Why Is the Internet So Infuriatingly Slow?

[tyler811]

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Plan One: Feed the meter. Category: Horrible now. In January, Time Warner announced it was rolling out an experimental plan in Beaumont, Texas, that charged users by the gigabyte. Thirty dollars would get you 5 gigabytes a month, while a $55 plan would get you 40. Each extra gigabyte over the limit costs a buck. In succeeding months, this data-capping idea has caught on. Comcast recently announced that it's drawing the line at 250 gigabytes per user per month. Once you've used that much bandwidth, you can get your account suspended.

Plan Two: Blame BitTorrent. Category: Horrible later. In addition to capping data transfer, Comcast is taking a second anti-hog initiative. Rather than charging more, the company plans to slow or cut off peer-to-peer traffic during peak times. Last October, the Associated Press caught Comcast deprioritizing traffic from BitTorrent and other file-sharing protocols. The company received a slap from the FCC for singling out a specific type of traffic, which violates the FCC's policy statement on network management. Comcast now says it will pursue a more compliant strategy that slows the connections of power users during peak times without singling out specific types of traffic. This tactic is similar to the more general practice of "traffic shaping": prioritizing data packets for applications like video that shouldn't lag at the expense of something like e-mail, which can wait in line an extra few seconds without anyone noticing?except that it's deprioritizing users, not data packets. (People who hate the concept of traffic shaping prefer to call this "throttling" or "choking.")

 

[mrSHEiK124]

LAME!

 

[moshquerade]

somebody read slashdot?

 

[CKent]

Glad I don't have Comcast

 

[Bateluer]

These ISPs are in for a world of hurt in the near future. Online streaming of digital content isn't going to slow down, and these ISPs are going to be left behind because they failed to upgrade their network in a timely manner.

 

[Jumpem]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
These ISPs are in for a world of hurt in the near future. Online streaming of digital content isn't going to slow down, and these ISPs are going to be left behind because they failed to upgrade their network in a timely manner.

Thier plan is to simply make it unaffordable for users to download that much content.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
These ISPs are in for a world of hurt in the near future. Online streaming of digital content isn't going to slow down, and these ISPs are going to be left behind because they failed to upgrade their network in a timely manner.

Not really. Most people only have one or two options for broadband. We basically have to live with whatever we can get.

 

[AstroManLuca]

I've got Qwest 7Mbit DSL.

Wonder what they'll do...

 

[Gothgar]

Been discussed here before, if TW in my area starts doing this I am switching so fast their head will spin.

 

[Throckmorton]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
These ISPs are in for a world of hurt in the near future. Online streaming of digital content isn't going to slow down, and these ISPs are going to be left behind because they failed to upgrade their network in a timely manner.

Left behind by what? The nonexistent competition? Wake up- there's no free market here to save our asses. The internet is at the mercy of an oligopoly. Don't believe me? Try starting a broadband company and laying fiber lines if you think you'll be able to provide a non-capped alternative.

 

[Sphexi]

Cry some more. I'm all for caps, I hate the idea that there's assholes out there serving video files from their residential connection, absolutely abusing their connection and slowing things down for everybody else.

I have a 60GB limit, I download plenty of videos, play games, upload mass amounts of photos, I have NEVER gone over it. Not even close to it. I can't see how someone would go over 250GB that they're going to be using with Comcast, that's a huge amount of information.

As Throckmorton said, there's no alternative for most people, better get used to it.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

Originally posted by: Bateluer
These ISPs are in for a world of hurt in the near future. Online streaming of digital content isn't going to slow down, and these ISPs are going to be left behind because they failed to upgrade their network in a timely manner.

Left behind by what? The nonexistent competition? Wake up- there's no free market here to save our asses. The internet is at the mercy of an oligopoly. Don't believe me? Try starting a broadband company and laying fiber lines if you think you'll be able to provide a non-capped alternative.

Unfortunately, you are mostly correct. People will still get pissed and angry though, especially when they hear how fast people in foreign nations are connecting and what they are able to do.

Whats really sad is that the Internet was invented in the US, and now we've fallen by the wayside because of corporate greed.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Sphexi
Cry some more. I'm all for caps, I hate the idea that there's assholes out there serving video files from their residential connection, absolutely abusing their connection and slowing things down for everybody else.

I have a 60GB limit, I download plenty of videos, play games, upload mass amounts of photos, I have NEVER gone over it. Not even close to it. I can't see how someone would go over 250GB that they're going to be using with Comcast, that's a huge amount of information.

As Throckmorton said, there's no alternative for most people, better get used to it.

Next gen consoles want to shed the optical drive entirely. Downloading a single PS3 game would max out your bandwidth cap.

Your entire reason for complaining is the the ISP sat on their collective asses and failed to upgrade their infrastructure when they should have, and are now paying the price for their stupidity by being unable to provide the bandwidth people want.

 

[Sphexi]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: Sphexi
Cry some more. I'm all for caps, I hate the idea that there's assholes out there serving video files from their residential connection, absolutely abusing their connection and slowing things down for everybody else.

I have a 60GB limit, I download plenty of videos, play games, upload mass amounts of photos, I have NEVER gone over it. Not even close to it. I can't see how someone would go over 250GB that they're going to be using with Comcast, that's a huge amount of information.

As Throckmorton said, there's no alternative for most people, better get used to it.

Next gen consoles want to shed the optical drive entirely. Downloading a single PS3 game would max out your bandwidth cap.

Your entire reason for complaining is the the ISP sat on their collective asses and failed to upgrade their infrastructure when they should have, and are now paying the price for their stupidity by being unable to provide the bandwidth people want.

"When they should have"

When was that? Can you pinpoint a time when it looked like a good idea for them to invest billions of dollars for no reason? The network has been fine for years, only in the last 3 or 4 years has the Internet gotten to a point where it's able to keep up with current speeds. 7 years ago I paid $60/mth for 1.5Mbps download and 384kbps upload on DSL, now I pay the same for 15Mbps down and 1.5Mbps upload on cable. That's a 10x increase for download speeds in only 6 or 7 years, not too shabby I'd say.

What I've found is as with most things in life, the ones who are complaining the most are the ones that are trying to abuse the system. I saw the exact same thing at AT&T. Every month you had people calling in trying to get extra minutes, complaining that 900 minutes plus unlimited M2M and n/w for $60 is way too much, trying to get us to cut deals with them. These are the same people that get unlimited text for $15 and do 20k+ a month, or get the $15 unlimited data for standard phones and want to use it on their laptop as a modem (big difference between surfing facebook on your Razr and downloading torrents all month long on your laptop). And as in most cases, they didn't get what they want. Same thing will happen here, people will whine and complain really loudly, because the louder they are the more media attention they get, and then it'll be over and they'll have to deal with it.

 

[Anubis]

waiting on spidy to tell us we dont know what we are talking about and that BW Caps are the wave of the future

 

[RichardE]

Originally posted by: Anubis
waiting on spidy to tell us we dont know what we are talking about and that BW Caps are the wave of the future

Or that we will never have caps over 100gb because thats just too much.