Slashdot Mirror
How Broad is Broadband?
Photon01 writes "The Register reports that UK ISP NTL have lost, in a ruling that their advertisement of their 128k broadband service as 'High Speed Broadband Internet' is misleading.
This is despite it clearly meeting the technical definitions of broadband internet.
Apparently 128k broadband is not broad enough." My first cable modem was only 256k. It wasn't blazingly fast but after being stuck on dialup it was heaven, and I imagine 128k wouldn't be so bad for a single household.
not broad enough :)
i still have my 2400bps external modem that I was forced to used for a year.
well, it's all realative. back in the mid 90's, dual channel ISDN was amazingly fast, and is what everyone wanted for their businesses. now a days, we know that ISDN isn't all that hot, and then the ADSL are to be considered lower end broadband. so how broad is broadband? well for me, right now, it's about 800k/sec sustained download from sunsite. kinda hot.
There's service marketed as broadband in my area that's around $35(US) a month for 256kbps down/128kbps up. Is that not broadband too?
Well, just to start things off how about this for a definition...
More that a single channel on a T-1 ie, greater than 64kbps. Any takers? Better suggestions?
Dunno about the rest of you, but my "broadband" connection is only a few millimeters wide...
"I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside" -- Calvin
This is what comes of marketting departments taking a technical term and redefining it. The opposite of broadband is not narrowband, but baseband (eg the defunct V.35).
What can be done to stop sales and marketting (and politicians) from diluting perfectly good technical terms.
how many brands can a broadbrand brand if a broadband could broad brands?
When you buy gasoline, the octane rating is Required by law to be posted. A similar system of 'Broadband Octane', so to speak, would allow consumers to more effectively make decisions on internet access.
In addition, there seems to be a growing trend of 'broadband' carriers who are slowly jacking down the bandwidth to each individual, either by packing in more consumers on a main line, or forcing the hardware to lower rates. In any case, more unsolicited disclosure would be welcomed.
Here on the UAH campus network, They say it's broadband, but we get the speed and relability of dial up. I guess they think if you get a static IP and connect though an ethernet jack it's broadband.
I got ADSL myself, at 376kbs down and 128kbs up. It's not very broad for a broadband (indeed, some argue that ADSL can't be defined as broadband), but I picked it for quite another reason then bandwidth; I'm always on. And when you're used to pay for the minute, that's pretty darn important - I've saving about 50% each month compared to a dial-up connection. I would say that for my use, thats more important than the speed with wich I can D/L over P2P.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Here in Oz we have ADSL services that offer you 256K down and 64K up. Meaning that it is ok if you are surfing, and leeching files, but if someone else wants to get data off you, it is going to be limited to your upbound capacity.
Is it still called broadband, or is that no more than a farce than what was described in the article (which only said a speed of 128K, and did not focus on where the restriction lies)
Maybe if I had broadband, I would be revived from stasis much faster, on Terran Legacy. Damn, I sware that is the same Zealot waiting for me to look around outside the base, or the same pervert Overlord spying on me, or that damn Level 3 hydralisk waiting to deliver another 850+ damage POWER HIT.
Damn you 128K broadband!
13.21 Gbps OC-255
10 Gbps OC-192
4.976 Gbps OC-96
2.488 Gbps OC-48, STS-48
1.866 Gbps OC-36
1.244 Gbps OC-24
933.12 Mbps OC-18
622.08 Mbps OC-12, STS-12
466.56 Mbps OC-9
155.52 Mbps OC-3, STS-3
100 Mbps CDDI, FDDI, Fast Ethernet, Category 5 cable
51.84 Mbps OC-1, STS-1
44.736 Mbps T-3, DS-3 North America
34.368 Mbps E-3 Europe
20 Mbps Category 4 cable
16 Mbps Fast Token Ring LANs
10 Mbps Thin Ethernet, category 3 cable, cable modem
8.448 Mbps E-2 Europe
6.312 Mbps T-2, DS-2 North America
6.144 Mbps Standard ADSL downstream
4 Mbps Token Ring LANs
3.152 Mbps DS-1c
2.048 Mbps E-1, DS-1 Europe
1.544 Mbps ADSL, T-1, DS-1 North America
128 Kbps ISDN
64 Kbps DS-0, pulse code modulation
56 Kbps 56flex, U.S. Robotics x2 modems,
33.6 Kbps 56flex, x2 modem communications rate
28.8 Kbps V.34, Rockwell V.Fast Class modems
20 Kbps Level 1 cable, minimum cable data speed
14.4 Kbps V.32bis modem, V.17 fax
9600 bps modem speed circa early 1990s
2400 bps modem speed circa 1980s
Units of Measurement
bit = smallest unit of digital information, i.e. ones & zeros
byte = a set of bits
bps = bits per second
Kbps = kilobits per second =1000 bits per second
Mbps = Million bits per second =1,000,000 bits per second
Gbps = Gigabits per second = 1,000,000,000 (one billion) bits per second
Tbps = Terabits per second = 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) bits per second
(Network speed is mesured in 1000 units, memory and storage space in 1024 units)
I'd say the problem was that it was marketed as high speed broadband. While 128Kbps may technically be broadband, I don't think many people would consider it to be particularly high speed.
Can someone with a better idea of whay is going on here (like someone across the pond) throw me a bone here. If it meets the standard physical and regulatory definitions of broadband how can it be anything else? Where does this "the average consumer expects broadband to be 500 kbps or more. I just polled my dorm floor (Johns Hopkins University) about what speed they thought broadband was and the answer I got the most is 5 times dialup, which this clealy meets.
Nalanthi
I can't find my
Doesn't broadband refer to a wide bandwidth (as opposed to a narrow band)? For some reason people think "broad" means fast...
It's a terrible precedent when marketers and lawyers can define a technical term like "broadband". I wonder if they're going to define "baseband" for us as well?
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
That's the equivalent of ISDN!!
Wow, 80s flashback....
Amiga, Debbie Gibson, Super Mario's theme song.... It's all coming back to me all at once!! Make it stop!!!
They were advertising "high speed" broadband internet access. It may well be broadband, but it certainly isn't "high speed" broadband.
"Low speed broadband" would have been more appropriate, but of course, they would've made their offering pale in comparison with real "high speed" broadband, so greed took over and caused them to advertise in a misleading fashion.
Just remember that to the average user, a 128k ISDN line with relatively low latiency is going to feel much faster at their normal tasks than a faster connection with higher pings, such as satellite or even some cable modems. Broadband should include more than just throughput, it should be the sum of many factors.
2 definitions found
:
:
From WordNet (r) 1.7
broadband
adj 1: of or relating to or being a communications network in which
the bandwidth can be divided and shared by multiple
simultaneous signals (as for voice or data or video)
2: responding to or operating at a wide band of frequencies; "a
broadband antenna" [syn: wideband]
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (09 FEB 02)
broadband
A transmission medium capable of supporting a
wide range of frequencies, typically from audio up to video
frequencies. It can carry multiple signals by dividing the
total capacity of the medium into multiple, independent
bandwidth channels, where each channel operates only on a
specific range of frequencies.
See also baseband.
(1995-05-09)
Someone should tell these guys about it. What they advertise as "ultra high speed internet access" is actually a great 100 Mbit LAN connection...to the other residents of the apartment complex. Connection to the internet? Capped at 64 kbps. Yes, you read that right... 64 kilobits per second. As in, slightly faster than your 56K modem. On a good day.
