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About LinkBacksWe're already behind and 21CN is at best a sticking plaster over the real problem.
OFCOM are thick-headed-retardo-monkeys (or just taking massive backhanders).
We're already behind and 21CN is at best a sticking plaster over the real problem.
OFCOM are thick-headed-retardo-monkeys (or just taking massive backhanders).
Crosshair VIII Hero (WIFI), 3900x, 32GB DDR4, Many SSDs, EVGA FTW3 3090, Ethoo 719
pollaxe (04-12-2007)
But some of us live in big cities, not backwards places, and yet we end up paying a lot of money for 8mb only to get a maximum of 6 most of the time (if they are lucky), or less a large part of the time. You then start downloading lots of data in the evenings, and they cripple your line because they deemed you to be doing something "unfair". What's fair... is providing the 8mbit speed that people pay for.Originally Posted by TheAnimus
It's not *more* than enough. Who in their right mind downloads something that takes 15 minutes and says, "Hmm I wish that took half an hour instead"? Lots of people pay for 8mbit, and they don't get 8mbit. There are even a fair number of people who pay for 10mbit or even 20mbit. If 8 was more than enough, these people wouldn't be paying for over double the speed. They may not be a majority, but that doesn't mean its right to ignored them and say, "Ahh screw it then, lets just stick with what he have and not bother improving anything".
That's not the way it works though. If you live in a none congested area and you get a quick connection, it's because you aren't competing with anyone. It's not because you are stealing the bandwidth away from people in the congested areas.
That isn't the problem. Plenty of people do pay for fast broadband. The problem is that they don't get it because the ISP's are greedy gits and offer more bandwidth than they have... What they are doing isn't fair. It's like advertising 50 big fat pies at a quid a go, and 100 people place an order, so they chop them in half and only send people half a pie because they didn't have enough - and yet still wanted everyones money... In any other industry, that would probably just be seen as theft.
Since when does spending on the plumbing infrastructure of the UK, come out of the same pot as broadband? What someone pays to Virgin media, has no impact on what gets spent on water pipes. The infrastructure is another issue. But even looking at the infrastructure,.. if we where just asking for too much, that would be fair enough. But when you look at what they have in America and most of Europe, we look pretty crap in comparison. We are almost getting the same crap deal as the Kiwis and Aussies... And look at the size of Australia compared to Britain... They have deserts and swamps bigger than most of our major cities. We should definitely have a proper internet infrastructure here. We can't get our railways and roads right... the least we can do is lay a bunch of cables to make up for it.
Last edited by acrobat; 04-12-2007 at 04:35 PM.
In my street Belgacom is putting in fibre networks as we speak. I won't be here to see it but they are promising 50Mbps next year at no additional cost. (This is up from an estimated 6mbps at the moment). The Belgians reckon that there is potential to attract businesses which will offset the cost a bit. Well, with St. Pancreas just 1:41 away that is a possibility.
(Thanks Evilmunky)
Eagles may soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet intakes.
See, thats just far too sensible. We would never do something like that.
The big problem with broadband in the UK isn't the copper/alu local loop - that is one limiting factor in so far as determining the maxium line speed you can get, but as has been said the *possible* speed isn't an issue. 512k is more than enough for internet access if your not sitting on bit torrent or similar all day, and 2mb is plenty good enough for having multiple streams from the internet for IPTV and the like.
The biggest problem is that you will only ever get your maximum line speeds when your exchange isn't congested, which only really happens in the early hours of the morning, or sometimes during the day if your in a commuter area without many students. This has no relation to the local loop, its all down to the infrastructure and equipment at the exchange and between the exchanges. If BT got their act together and installed enough cards, upgraded their switches and routers, and actually bothered to setup a fast enough network at the exchange level, then the problem would start to fade away. In other words, reduce the contention ratio from the frankly absurd 50:1 to somethin more practical, like 10:1.
No-one needs 100mbit fibre in your house, it would be nice and it will happen in the future, but its not needed right now, and in fact it would only make things worse. Think about it - the exchanges are congested enough right now with all the bandwidth being requests from just 512k-24mbit lines, what would happen if everyone got 50mbit or 100mbit fibre? The internet would grind to a halt for the UK.
In short, BT need to get their act together and fix the internal infrastructure first so that it can support the current demands of users, then start to think about upgrading the local loop.
More than enough for who? You don't know what me or anyone else does with our internet access. If I am in work and I need to download a 570mb file from an American server, and then upload it to another server, it takes ages on our crappy 8mbit-which-only-works-at-about-2mbit connection.
And if I had to work with large media files, it would just be even more of a joke.
Or when I'm at home... and like when I got into Vanguard Beta, they say here's the link to the download.. by the way... its 18gig... it took me days. And if I download something at my dad's house and then he want's to download something and the connection is already swamped... Why is that ok? Why should we settle for crappy speeds just because we are in not-so-great-Britain? When the American's have stuff about 20 times faster than us, and their UPload speed is like a century ahead of us. My home connection struggles to upload at 15kB/s. Thats just rubbish.
