the most likely things that will be watched in the area.
This works great. Because performance is great* from the ISP office to the customer premises.
*unless your ISP is AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Frontier, Cox, etc.
If a minstrel has musical instruments attached to his bicycle, can it be called a minstrel cycle?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeVilla on Monday April 13 2020, @01:25AM
My brother works a small ISP and they have the same thing. Services like Netflix will give the ISP a co-loc box basically for free if the ISP give Netflix the power, space & net connection. Netflix will cache data for the ISP's users more intelligently on the local box saving bandwidth all around. The ISP benfits from that and is able to provide better service to it's customers. It's a win / win / win for Netflix, the ISP, and the customers of both.
Comcast and the like don't see it that way. They'd like to double bill both ends of the wire.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:30PM (2 children)
I have had frequent outages in the last 2 weeks, almost daily, for up to hours at a time. I doubt long periods of ZERO are factored into the average speed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @04:52PM (1 child)
What service, and where?
My FIOS link has been unmodified (still achieves the same performance as it did pre-lockdown).
So the reasons for yours may have something to do with the ISP you are forced into having to use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @12:21AM
Spectrum in Ohio. No problems in the last 2 days, but I expect more outages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @09:18PM
What does that even mean? More lower? SEMANTICS PEOPLE!! LEARN SOME SEMANTICS!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @09:34PM (3 children)
For the last 5 weeks, I've been working from home, in the Seattle area. Our bandwidth from Comcast, both download and upload, is fine. We have no problems with bandwidth.
The problem is latency and error rates. My company uses Zoom and Google meet for virtual meetings, and we use them all day long. I'm on one of those two 6+ hours a day. And it sucks. My bandwidth is fine. The problem is no one can understand me because my audio cuts out constantly, and my video is jerky. When investigating this, using some tips from Google, I find that ping times to Google's backend fluctuate greatly between 25ms and 300+ms. with about 2% packet error/loss. This is from a simple ping command running in a terminal window.
The problem today is quality of the connection, not the amount of bandwidth. And, trying to explain that to Comcast customer service is like talking to a wall. "reboot your modem". "oh, you don't rent one of ours, so I can't help diagnose your network's problem". "our tests show up and down speeds in your area are very good right now". Etc.
It's the definition of being powerless when you are talking to your boss on video and he can't hear a single thing you're saying. All while knowing that I can stream multiple videos at once and not have a problem. But I can't talk on Zoom/Meet and have people hear me.
(Score: 1) by webnut77 on Saturday April 11 2020, @09:50PM
What? We can only see about every third word of your post. Say again? :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @10:16PM
Escalate that situation. Don't deal with someone on the front desk that can't help you because the script won't let them. Ask to talk to a supervisor, file a complaint with your regulatory oversight or utility board, contact your neighbors to see if they have the same problems, write a letter to the editor or your legislator, etc. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Sunday April 12 2020, @06:23PM
Latency can be a bigger problem than bandwi...98yyshg987w9*AG#@#*&%lgjsh;e
NO CARRIER
If a minstrel has musical instruments attached to his bicycle, can it be called a minstrel cycle?