I tried to call them on it, but the apartment won't take responsibility ("we're not the network guys, we just pay for it") and the actual ISP won't either ("we just provide what they pay us for"). It infuriates me because I think the ISP is trying to pull a fast one on the apartment complex and the complex just doesn't know any better. Even the head technician claims that 64k is two to three times faster than 56k cause it's full-duplex (doesn't help my download speed) and ethernet means reduced latency (still doesn't help my big downloads).
Someone get Cogentco to come to Utah. Now *that's* what I consider "ultra high-speed internet!"
In related news, Bill Gates redeemed as being the future insight of computing expectations. It is true, 640k realy is enough for anybody.
And in other related news, Steve Ballmer's "monkey boy" dance has been discovered in a remote primitive tribe of the Brazilian jungle. Steve Ballmer, a phsyic anthropologist genius? He'll be the guest of honor at this year's HIP-HOP charity Feed The World To Microsoft (or Microsoft Feeds The World Ape Shit) event.
It's not how much you have have, it's how you use it.
Broadband means it's a communications channel divided into multiple chunks. Each person on a cablemodem connection uses a different freqency range on the same cable, that makes the cable broadband. The opposite of broadband is baseband, that's where the base comes from in 100BaseT.
If you divide a 2400 baud modem among several users in that way, it can be called broadband too even though each user only have a few hundred bps.
Jason
ProfQuotes
It's not clear how this term became associated with DSL. Early on, DSL was referred to as "data over voice". (This came from the old "data under voice" system, which sent very low data rate signals for alarms and such over lines also carrying voice, using a frequency band somewhere below 100Hz.) Both of those terms are now obsolete.
DSL has no DC component (you can put it through a capacitor and it works just fine) so technically, it is "broadband". But that has nothing to do with the data rate.
From a regulatory standpoint, what we need is this: It is deceptive advertising to advertise an "up to" speed without showing, with equal or greater prominence, a guaranteed minimum speed. This rule should apply generally to any advertising that specifies some numeric measure of goodness.
Now 128kBps (kiloBYTES per second) is cookin'!
Dont forget about all the people who have the most expensive and lowest speed DSL, iDSL. DSL over ISDN.
I was stuck on iDSL on covad for 2 years till they fixed our phone lines.
Good points, faster than modem, almost 3x. And ping was great, 20ms to all hops in Seattle. (Low ping bastard for games)
So it was doable. And compared to ISDN which you had to bind the channels together, and dial out, was a snap, static IPs and never a disconnect.
Total cost, about 400 bux for a modem, 100 bux a month service.
Now YOU bitch about the price of high speed DSL.
And by "broad" I mean widespread. I live in a somewhat rural area (central Pennsylvania). Broadband has finally made its way to the area (no thanks to the greedy fucks at Verizon and Adelphia), but how they've deployed it is rediculous. In my town, all we have is dial-up. That's all we've had since the Internet became widely available. Yet, five miles down the road, they can get Cable service. The whole area is wired, I watched them hang the lines in front of my house. All they have to do is turn it on, but they won't.
128K would be a godsend to me, even though it isn't all that fast in the grand scheme of things. I could get it (via ISDN), but it's too damned expensive ($150+). It'd be more sensible to wait out Adelphia and get Cable service ($60), more speed for less cost. But the wait is getting a bit tiresome. I've complained to them several times, and one time I even got fairly lippy when they told me the lines weren't ready when I knew for a fact that they had been ready for two months. It's almost like Baghdad Bob is working for them
The sad thing is we can't do a damn thing about it. They're in control, and only listen to Dead Presidents instead of their customers...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Gbit Ethernet doesn't function over Cat-5(e), as Cat-5 maxes out at 100Mhz full-duplex and Cat-5e maxes out at 350Mhz full-duplex. For full-speed Gbit Ethernet over copper you need Cat-6.
Another one I see that he left out is ATM - which works at the same speed as an OC-3 (155.52 Mbit/s). Still... a pretty complete listing, over-all.
/dev/random
I remember reading a while back about the FCC's definition of Broadband. One idea holds that broadband should be fast enough to support streaming video at VHS quality which is supposedly 500 kb/s. In theory if you can support streaming video, basically anything can be provided over the internet assuming that it is processed on a remote server. However, I would still like my personal fiber optic cable.
Maybe it's broadband, but it's not what I would call high speed broadband...
If I have multiple telephones, can a proxy combine two or more 56K connections to get a larger pipe?
i.e. If I view a page that references p1.png and p2.png; can a proxy server take the two HTTP requests for p1.png and p2.png, and send each request out through a seperate 56K connection?
I know some ISPs support channel bonded modems - but these are pretty expensive. Has anyone heard of a pure proxy server that can implement this sort of thing?
... Maybe even Riveting. I'd like to see these guys order lunch. "Let's see, I'll have the Grandpa Burger. Easy on the plaid. What? It's not made of *real* grandpa? That's totally misleading. According to dictionary.com, a grandpa is 'A grandfather'. Now I want my crippled meat!"
Comic Book Guy: I am interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud connection to a 1.5 megabit fiber optic T1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router thats compatible with my token ring ethernet LAN configuration?
..... can I have some money now?
Homer:
The reasons given in the article are backwards. The ad should have been shot down for billing it as high-speed - not broadband. To most users, high-speed would indicate 512k or greater, but the connection still qualifies as broadband.
I guess the decision had to be coached in terms relevant to the initial complaints, which were most likely poorly worded. I wouldn't be surprised if the member of the public was actually connected to Freeserve in some way. They should have based their complaint on the high-speed aspect of the advertising. If NTL appeals, they should be able to win, but Freeserver will no doubt come back at them with other complaints...
I have 8mbit download, and 864kbit upload. I cannot see that this is ISDN, thus it's "broadband". Broadband is a low-speed internet service, and should be threated so.
I think that "broadband" must be defined as "The possibility to watch movies and play games on-line without much problems". As PC's will continue to evolve, and bandwidth for movie-watching is lowered (we have to expect higher and better compression in the future), we might actually end up with that an ISDN-owner might see a full quality streaming movie on-line. Thus it's broadband.
Well, where do we start? Sure, it isn't "high speed broadband". So I was agreeing with the judges decision. Afterall, here in .au, we actually care about the "consumer" (hate that word), and if some lousy business lies to you, we sic ACCC (Asutralian competition and consumer commision) onto them.
But then found out that the lawyers were arguing it wasn't "broadband". ie, some stupid slime has stolen physicist's language, and is trying to force change in terminology through law. They didn't have a beef with the "high speed" part, instead they chose to pick on "broadband".
I'm an NTL and although I have a megabit broadband connection my friend only has a 128k connection at his house and he usually gets at least 35kilobytes of data down his line which after doing the maths seems more than that stated 128kbits ... Plus moving from 56kbit dial up to a 128kbit NTL connection is amazing for normal users simply because of speed boost in resolving domain names etc. I'ts good that a company is offering a good cheap service in the UK.
The issue isn't that it's called broadband. The service is broadband. However it is slow broadband, not 'high speed broadband'. I would argue that 'High speed' broadband would start in the range of 640kbps, if not 1mbps.
I've been with a cable modem for the last couple of years since I moved to L.A. At first it was Road Runner which was bought out by Media One which was bought out by ATTBI which this month was just bought out by Comcast. And yes, I was sent a notice that my service was going to be raised from $46 to $60/mo. unless I subscribe to their TV cable service as well. The notice came with an ad for their digital cable service with the motto "Comcast, a company you can love". Well, I agree because I love to hate Comcast. Goodbye cable modem, hello DSL.