BitTorrent isn't the only thing that needs high speed. And its also not just for illegal haxxor downloaders. Its 2007.. look at game demos on Fileplanet or wherever, and loads of them are over a gig. Or you can buy entire games online (legally) and have them digitally sent straight to your PC... But I rarely do it because if I need to wait overnight (or even longer).. I may as well just go to the shops the next day and get the actual box. So much for convenience.
It is. I want it, right now. I am in my house, and I want 100mbit now.
That's like saying there is no need for Ferraris, Porches, Lambos, private planes, helicopters etc... Should I sell my microwave because I don't NEED it? I already have an oven.
People should be able to buy whatever they want and whatever they afford... If you where in charge and we couldn't buy nice stuff because you tell everyone they don't need it... we would all be living like Borat in Kazakhstan.. getting towed to work by a three legged goat.
But thats the whole point. Are you saying we shouldn't think to the future and think about upgrading yet? We should just all relax and wait for BT to make everything right? The reason why we have crap speeds and many an American has 100mbit download and UPload.... is because they do stuff immediately. Not tomorrow and not when such and such get around to upgrading whatever. If a company wants to roll out super fast broadband to 50 million homes, they do it.. and if some crappy company like BT holds them back, they just go with someone else. Everyone competes to be the fastest and cheapest, and we haven't had that because of BT, and even today, they still hold us back.
Bloody Brits. We are so busy chortling at "dumb americans", we failed to see them leave us in the dust. They think big, the do things fast. Bigger, faster, cheaper, better. Meanwhile, we all piss about, happy slapping pensioners, killing off our poisonous cattle and putting up with our congestion charges, late trains and incompetent government. Hurrah for rainy britain.
Last edited by acrobat; 04-12-2007 at 06:25 PM.
The problem is the "internet" isn't just HTML pages anymore.
In my house we have:
2 PC's + laptop (rarely used)
Xbox 360
Xbox 1
Media Centre
VOIP phones (via SIP)
If a few of these devices want to use the connection at the same time, 512 just don't cut it. Don't get me started on the upload.
If you keep things at 512 then people will design for 512. When the barrier is pushed, innovation happens.
Note that I am talking about the vast majority of home users here, and totally excluding business or atypical users. If you really *need* a very fast internet connection you can have one - BT will happily sell you a leased line or similar which will give you the speeds you desire with a pure 1:1 contention ratio.
Whether you agree or not the vast majority of internet users don't need 20mbit a second, or even 2mbit a second. Thats one reason why so many ISPs still have very low bandwidth limits of 1-20gb per month..people don't need the speed.
I know bit torrent and other illegal stuff isnt the only thing that needs high bandwidth, but that was just an example. Game demos etc well yes your right, but you still wouldnt need a 20mbit connection to be able to get them, a 2mbit connection would let you have it in a few hours. Again remember you are in the vast minority with your requirements there.
If you really have a need for super fast internet then its there, you can go buy it, it will just cost you a heck of a lot per month. I stand by my point that theres not a problem with the vast majority of local loops, and that before we even look at upgrading that, BT need to fix their own network so it can cope with the current traffic...THEN we can upgrade the local loop to support faster speeds and so on..makes no sense to do it the other way round.
true,
if we had a 512k line we'd have a 16k upload. Its how it is in the UK. Back when broadband was first coming in we didn't have consoles connected to the net or media centres or multiple pc's in a house. We have 3 Pc's in the house here. 1 upstairs for my 2 sisters, 1 in the living room for my mum brother and dad and one for me. When we're all on it's not bad but if one person starts hogging the upload then we're all stuffed. That's another thing. Many routers don't come with bandwidth limiting abilites. ie limit the speed up/down to each pc etc. I know that even with a faster line using the full upload will slow the download but 512 I think is just too slow. Even for a single user. For example Zak33 likes Lineage 2, an online mmo. When they release new clients for you to play the client sizes are usually 4 to 6GB. On a 512 line that would take 27 hours to complete. Assuming you get full speed on the server you are downloading from. Plus downloading game demos would be longer.
Just to add that ok, 512 isnt enough for lots of us when you start having more that one thing using the internet (remember we are in the minority though), but I think we're getting side tracked here anyway. Its not about whether you need 512k, 2mbit or 8mbit, as those speeds are available all around the country anyway (most places can get 512k now, and inner city residents next to an exchange can get 8mb+). The question is more of what would be the point in upgrading the loop from the consumers house or the box on the street to the exchange, when the exchange couldn't cope with the increased traffic?
They can't cope with the demand as it is, so increasing the damand just makes no sense whatsoever..
If moogle's usage is the average family, then look at my house's usage:
Mine
Laptop
HTPC
Server
(soon to be) Xbox 360
Desktop (if I set it up)
Housemates
Shuttle
2 Laptops
XBox 360
Original XBox
Shared:
VOIP phone.