Federal Law states that the octane rating can be as high as 7 points off the mark on the pump without relabeling the gas.
So, 83 could be as low as 76, and high as 90 (doubtful).
Dont ever know what your gonna get, eh?
...Not broad enough dammit. There's no such thing as downloading pr0n too fast!
Repeal the DMCA!
I have the NTL 128k "Broadband" service at home and it suits my needs.
I wouldn't call it slow. Low latency when gaming and download speeds are reasonable particularly for the £15pcm (cheap) it costs and its always available (ignoring network outages). Bearing in mind that some/most dialup services cost £15pcm plus any additional call charges that may occur plus your phone line is then tied up - the NTL is twice as fast, always on and costs less to run.
It is slow however "compared" to the 600k and 1M services. But the problems I have seen with atleast the 1M service is that you have more bandwidth than most of the servers out there and the speed is never fully utilised - at the moment.
I'm not saying its lightning fast but then I don't mind waiting a few minutes for a 10MB download.
The ruling is wrong as they are saying the service you provide is a broadband service but you can't call it that. If the 128k service does not suit your needs then you can up your tariff and bandwidth to one of the faster/broader services.
Its also to note that the other telco services in the UK do NOT offer a comparable service its dialup or full ADSL. Because NTL offer a cheaper and better alternative with a range of services is why they are kicking ass in the number of people signing up to NTL.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
I am involved in the videogames industry. In this generation of consoles, there has been a lot of controversy on the definition of broadband, since there's not a standard on the requirements for any given game and there's not a clear way for the user and the developer to know if they are met beforehand.
This causes a big problem for everybody. Developers have an inherent need to limit their bandwidth requirements and perform a lot of tests to reduce network problems, and it can really influence gameplay design; technical support and marketing can be a headache for the publisher and the experience for the user can be very frustrating if there is a simple latency problem, even if the bandwidth is high.
Every "broadband" user in this case says: "but I have broadband! Why can't I play?". Latency and bandwidth are very complex things to explain, and many factors can affect the videogame experience negatively. (number of hops, type of interface, firewalls, NATs, network traffic, just to name a few)
I performed extensive tests with the Dreamcast, the PS2, the GameCube and the Xbox, I can say not many games really require more than a 64K connection, but in many cases, while even the bandwidth of a 56K modem could suffice, a specific game may have a problem with the latency associated. That's why some games are labeled as "broadband only". Of course, it doesn't guarantee the connection will meet the game's requirements, but it minimizes the problem somewhat.
As it is, we used to have a better way of classifying the connection speed on dial-up modems. The diversity on interfaces and protocols (xDSL, Cable, WLAN, etc.) just render the term "broadband" useless.
I remember Ken Kutaragi (Playstation's main designer) saying something in a conference a couple years ago that went along the lines: "you call 1.5 Megabits/sec 'broadband'? But that's about the speed of a CDROM!" I wish Kutaragi extended the analogy to latency using CDROM seek and access time too.
We need a better way to refer to a modern Internet connection, period.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Broadband should be at least 1MBit/s today, and full duplex. None of that slower up than down.
It is time for a fiber revolution!
I always see the "up-to" speed advertised based not on how good the product is, but how bad the competing product has the potential to be. That has annoyed me, and I really think they should be forced to change that part:
/could/ be using. By their logic that makes the service I'm getting even better- "Up to 300 times faster!!"
"Our service can be up to 50 times faster!"
vs
"Your old service could be 50 times slower!"
I still have a 1kbps modem which I
You can't possibly give a garanteed minimum speed, though. Such a number would be meaningless to a network.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
When are people going to get some god damn common sense? People always want technical, detailed labels on stuff defining things that everyone knows.
"Cigarettes may cause cancer."
"California Recognizes that burning gasoline may pollute the environment."
"Warning, Coffee May Be Hot"
How about a whole list of stuff?
So when a company decides to use the techinal term, (a REAL technical term) people get all pissed off because it doesn't quite meet thier own made up definition. When are people going to wake up and realize that labels aren't going to save you, and the government isn't going to build a private padded room for everyone to live in?
The problem I have with broadband is that it all depends how many people you're sharing the pipe with. What starts off at 256kb/s will slow down when everyone else in the street gets it and is downloading things at the same time... and none of the major suppliers (that I know of) will give any kind of bandwidth guarantee. So if your broadband connection ends up running at 1kb/s, tough, it's still broadband, pay for it and be grateful...
Whereas at least I know that my old slow ISDN connection will only ever vary between 64kb/s and 64kb/s!
I get 4096/128 from my isp (teledisnet (belgium)) for about 34?
28.8 baud is about 3.2K/sec so 128K/bit sould be about 4 times faster than a dialup modem. My cable modem is capped at 15KB(150Kb) upload, but the download is in the Mb. Sometimes 600KB or 6Mb/sec. 128Kb down would be 4 times faster thank dialup, but it is not my definition of broadband.
iD and GameSpy really need to look at their algorithms for ISDN users.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
My home ADSL is 1.5Mb.
Where I work (the R&D hub of the Air Force) has OC-12s and -48s and who knows what else, coming out of its ears.
But the link from inside to outside goes through so many filters and firewalls that reading email, loading a web page, or trying to download the latest security patch goes far far faster at home than at work.
(And it's not competing traffic from the rest of the base's inhabitants, either. Trying to pull stuff off the net in the middle of the night when nobody else is there isn't any faster. Grumble.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
And lets start it at 1 meg a second...
Like think about this for a second. Look at how fast modems became extinct. Now we are going backwards instead of forwards. Faster speeds are coming out every day like ADLS2 but there not available anywhere. There pricing modems at $20/ month so there for Highspeed must be worth $30 to $50 a month so ADSL2 will be like what? Too expensive. We need Moore's law in Broadband and on it's price !
At least in New Zealand, the 128k ADSL is effectively crippled by traffic caps in the region of 5-10Gb/month. @ 10Gb, thats a monthly average of 32kbit/s. Take the cap off and maybe I'll be more receptive to claims of "high speed" internet.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
Perhaps it was the adjective that NTL used that made it particularly false: 'high speed' broadband. I don't consider 128k to be 'high speed' for a broadband connection.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
128Kbit would suck ass... Throughout much of Canada you can get 3 to 5Mbit (300-600kbit upstream) for ~$45 CAD/mo. I'd be very disappointed with less than 1Mbit.
90% of the highly-modded replies here are complaining that the original definition of "broadband" is multiple signals on the same wire.
However, I'd like to put forward the idea that the popular definition has now come to mean "broad" bandwidth. Bandwidth meaning digital data rate. In this context, "narrowband" would mean a 56k modem. Non-technical people are so used to talking about digital data rates of a connection, they're using "broadband" to mean higher capacity.
Like "Hacker" vs "Cracker", the term has been usurped by widespread usage. At some point, feedback needs to occur and the technical community should recognise the popular definition. English is constantly evolving and it seems a little pedantic to keep posting technical dictionary definitions of "broadband" when you know what it means in context.
In Sweden the government has defined broadband as 2Mbps full duplex. I think that's a pretty reasonable speed to define it as. /Erik
Erik Dalén
In Sweden, my friend lives in appartment block, and they got a 100Mbps broadbend network installed free as the company wanted to test the technology. (They pay about $20 a month to use it).
Thay had a meeting about it, to discuss what people thought of it, the company explained that other appartments were having 10Mbps lines installed.
Being Swedish, they decided to have a vote, and democratically decided to change the network to 10Mbps so they would have the same as everyone else.
Only in Sweden...