When we all want a chunk of the internet, it can get a bit slow, especially at peak times
yikes! and i thought i had it bad. but luckily with me being on Be I'm getting decent speeds. Most of the time when I'm not gaming I modify my SNR so I sync a bit higher with 10ms more ping but about 7mb more speed
For a start off, its not un-affordable, when you look at broadband costs vrs mobile phone costs, or even basic PSTN line rental, there not that high for the land of tax. Be will happily chug out the BB for the price of a bottle of passable wine at local italian themed restraunt prices.
If you had to pay for the true cost of the network capacity you use, you might well squeal. Its not normal for the average home to use 500gig month, try and find fully international going everywhere p2p type transit at telehouse for less than £20 a month. Now don't forget the LLU costs.
No because the contract clearly states upto, and has contention, you can buy 1:1 contention broadband if you want, SDSL and such have been flogged to the SMEs for ages now, and is considerably cheaper than a leased line. The fact is the bottleneck isn't normally even BT's ATM network, its actually the ISPs been cheap. Now surely basic free market would state if there was a demand for home high contention BB people would offer it, problem is, your not going to pay £75 a month are you?
Because companies like virgin are already expanding their network in the face of low profits (look how much money they make, its not very much) it would have to be goverment funded subsidy/insentive else backwaters would be further damned to becoming well, backerwaters.
Reason i mentioned water pipes is many nations use the massive water/sewage lines benieth the cities to run their governement backed data networks. The goverment in effect forcing a fair rent to be given by the utility company to the 'other' utilitiy company. The problem is this country had sewers before most other cities did, as such they are aged, and crumbling (if you go down to victoria on a very wet day, it stinks of gordon).
So i'd sooner pay for our leaking pipes to be upgraded, and the sewage system upgraded. That in my mind is more important (as sorry, you don't need to pirate the latest episode of heros. you sad barstards).
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
No. A small business cannot afford a leased line, neither can an individual in their home. And some places can't even have one.
But thats like saying nobody NEEDS a car that goes over 70mph, or nobody NEEDS a TV bigger than 14" etc...
And I'm not THAT exceptional an internet user... I play games, I buy stuff, and I visit websites. That's hardly cutting edge.
The amount you can download in a month, is not the speed of the connecton.
But so what? If I chose to play squash at the weekend instead of footy, I would be in a minority... Does that mean I am not entitled to enjoying myself and getting decent value?
I can't see why you are arguing with that point? Saying something is available but it costs a "heck of a lot per month" is just illogical. Thats the whole point of the problem.... The problem is the speed, the availability, and the price.
If your philosophy made sense, we wouldn't have anything good. "You don't NEED more than 5 TV channels....." etc.
What do you mean by local loops? Nearly everyone in every city complains about their crappy speeds, reliability, availability, and price of their internet.
Fix the network before upgrading? Its not broken... it needs upgrading so it can cope with current traffic, and it needs upgrading to cope with future demand.
The local loop is the connection between the BT exchange, and your house. Thats the copper wire that runs from your house to the box in your street and so on until it gets to the exchange. This is the bit that woud need to be upgraded to give you a 100mbit connection or whatever, and its the thing that is limiting the potential line speed of your connection to 24mbit or whatever.
When I say there is not a problem with these loops, I mean that although they may be the cause of the "I can only get 2mbit" problem (I myself am affected by this), they are not the cause of the slow speeds, packet loss, reliability issues which are, in my opinion, the biggest issues with broadband in the UK today. All those problems are caused by the BT exchanges and BT's internal network not being able to cope with the amount of traffic.
So, lets say that the new network goes ahead to it fullest and BT place a fiber line into everyones home. Suddenly everyone can get a 100mbit no matter how far from the exchange they are (in theory anyway). Sounds great, yes? Well sure, but then that has only upgraded the potential line speed. The limiting factor is still the exchange - so you would still get the problem of poor reliability, very slow speeds when lots of people are using the internet and so on.
The majority of BT's network in the UK is *already* fiber or using other pure digital technologies once you get past the exchange level - but what they have at the moment can't cope. Putting more load on the system just doesn't make sense.
edit: just to add a couple of small things which i didnt reply to
The whole bandwidth/speed thing - yes I know they are different, but they are directly related. If you have a 8mb line and only 1gb of data that you can use, then your line isnt really 8mb anymore as if you use it as an 8mb line for the whole month, you will go over you limit. Instead it becomes an 8mb burstable line. I still think that its incredibly dodgy marketing when a company can advertise an '8mb always on' connection which you can't use 24/7 for every day of the month. Thats a separate issue though, so lets not start a discussion on that here
Then the need/want issue..not going to argue that anymore past here, but the 'need' for a 100mbit line is he same as a need for a car that does 70mph or a ferrari - its not a need its a want, it would be nice but its not needed for you to work properly or to live. If you do need it, then you can go and buy it. Its expensive but thats life, tough.
Last edited by Spud1; 04-12-2007 at 07:25 PM.
From what I can tell, typical usage among people who spend the most time on the internet are things like YouTube and MySpace. We are in the 'age' where anyone can throw together big multimedia content and chuck it out there for consumption. The demo lovers among us are probably small fry in comparison
As far as speed though, I'm not that fussed - I'd rather have capacity to get my advertised speed.
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