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
I used to have a 128k connection from NTL until january. I upgraded to it from a 56k modem, and the difference to me was a revelation. I know it's pretty low speed compared to most other broadband services, but it was much faster than my modem, always on and didn't tie up my phone line. In that sense, maybe it shouldn't be called "high speed" but "much higher speed than your modem" isn't a very snappy name.
As for the word broadband, I thought it referred to dividing a line up into multiple channels with frequency division... a cable modem definately does that, no matter what speed it is. So does ADSL (24 seperate channels agregated together) and in fact a 56k modem does too!
Whatever. NTL's service should be called broadband, and just marketed as "entry level broadband" or something.
As for me, I have just moved to the Netherlands and recently ordered a 256k ADSL line from XS4ALL. I'm sure it will be fast enough for me.
A latent existence
while working on a military base i got a chance to use a 48.8 dialup modem...was this just a crippled 56.6 or perhaps something else entirely?
:)
and let's not forget 96 & 120 BAUD
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
...those Mormons won't be downloading streaming porn, so they don't need much more than 64kbps, right?
(glenwood apartments is targeting the BYU community)
Whatever the technical definition is of broadband (what several people have pinted out already) is not the issue. It is the marketing definition that is what counts here. In the UK 'Broadband' has been specifically linked with a 'High speed, always on connection'. Not only that but it is what you can do with this connection. The advertising from BT (An ADSL Wholesaler) has cleary stated online gaming, movie trailers, audio and multimedia content. Given this definition 128kbs is not broadband.
/b
This 128kbs service should be marketed and targeted to an audience that wants an always on connection that is faster than Dialup but may not want as much streaming multimedia content.
[Please type your sig here.]
It's whether 128k can be described as high speed broadband. It can't. 512k is normal broadband, 128k is their low cost, low speed broadband option and I welcome the fact that it exists but it certainly is not high speed broadband.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Technically I figure anything that offers a advantage over the fastest dialup technologys this could be classifided as broadband. I wish people would go after all the companys that advertise unlimited access that dont really mean it... How many say its unlimited then you end up with *'s describing factors that still 'limit' your bandwith in one way or another.
You guys arguing over small values like 128k. Its like watching people fight over bread crums. You need 640k or you're wasting your time, and embarassing yourself. Even Bill Gates is quoting as saying, 640k is pretty much what everyone needs.
God spoke to me
up to 100k narrowband
100k - 500k mediumband
500k+ broadband...
I certainly wouldn't call anything less than 500k broadband.
Nick..
I can't take it any more! I'm moving.
Technology does. Broadband is a kind of link that can do multiple things. Like DSL, there is both data and voice riding over the same wire, just in seperate bands. This is as opposed to technology called baseband, where the whole bandwidth of teh link is used for one task. Ethernet would be an example of baseband. It is perfectly possable to have really slow broadband (like say DSL with only 64k upstream) or really fast baseband (like 10Gb ethernet).
The reason why broadband is an exciting technology to the home user is that you can get data over an existing technology like cable or phone lines. Since it travels in a seperate band, it doesn't interfere with your existing service, and since it is part of the same link, there is no requirement to run an additonal connection to your house.
However it has no bearing on speed. My external link is broadband, but only 640kbit/sec. My internal links are all baseband, and old technology at that, but still run at 100mbit/sec.
"Enlarge your broadband now! No pills, no pumps! Up to 4 inches thick! Guaranteed!"
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
128K ISDN is plenty of bandwidth, provided the latency is good and you're not a download whore (aka, a warez kiddie, someone that downloads every new demo, or someone that downloads music/videos, etc). IMO, the main problem with dialup is the latency, not the pipe size.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) defines broadband service as:
"A service requiring transmission channels capable of supporting faster than 1.5 Mbps or the primary rate in ISDN or T1 or DS1 in digital terminology. In European version it is called E1 or 2.048 Mbps."
-- Broadband Communications, Balaji Kumar, McGraw-Hill, 1998
According to the FCC broadband isdefined as an information service with a carrying capacity in excess of 200 kbps upstream and downstream.
That's how "broad" broadband is.
the base was still kind of stuck somewhere in the 40's as far as utilities went - the dirty dirty power killed i think it was 40 computers[all or most behind some sort of power protection device]...the telephones must have been still on an analog crossbar switch...hell the beds were the same more or less than when the nazi's were raising hell in europe...
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I just received a letter from NTL saying they're changing the 128k service to 160k, and are gonna charge £3 more p/month for the privilidge. Why would they do that? Would this make them 'high speed' now?
I'm still on ISDN (Yes, I don't have a choice), and the ADSL guys are blazing past me. Ever notice how a normal web page is can quickly be 3-500 kilobits? That's 2-4 seconds of time, while my friend with 1mbit ADSL (now 2mbit, actually) downloads the same in less than half a second. Even the slowest of satellite connections I know of don't add more than half a second of lag, making the total time about a second. Beats me by a factor of 2-4. And that's only when I connect with both ISDN lines at twice the rate, making it insanely expansive instead of just incredibly expensive. Sigh. Good thing there's the university....
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It would be fair to ask NTL to drop the High Speed claim, 128kbps isn't that fast, but it is technically broadband - by the ASAs' own admittion! Thereby having "broadband access from £14.99" instead of "high speed broadband....", but no this is too much like a good idea.
Mind you doing things that define common sense isn't new to the ASA. A couple of years ago they banded a car newspaper/magazine ad because it had a blurred background and gave the impression of breaking the speed limit (the car was actually standind still with no driver as I remember). To further prove that they are a bunch of silly people several months later didn't ban a similar ad by another car maker - doh! In general the ASA do do a good job, but it's at times like these you wonder if they have the heads screwed on.
There are only rare occasions that I personally need high bandwidth. The appeal of "broadband" is the always on nature. I would like BT to get there arses kicked in the same sort of way as NTL have here because they've put a 150 hour limit (or some such) on their broadband service. Surely broadband == high bandwidth + always on?
Carpe Daemon
Dispite the technical meaning of the word, people assume broadband = fast to begin with. "High Speed Broadband Internet" indicates you're selling fast broadband. Advertising it as "High Speed Internet" *or* as "Broadband Internet" would work, because it is considerably faster than a dial-up line. But when you stick then together you expect a broadband connection faster than the average, not the slowest of slow broadband.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
how much ground round would a hound dog hog if a ground hog was ground round?
i'd say, the common perception of narrow-band is voice services - say ISDN in europe - which would be something like >= 128-144 kbp/s. i'd consider things termed like "idsl", which is basically 1d+2b channels, offering 144kbp/s bandwidth - still narrow band. well, if you say anything > narrow band = broad band, then at least anything > 144kbp/s should be broad band. i'd wouldn't define the it in terms of speed. i'd would define it in the capabilities of the service / technology. DSL (such as full rate ADSL or G.lite), Cable Services etc. would be always broadband services - even if a service plan restricts the bandwidth to 128k (i mean if you have the opportunity to call and they open the pipe for a few bucks more without laying new cable or installing new devices). h.
One things that I don't see mention of is contention ratios. I can quite happily supply 100 customers a line capable of carrying 512. But if I only have a 2MB leased line filling all of that then they are going to complain but buy definition it would still be broadband. Prehaps it would be better to say something like
"512K is broadband when it can be sustained for 99% of the time" or something similar
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Sounds to me like you're from Malaysia cause that's basically how the situation is here. Dail up is charged by the minute and the speed of your ADSL service is the same as here. Though since getting, I've been making weekly phone calls to the isp to bitch about the frequent disconnection and dismal speeds that are slower than a 56k. In fact the service is worst than a 56k sometimes. Makes you wonder if it's really worth it sometimes.
Yeah I know you can't include them all (vary even from country to country) but that was a good start. DSL go as high as 24Mbps in Korea and 12Mbps in Japan right now. AFAIK 8Mbps is quite common in Japan and 2Mbs in low-end ADSL.
The most important ones missing are LMDS (great, check http://www.wcai.com/lmds.htm) and Satellite. Residential networked building blocks work great and cheap in Sweden.
BTW : WiFi networks enter the broadband range too.
HAM radio is quite slow (about 4000bps in my experience, but that depends on antenna, location, etc) . Anyway it's been here for a while.
I mean it. Anything less than 512kbit is not broadband. Broadband, for me, means streaming video(of some quality) with sound quality almost that of 128kb mp3, not a bunch of stretched gray and purple pixels with a tinny sound you get on ISDNx2.
Probably will win in court.
Ah... advertising law is a wonderful field where wordsmiths clash.
In many cases a copywriter manipulates language to make a dubious clash and then the advertised company gets sued by a competitor. The plaintiff lawyer has fun attacking it with reference to professional and consumer opinion (is Slashdot professional or consumer) and the defending lawyer has to say, it wasn't dubious, people are used to dubious advertising and take it with a pinch of salt and anyway dubious advertising doesn't effect their decisions - all in one go.
A lawyer (or lawyers) found that the term 'broadband' is misleading as used in reference to 128kbps. He didn't define it.
Since consumers would probably equate 'broadband' with 'quick', I think the finding is reasonable - 128 isn't quick.
everyone advertises "unlimited" access, and the first thing they do is impose limits. I'm aware that cable modems can only generate so much signal, therefore there a technical limit to how fast they can return data. But beyond that limit, my ISP, charter communication, limit my upstream to 20kbps. Also, they limit what I can do with my connection by outlawing "servers" in their aup. They also limit what I can do with my own hardware that I own, by preventing uncapping blah blah. uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
i'm itringued to know if this will affect blueyonder in anyway as the are belived to be partnering with NTL. Dont want any of the download capping or lower bandwith accounts there.
Your only young once, but you can be imature forever.
I am amazed at the lack of technical knowledge being displayed by contributors to a forum that is supposedly frequented by those of a technical disposition. 'Broadband transmission' is a type of data transmission where a single medium can carry multiple channels at the same time. Contrast this with a 'baseband transmission' that can carry only one signal at a time. It has got NOTHING to do with speed or throughput.
The best book I ever read
I always was taught that it went like this: 256kbps = "Broadband" T1 (1.544mbps) = "High Speed Broadband" T3 (43.323mbps) = "Wow!" 100Base-T = "Baseband" OC3 (155mbps) = "Damn!"
Q: "Why do sound techs say 'check 1, 2'?"
A: "Cause if they could count any higher they'd be lighting techs."
The full adjudication can be found on the ASA website.
The complaint had nothing to do with the description as "high speed", although removing those words and adding some qualifying text will fix the situation.
What I find interesting is that I am sure I recall in the early days of 'Broadband' in the UK that OFTEL used the 500 kbps mark.
Then the government of the day made some election claim about 'Broadband Britain' and how much takeup they were going to push for.
Now I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if OFTEL lowered the speed of what it called 'Broadband' to the same speed as channel bonded stock 2 channel ISDN then that suddenly means a lot more of the data links in use are 'Broadband' and the government wouldn't look quite so daft, nor actually have to do anything in terms of investing or legislating to try and ensure a decent availablity of good quality 'Broadband' technology...
"How many hops to the backbone?" (in our case here in South Africa, I would ask about their peering with Jinx, as well as their international bandwidth in addition to this).
We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office. - Aesop
NTL is a an example of a telecom that's on its way out the door. A dinosaur barely surviving in the dotCom era. Their UK division's policies since declaring bankruptcy and splitting the company in pieces have been draconian and have repeatedly fucked the consumer. At one point, NTL implemented a 1GB daily transfer limit. Now that's outrageous and absurd. If I were a UK customer, I'd drop the service purely on principle.
A few years ago, sitting in front of my 1200/75 MODEM, I was in awe of those with 33.8kbps devices... Today, with my 512/128kbps connection, I still wish it was faster.
The difference, apart from my own impatience, is the content that forms the dominant delivery paradigm. In 1990, high-bandwidth content was not in the same universe as what we will consider to be high-bandwidth content in 2020. Thankfully, the days of ASCII porn are over...
If you choose to determine the nature of broadband by the speed of the connection, you need a sliding scale, linked to what content developers and users use it for - almost an Internet Societal Norm - as I think that speeds and the size of content 'atoms' will continue to grow.
Of course, I make these comments from a position of complete ignorance...
It's times like this I really appreciate my 10mbit down/1 mbit up broadband link. It's only $39.95 a month!
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
No ISP in their right mind would guarentee speed to a site not within their network. I just started working for an ISP, and they guarentee speed to the DSlam or slightly after that. Anything past there is out of their hands, hence they can't guarentee shit.
anyone know of a way to accuratly measure the throughput of a broadband link?
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
The def. of broadband the Swedish goverment set is 2000kbit both up and down =). Just a useful FYI.
I live in Fairfax, VA, no cable, no DSL
unless you want to call $90/month with a 1 year contract to iDSL with $500-600 in eq charges broadband.
Does anyone know of any solutions that won't cost me a small fortune to get an always on faster than dialup? I like my earthlink dialup but I would like some speed, even 128kb would be nice.
Anything faster than my 300 Baud VicModem.
Better rhythm:
A broadband would band all the broads it could band, if a broadband could band broads.Congratulations! Now we are the Evil Empire
I think the reason this is not called "broadband" is that British Telecom has got away with pushing terrible services for many years and the telecom regulators are reluctant to let this happen again. Remember that in many areas in the UK broadband is still not available. I'm frustratingly stuck with my 56K modem, where I live, and I see no solution to this problem in the next two years! I live in a large residential area too! My only way of getting a decent speed would be a satellite connection but that is far to expensive.
1)The bronze service (256kb) which I have neither uploads or downloads ANY FASTER than the Silver 512kb - Gold 768kb - or Platinum 1mb -
Workers / installers also make people think that is MEGABYTE AND KILOBYTE it is megabit and kilobit - they advertise the service with a k when it should be with a kbps or kb - but front desk people will often say "You should upgrade to the 1 megabyte service"
The way I have tested this is by hooking my Aiport BaseStation up to both - I used his (neighbor's) service, he used my service for a week. We both use Peer to Peer and both download a considerable amount of images and software updates. We also both upload to eBay a lot. There is a considerable sized class action action lawsuit in Greenville against Charter, this is one of the many things mentioned as a grievance in the suit.
2)They advertise on the Pipeline website that a Mac with a 601 PPC or higher is able to have the service. They install free ethernet cards (ISA,PCI, PCMCIA) in most every Wintel but won't install an AAUI adapter (on some Macs) or something like a PCMCIA card on the PowerBook 1400. They also tell my customers that I have sold 7300's (604e/180 processor) to, even if they have G3 upgrades that they won't even ALLOW then to get on Pipeline claiming it doesn't meet spec, when one can can view this message on their site: Pipeline Requirements
They also are under investigation for charging the bogus "line maintenance fee" - which they tell you if you don't have they will charge you to fix your cable, when technically (although not by law) they are a municipality/utility and must include line maintenance in costs.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
How many broads must a brand load down, before you can call him broadband?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
To use the term "broadband" (or rather, "bredbånd") in advertising your internet service, the connection must be fast enough to use modern multimedia technologies in real time, the mark currently being set by the ability to watch live video streams of "good" quality.
The world will end in 5 minutes. Please log out.
We all live in a world where naming of computer related products has been somewhat obscure to the consumer for years if not decades. examples are numerous such as 802.11b etc. However Broadband has been an exception as the name reflects its purpose (has to be a deliberate decision by marketing). What am I talking you may ask? Well the term "broad".... I mean they are right ...
90% of internet searches and downloads relate to broad's in one way or another :-)
If you get modded down for a first post... What do you get for a last post?
if you're a consultant or contractor, that's the way to go. Sure it costs more, but you get to write it off. Only cavet is you have to use it for business purposes. Many broadband providers are limiting he upload bandwidth to 128 and keep download to 512. That's becoming the norm, so the only way to get 1.5/384 or 1.5/512 is to get business broadband. It's well worth it to me.
I've got a 10 mbit connection at home. That's a 10 mbit full-duplex connection, and it's excellent. I did some testing, and upstream the speed is rarely under 9.68 mbit/s and downstream it's about the same. I personally feel that anything under 6 mbit cannot be called broadband, it should be high-speed internet.
I don't know about you guys, but even 1.5Mbps isn't fast enough for me. Of course, if I actually had a 1.5Mbps uplink, it might be a different story. I like to be able to run my own servers from my house, rather than a colo spot. So eventually, I had to ditch my DSL and get 3.5Mbps/384kbps cable instead. Why can't I please just have a standard 10Mbps line like I did in college? I'm paying $95/month now!
It depends on what you are doing.
For ssh sessions, web browsing, email and downloading a reasonable number of iso's 128k is fine.
I used to have a 1 meg connection, untill I realised that I wasn't using it.
Most p2p stuff is limited by the other persons u/l limit which is 128k for a lot of people and 256 for most of the rest.
If you want to d/l every new distro every week, or you want to cvsup every single day, then you might notice a problem with 128k, but with 2 of us working from home we don't.
You said "broad"...
I'm stuck with 56k dialup. Which is really just 53.3 because of FCC regs.
How does all this compare to my VICModem 300?
In my day, we had 56k FRAME RELAY and gosh darn it, that was good enough for us.
Seriously....my college back in the early internet days had a 56k frame connection for the entire campus....and it was damn cool (circa 9600 baud modem era).
Even today, I see lots of offices with 50+ employees still connected via 128k ISDN....and they aren't looking for anything faster. The complaint I hear from most of these guys is that it's too expensive....not that it is too slow.
One of our offices recently transitioned from 128k ISDN to 1.5 Mbps DSL...why? Cost! The ISDN circuit ran us $200/mo. DSL costs us $79.99/mo.
-ted
Here in Denmark broadband is politically defined to mean anything faster than 1Mbps (or was that 500 kbps? Too lazy to look it up. Anyway it's only about tax rules when your employer supplies the connection to your home). It has nothing to do with broadband/baseband or anything, which is really how the average user thinks. Here on Slashdot, some of us know about stuff like band issues, but the vast majority of the population knows nothing about that. All they do is associate "broadband" with "quick". You may argue about how sad that is, but there you have it. Now get over it.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Gigabit ethernet is actually a 250mhz signal.
Bits/second != Hertz
I have 2mbit cable, better than a T1. When i go on anything less it reminds me of the 14.4 days. Now, if they proposed T1-C style 3mbit being broadband, i'd be very happy hehe :)
The technical definition of broadband is going the way of the technical definition of 'hacker'.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I can see where the UK consumers are complaining here, ISDN is really not much more expensive than a regular POTS line. Dual bonded ISDN is 128K so shelling out for a Cablemodem at 128K is hardly worth it.
The only advantage is that in the UK ISDN calls are metered so you're saving the 2p a minute dialup costs. Of course, this may have changed, I've not lived in the UK for 3 years, are ISP's offering unmetered access for ISDN in the UK nowadays? If so, then Cablemodem at 128K - not worth it!
Bandwidth Definition/Reference and USA FAC Link on bottom Technically (I think), the UK court is correct. 128Kb/s is wideband (not broadband) communications. There is no such thing (I think legally) defined as a "Broadband Internet" frequency or data-rate. There is a term "Broadband" with international acceptance (I think) and (definitely in the USA) definition.
b /sUltra-wideband5Mb/ss
c hrt.pdf
Bandwidth Data Capacity (from my old references, plus)
Narrowband64Kb/s]
64Kb/sWideband2Mb/s
2M
5Mb/sUltra-Broadband2.3Gb/
2Mb/s-2.3Gb/s (AKA: Broadband)
128Kbs is equivalent to two phone lines or the full BRI ISDN. Two full BRI ISDN circuits together would barely meet the definition of wideband communications. A T1 circuit at 1.54Mb/s is in fact a wideband circuit not a broadband circuit. Marketing hype incorrectly uses the term broadband, but not misleadingly for me.
Due to "junk character and white-space violations" I could not format this more readably.
Bandwidth Term Data Rate
DS0 64 kbps
ISDN Basic 2 x 64 kbps & 1 x 16 kbps [144Kb/s (w/framing and stuff 192Kb/s)]
ISDN B Channel 64 kbps
ISDN D Channel 16 kbps
ISDN Primary 24 x 64 kbps & 1 x 16 kbps (AKA: H Channels, 1.544 Mbps and 2.048 Mbps)
E1 2.048 Mbps
T1 1.544 Mbps (24 x 64 kbps, in ISDN and Circuit Switching)
T2 6.312 Mbps
T3 44.736 Mbps
Ethernet 10 Mbps
Fast Ethernet 100 Mbps
Token Ring 4 or 16 Mbps
DS1 1.544 Mbps
DS2 6.312 Mbps
DS3 44.736 Mbps
OC-1 51.84 Mbps
OC-3 155.52 Mbps
OC-12 622.08 Mbps
OC-24 1244.16 Mbps
OC-48 2488.32 Mbps
OC-96 4976.64 Mbps
OC-192 9953.28 Mbps
Sonet 51.84 Mbps - 10 Gbps
SDH 155 Mbps - 10 Gbps
PDH 1.54Mb/s or 2.048Mb/s - 565 Mbps
Protocol
Connection Type Data Rate
IrDA-Control 9KB/s
Serial 20KB/s
Bluetooth 125KB/s
Parallel 1.0MB/s
USB 1.1 1.5MB/s
SCSI-1 5MB/s
Fast SCSI-2 10MB/s
Bluetooth-2 2 to 12MB/s
FastWide SCSI-2 20MB/s
Ultra-SCSI 20MB/s
Ultra-Wide SCSI 40MB/s
FireWire (1394) 50MB/s
USB 2.0 60MB/s
Ultra-2 SCSI 80MB/s
FireWire (1394b) 100MB/s
Ultra-160 SCSI 160MB/s
Incase you want to know what are the USA Carrier (not data rate) Frequencies.
Dang Good and Detailed Chart for USA Frequency Allocation:
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allo
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Up here in Canada, Sympatico is doing the same thing. When I moved to my new place I wanted my 1 Meg DSL to follow me so I called Bell and requested that. Somehow I ended up with 128k DSL, which I didn't even know existed. I don't know any other DSL provider in my area that even offers it. I only found out when I called to get a tech in to replace the wiring which I thought was causing my speed problems.
If an advertisement said: "Broad band, Cheap price" you wouldn't sign up without checking what cheap price was first, would you.
Why should it be different for the bandwidth? Don't consumers have brains?... err... never mind.
The "10 bits in a byte" rule originally applied to parity and synchronization bits in a stream. Modern streams no longer use straight parity per byte but rather a CRC per packet, and synchronization happens less often, but "10 bits in a byte" is still valid because of protocol overhead such as IP addresses, port numbers, packet sequence numbers, evil bits, etc.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There already is an 'octane' rating for internet access. It is called 'kbps'.
I know about "kilobits per second", but the ISPs seem not to use it. I didn't see a guaranteed kbps in the contract with my area's monopoly cable ISP.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Only if these applications are highly interactive.
The most prominent applications deployed as of April 2003 that 1. absolutely require a connection significantly faster than dial-up and 2. are not primarily used for mass piracy are video conferencing and online twitch gaming. Both are highly interactive.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How do you eat food without cooking it.
By opening one already-measured serving, putting it in the microwave oven, irradiating it for four minutes, removing it, and eating it. I wouldn't exactly call microwaving "cooking" in the sense that one has to measure ingredients.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well I just moved up from dial up to a cable modem, but I'm still only getting 64k Imagine the dam cable company is calling that broadband! I live in Trinidad and it's costing me 400$ a month. The best package I can get for home users is 256K and that's going to run me at least 900$ a month. Ahhhhh the disadvantages of living in a third world country!
I'd rather brand broads myself.
i wish i wuz lyk yoo...
£14.99 for 128k is an excellent deal
-significant improvement over dialup speed
-always on (so no call charges, & seperate line)
-seem to have near-perpetual free installation
c.f. £15.99 for AOL flatrate dialup access
OK -so the marketing guys took a liberty - but the offer can't be beat. If only they could figure out customer service as well...
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
Kind of interesting to hear the speculation about broadband and baseband.
firstly ISDN and DSL services are NOT broadband services. ISDN uses multiple channels on multiple wires. Basic rate isdn uses 2 data carrying channels both rated at 56Kbps. That brings the total to 112Kbps. There is a third channel that carries control signals across those wires at the rate of 16Kbps (which sometimes does act as a data carrying channel) bringing the total to 128kbps. Now I don't think anyone would call their old telephone modem (56K) a broadband device. The difference between the old modem and the ISDN service is that the signal is all digital from the telco to the end user/business. The 56K modem uses an analog signal to the end user. There are varying services isdn offers too, the next step up is 23 carrier channels (data) and one control channel still for a total of 56Kbps*23 + 16Kbps. You can do the math, but the important thing here is that there are 24 wires coming in to the office. This service is quite fault tollerant. It was replaced by the T1 and up services. Which we know requires 24 wires into the office as well.
Both the T1 and ISDN services are not broadband. DSL service is also not broadband either. The DSL service uses one part of the wire to transmit/recieve data, but uses frequency modulation and compression to make this possible. Because we all know without compression the theoretical max bandwidth of a single telephone wire is 56Kbps, there is no way this bandwith can be increased without compression. You only have so many wires into your house.
Cable modems are broadband services. There is no frequency modulation or compression used. The service uses the availible bandwidth of the coax wire to transmit in analogue form. The cable modem then acts much like a dial-up modem translating signals from analogue to digital, and back. The reason that your tv still works is that the availible bandwidth of the coax wire is much more than that of the typical telephone wire. The compression and modulation of the signal is the classifier that make it "broad" or "base" band.
>My first cable modem was only 256k
So what? When was that? How did the provider bill it? What bearing does a service that you apparently purchased years ago have on a service that is being sold today?
And, how does it matter that 128k would be "OK" for a household?
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
the broad bit means your using a wide frequency range for your modulated analog signal.
the difference between a 56k and a broadband modem is that the 56k uses the frequency range of a telephone voice signal, while the broadband uses a much wider spectrum.
your mixing up the difference between analog and digital with broadband and narrowband.
incidentally, the 128k will be broadband, it'll just be a capped system.
North of a Chicago there's a road called Half Day Road. Used to take a half a day to get there. A hundred years maybe? Takes an hour now.
In a recent broadband assessment for our area, as part of the Link Michigan project, they defined broadband as enough bandwidth as to not limit your application. That is, there's enough speed to do whatever you want.
So yesterday, perhaps 128K was broadband. It was enough. Today, cable modems at 256K+ download is enough. What about tomorrow?
Tomorrow (dare I say today?) we will see bandwidth serving multiple video streams, voice communication along with all the Internet-normal services. Can we do this in today's "broadband"? No.
"I have a broadband Internet connection" is saying the exact same thing as "I have a fast Internet connection".
It's all relative.
Read my sig!
I have 1 Gbps Internet access@home
I remember when I got my first modem (a 1200bps) that 9600bps and 14400bps were considered "high speed". The USRobotics modems were even branded as "HST" with the HS meaning "high speed".
Then 19200 and later 28800 came out and suddenly 14400 modems were accessible to the masses and they weren't considered to be high speed anymore. However some 14400 modems still were labelled "high speed", presumably to attract people to make the switch from the lowly speed of 2400.
Then it happened all over again when 56K came out.
The one thing that was different is that I can't recall hearing of anybody getting sued over it. Probably because most modem buyers back then were more of the nerdy types and weren't fooled by cheap marketing gimmicks like sticking the words "high speed" on the box!
As for broadband, it's probably best left as a relative term. In many countries, 128K may be the best that one can get, unless one wishes to spend thousands of dollars.
... but it wasn't Broadband; it was Scrawnyband. Infinitely nicer than dial-up, sure, but if the catch-phrase is "High Speed" then it's misleading in a world where computers are coming with 100Mbps LAN on the motherboard. Now I've got a cable modem that generally runs 5-10x faster than the old IDSL and I'm finally feeling like I've got a respectably fat pipe coming into my house (given that I'm not actively hosting any servers in here).
;^)
For example, I was able to download the Matrix Reloaded trailer last night at 100KBps -- can't do that with scrawnyband, regardless of how much better it is than dial-up.
I can understand the complaint against qualifying it as 'high speed', though. It sounds like 'high speed broadband' would put your service at the upper end of performance. If someone sold me a high performance car, I wouldn't expect a rusted out 1967 VW Beetle with expensive tires. "High Speed" qualifies the broadband. They were totally right to do this.
"Broadband" referrs to the modulation of multiple signals on different frequencies over the same physical wire.
Contrasted with "baseband", which is the simple placement of an electrical signal on a wire.
Ethernet uses a baseband method of signaling. Hence the technical terminology "100 Base TX" 100 Megabit, baseband signaling. The TX, I forget what that represends.
Baseband signaling is trivial to interpret...an ethernet adapter only needs to be aware of three states on the wire...0, 1, and null. As opposed to broadband, where the adapter needs to be aware of the different signal levels and frequencies and pick the right channel from the wire to modulate/demodulate over.
How can a lawyer define a technical term? "Broadband" has been misused because DSL/Cable are implimentations of broadband, but broadband signaling is not implicitly faster (or slower) than baseband signaling. There is no debate over what "broadband" means, it is explicitly defined in the world of electrical engineering, and has been for many years.
WTF do the lawyers think they can get off doing?
128 kbps in this situation means 128 kiloBITS per second.... To get kb/s we must divide by 8, leaving you with 16 kiloBYTES per second.
0kpbs. You cannot safely guarantee anything faster than that, lest you have customers threatening lawsuits when a router over which the ISP has no control dies.
What should be offered is a guaranteed average rate.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
First, a byte is eight bits exactly, not just any old set of bits. Second, you are mostly correct that network speeds and feeds are quoted in powers of 10, and that memory and storage are quoted in powers of 2.
However, that is no longer the case. Now, storage vendors are also quoting capacities in powers of 10. This allows them to brag about their drives that hold 250,000,000,000 bytes as if they were 250GB drives, instead of the 232GB that they really hold. A real 250GB drive would hold 268,435,456,000 bytes of data. They are overquoting capacity by more than 7 percent!
Finally, I expect that memory vendors will follow this trend any day now, and that those shiny new 16GB DIMMs will only hold 16,000,000,000 bytes instead of the 17,179,869,184 bytes that God intended! Or else they will start calling them 17.2GB DIMMs.
So in summary, buyers want to know capacities in units that make sense in relation to their use with computers, and sellers want to sell in units that inflate the perceived value of their wares. This will continue until the buyers get tired of doing these conversions in their heads and demand sensible units from the sellers.
Cheers!
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
Packet not considered in this definition ... broadband can provide a wide range of services ....
....
- wideband5Mb/s
packets for email, packets for VTC, packets for audio, packets for
Bandwidth Data Capacity
Broadband range is from 2Mbs to 2.3Gb/s
Narrowband64Kb/s
64Kb/sWideband2Mb/s
2Mb/sUltra
5Mb/sUltra-Broadband2.3Gb/s
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Carrier Frequency
Data Frequency
Modems and Radios both use carrier frequencies to transmit data. In a modem or radio the data (analog or digital) is modulated on to the carrier at the origin and demodulated at the receiving end. MoDem (Mo.dulate Dem.odulate) a radio does this with an RF carrier frequency transmitting across a space/air, and the modem is specifically for cable (FO/wire) data transmission. The carrier frequency provides power to the transmitted signal and the radio or modem provides appropriate modulation and signal format.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Its amazing how the Media and Marketing guru's can change the definition of just about anything.. But marketing loves to create new buzzwords to fuel the fires of thier newest endevors. Broadband existed long before networks ran at 110baud.. yes Baud.. Thats 110 bit per second.. No Kilo about it... (Well I wouldn't actually call this a network at this point they weren't using a "Network Protocol" to aid in the transmission)and thats also including parity.. Thats about 8 bytes per second... So someone piping up and pointing fingers at a company thats offering speeds too slow to be called broadband is really out there.
People wonder how a language in a educated nation can pop up out of nowhere... Its things like this that start the ball rolling.. Ebonic's is an extreame example of what can happen when people are allowed to run amok with a language without being corrected.
More or less you see the same thing starting to happen with "Free".. how much "Free" stuff have people paid for or payed money to access. The term hacker has been stripped down to mean nothing more than a malicious attack on a computer. When hacking actually has alot more to do with a mindset of a person rather than the result of his actions.
Its very sad to see the widespread gross misuse of a word then have people argue that the public impression of that word has got nothing to do with the actual definition.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Some folks are mixing concepts on what is bandwidth and broadband (Approx: 2MHz-2GHz).
...). There is still truth in
Broadband can include multichannel circuit switching data-stream. However, on the internet the mixed services are packet-data and the number of connections packet-switching allows.
The transfer rates still depend on the distant end capabilty (ADSL/T1/OC3/...) and activity (site hits, DOS,
"you can increase the number of connections you make without sacrificing transfer rates"
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
hrmmm...seems like someone violated their usage agreement.
According to a letter I got today (I've got a 600k subscription), NTL are going to scrap their 128k service and replace it with a 160k one.
That's interesting enough, but what is more interesting is that my friend (who has the 128k) service tested the speed of his line and it was actually running at 250k!
This was presumably so 128k customers would tell all their friends how great NTL is, but the net result is that the speed 'rise' is actually a decrease (because I bet it'll start running at its real speed now)!
(And of course they're putting the price up too.)
I worked as an assistant rf engineer for a wireless ISP for about a year and apparently bandwidth does matter. When writing and refining the business plan we discovered that in order to advertise as broadband (also "high speed") the minimum offered service has to provide 200 kbps at least one way. This is defined in the FCC's Section 706 advanced service inquiry in their second report. The UK I couldn't comment on but you can look here.
I'm not sure why the guy fought it, wasted money. I would've just put "fast" or since they're electrical impulses "lightning fast" or even "three times the speed of dialup!" in the adds.
The way the rules written, one could provide 128 down 200 up, still advertise broadband or high speed, and extend their bandwidth budget a bit. Though I'm betting there would be a test case before too long.
...it's how you use it. ;-)
I designed and installed a true "Broadband" network some 3 miles in length for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. This network used RF carriers, and your description of 10broad36 is almost correct. Look into IEEE 802.7 or MAP/TOP networks for more information. The network I designed was a "mid-split" bi-directional network, with 5 to 115 Megahertz signals flowing one way in the cable while 150 to 450 Megahertz signals flowed the other way, through the same cable.
SLAC's Broadband network had 5 data independant data streamsflowing in it, each totally isolated from the others, together with some 30 video signals. This was similar to, but not quite the same as, the Cable TV networks most people have bringing television into their homes. The main difference is that SLAC's Broadband network provided for a lot more "up-stream" bandwidth than a cable TV system would ever think of providing. Remember, the model for Cable TV is that you are only supposed to be a consumer, so you can only receive signals, so signals only flow toward you, and not away from you.
This asymmetry persists because most people want fast downloads, but rarely do they ask about their upload speed. If more people did their own web hosting, I am sure this asymmetry would change, but I am also sure there would be loud howls of protest from many of the existing content providers, because they would rather not have any more competition.
The term "Broadband" is now used interchangeably with high speed (as in gigabit data rates). I think this is due to a fast baseband system's ability to "time multiplex" many independant signals, apparently carrying them all at once. A true "Broadband" system uses "frequency multiplexing", and can also carry many independant signals, all at once, hence the confusion.
The Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) scheme found in most fiber backbone networks is a close relative to the frequency multiplexing schemes used in Broadband cable networks, because different lasers are used to produce lightwave carriers in the fiber cable, each on a different light wavelength (or frequency.) These lightwave carriers are completely independant of each other as they all pass through the fiber, effectively multiplying the capacity of a single fiber many times over.
The last I heard, well over 100 seperate lightwave signals, each carrying a 10 gigabit (or faster) data stream, could be put into the same fiber, and that all those signals could then be transported hundreds of kilometers, without demodulating and remodulating any of them.
An analog gray hair frantically clinging to the trailing edge of technology.
well, it's all realative. back in the mid 90's, dual channel ISDN was amazingly fast, and is what everyone wanted for their businesses. now a days, we know that ISDN isn't all that hot, and then the ADSL are to be considered lower end broadband. so how broad is broadband? well for me, right now, it's about 800k/sec sustained download from sunsite. kinda
ISDN was designed to the T1 Spec as a platform for delivery of phone services (call waiting 15 levels deep, for exmaple). You are describing a stripped down version called the Basic Rate Interface while the full version is the Primary Rate Interface (and has a 1.5Mb/s throughput).
But broadband-- what is it? For example your ethernet is baseband rather than broadband. Your modem is narrow band, and your cable-modem broadband. So why> Here is why---
Baseband communications are *very* narrow band and digital. For example ethernet over cat5 is baseband. (what the base stands for in 100baseT).
Narrow- and broad-band are defined by the width of their frequency bands and have nothing directly to do with bandwidth. Iirc, these are derived from rf terms and originally from plumbing (width of a band of pipe).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP