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Increased Bandwidth Irrelevant?
halbert writes "ArsTechnica has a story about AT&T COO Randall Stephenson telling folks that there is 'no discernable difference' between AT&T's 1.5 Mbps service and Comcast's 6 Mbps, because the backbone is slowing everything down. The main argument from the article is that fiber to the home is not necessary. How about letting the consumer decide that?" From the article: "This is a direct response to the criticism that AT&T has suffered for deploying a fiber optic network that reaches only to the local node, not directly into a customer's home--which means that the 'last mile' connection is still copper wire. Verizon, by contrast, is deploying fiber directly into the home, making for much higher speeds. AT&T argues that its model is cheaper, faster to deploy, and just as capable as Verizon's, which currently uses much of its massive bandwidth to distribute RF TV channels."
So, the COO of company A who provide a worse service than company B says that there's no service-level difference in practice. Well, he *would*, wouldn't he ? It's always worth remembering the wisdom of ages... "cui bono"
IMHO (and it's only a single datapoint) it's certainly worth it for me... I have servers located in the UK on a 100mbit link, and at least 80% of the time I can download at ~500 kBytes/sec (sometimes more) from there to San Jose (CA). Since I transfer large numbers of multi-megapixel images, it's important to me that I have a fast link.
So, basically, picture me blowing a loud raspberry at Mr. Stephenson, thumb on the end of my nose, and waggling my fingers at him. I'll take the Comcast service, thanks.
Oh, BTW, you can get HDTV down the same wire too
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
and I sometimes get 3 - 4 Mbit / sec on sustained downloads. end of argument. AT&T, fix your slow shit.
And I can tell a HUGE difference in the performance of the connection during normal browsing activities. When downloading a new distribution or flac files their DSL connections seem unusable to me.
The main argument from the article is that fiber to the home is not necessary. How about letting the consumer decide that?
I'm sorry. I'm incapable of making important personal decisions.
Isn't there a government agency that could decide for everybody at once, including me?
Next you'll be asking me to choose a health-care provider!
I Don't know about Comcast, but with TimeWarner at 5mbs I tend to get the full speed or at least close to it. And it is defiantly faster then 1.5mbs. Especially using Bittorrent for large Linux ISOs, I can get up to 600 KiloBytes Per second which is 4.8mbs. I think it is AT&T just trying to Scam Us, and stop using faster Internet in which VoIP is clearer.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
AT&T's method is faster to deploy?
I live in a development constructed in 1999.
When I moved in, there was no consumer-level high-speed Internet access offered in the neighborhood.
Now, in 2006, Comcast has fiber to each and every home.
AT&T? "Sorry, DSL isn't offered in your area."
Faster to deploy? Right.
... the backbone is not the bottleneck. What if I want to serve up home videos of my kids to their grandparents? I can serve up more than 1.5mbps, my parents can consume it, and there aren't any heavily contested resources between us. As more and more people catch on to the fun factor of serving up their own content, and as tools to make that easy become more widely available, the demand for high bandwidth connections is going to go through the roof.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I have the 15Mb/s down 2Mb/s up package and it is fast as hell!!!! I routinely get 14.6Mb/s downstream when downloading from fast sites (like Microsoft.com). I'd say their backbone is working just fine.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
If the backbone is too busy to provide the ultra-high speed service today, what about the future, when it's capable of handling more data at higher speeds?
At that point, people who already have the high-speed "last mile" connection can make full use of the new capabilities, while those who have the slower connection will have to lay new wiring.
Hey, so maybe you should... oh, I don't know... fix your backbones?
I've got 6Mb DSL from Speakeasy, and I'm pretty certain there's a huge difference between 1.5Mb and 6Mb. Apparently the backbone isn't a problem for Speakeasy, either, since I regularly get between 500 and 700K/s download speeds. (That's bytes, not bits.)
Sounds to me like AT&T is doing what they do best... absolutely nothing, while they sit on their ass.
Of course the difference is not very big right now, at least not to average Joe. Developers gear content towards what most of their customers will be able to use, if most people have a 1mbit connection, then it makes no sense to develop sites that require a 6mbit connection to look decent. Once more people have faster connections, developers can make their sites even more media-rich. Verizon appears to be planning for the future, while AT&T can only see whats going on right now.
There IS, however, a noticable difference between the 2Mbps upstream on FIOS, the 768Kbps upstream on (my) DSL, and the 256Kbps upstream on cable around here. At least, for anybody who has ever tried to email a digital camera picture to a friend, etc.
Morphing Software
Did I have first post?
No. Apparently your cable speed is too slow.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
AT&Ts arguement is that it doesn't matter how fast your connection is, once your packets travel through the internet backbone, they're gonna get slowed down anyway. This has 2 major flaws:
1. Many many connections do not travel through the backbone. sure a connection from NY to LA will, but probably not from your house to your neighbors. AT&T only seems to be thinking about IPTV, but people are going to want fast connections for many other uses.
2. Eventually the backbone will be faster, and AT&T customers will be stuck with the slower connection.
I tend to agree with TFA. I used to work at a UUNET datacenter, and my desktop PC was literally two hops away from multiple OC48 connections. (My computer -> wiring closet switch -> department router -> ATM switch -> UUNET backbone.) Truthfully, the experience was not much different that browsing on my cable modem at home. Sure, if I wanted to download something from the university in my city (which was on the same sonnet ring) it was fast as hell, but other than that, it wasn't really that much different. Where you get an advantage with huge bandwidth like that is in aggregate connections. There were tens of thousands of servers and multiple circuits terminating in that building, and hardly any latency at all on anything. But for an individual user... not much difference.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Damn you and your high-speed, all I get is 45.2 Kbps. :-(
Ummm, just a thought, but in France we get 20Mbps adsl2+ that really is 20Mbps (well, when your phone line is good enough to get that high a rate), or at least most of the clients get a good 10Mbps, and get a stable download rate that's consistant with their synchronisation speed.
We have IPTV too. And the fiber only goes to the local node, not to the home. And you're talking about FTTH doing only 6Mbps? Did I read that wrong or are you really talking about a technology that is being used waaay below its real potential? AT&T's offer ought to be way above what it is, way above comcast's actual offer of 6Mbps (which should be at 100Mbps).
I'm afraid I still haven't gotten used to the turnaround with internet speed. We're all so used to looking at american connections and drooling it seems odd to hear you talking about connections we had a few years back...
Show me HDTV over IP that's at 1.5 mbps and I'll show you crappy HDTV. If AT&T thinks they can compete in the IPTV market at 1.5 or even 6 mbps, they're mistaken.
I guess the COO has never tried downloading a DVD-sized ISO of a Linux distribution.
Cablevision if doing a brisk business with it's new premium Boost service (2 Mbps up, 25 Mbps down) so somebody must feel the need for speed.
I wonder if anyone would notice the difference between 1.5 Mbps and 25 Mbps?
What a load of crap. I've had 10Mb full duplex for the last few months, and sure - I was quite happy with that. Do I really need more? No. Last week my ISP without any warning or notification decided to raise it to 100Mb. I'm not downloading (and seeding...) at around 9-11MB (yes, 11 MegaByte) per second. Do I need it? No. Do I want to go back to 10MB? No.
Also: "because the backbone is slowing everything down". Well, if the 6Mb is 6Mb only in theory, then it's not 6Mb, and the customers shouldn't pay for 6Mb. I understand that the situation is a bit different in the US than here (Sweden), but still - that sucks and is not acceptable.
"we're not constrained by bandwidth. You're not constrained by the size of the pipe anymore," Stephenson said, referring to the switched-video capacity of the network which delivers only one service to a single customer at a time."
So, he expects every home in America to have only 1 TV hooked to his TV network, and while that TV is on, nobody is using any computers in their house. It's this ignorant management and lack of innovation that makes most current telcos a dying breed. At least Verizon is taking a step forward with Fios and IPTV.
Can 1 HD channel even fit through a 15mbps pipe?
What possible reason could he have for downplaying a competitors speed advantage?
..good luck getting dates though.
Along the same lines:
a '86 dodge omni is just as good as a brand new ferrari
rubbing alchohol is just as good as a bottle of wine
pressing hard on your eyeballs is just as good as going out to a movie
Just think of how much money you can save with this line of reasoning!
Starsucks
Having used both services and numerous others I can say 1.5Mbps is noticeably slower than the 6Mbps, and the FIOS is just way faster than both for pretty much everything. By "way" I mean usually double the download speed. And for me it's cheaper than cable was by $10/mo, which is wonderful. Obviously you can hit some bottlenecks outside anyone's control, but these are actually pretty rare. Also, it's probably not relevant, but I also have a much more consistent low latency connection to the World of Warcraft servers now. I think that's more of an issue with the shared-bandwidth nature of the cable connection I had though. Anyway, that AT&T guy is incorrect as far as I can tell about there being no discernable difference, the difference between 1.5 and 6 is noticeable and from 6 to 15 is huge.
"640kbps ought to be enough for anybody" --AT&T COO Randall Stephenson
Kids? What are those? *googles by telnetting to google.com :80 and typing in raw HTTP strings*
Oh. They result from a thing called sex.... *googles sex*. Oh that involves girls. What are girls *googles girls*. oH.
This is /. remember? :)
Charles Wyble System Engineer
They terminated my service today for not restricting my downloads to 100G / month. This is in spite of their 'unlimited' sales pitch, and the conversation I had with pre-sales using a psuedonym: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/tags/speakea sy (read in reverse order)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
You really want both as the formula is fixed_latency+data_size/bandwidth.
The last part is not insignificant - for a chunk of 8KB the pipe with 1.5Mbps contributes 44 milliseconds while a pipe doing 6Mpbs contributes only 11 milliseconds.
all this bandwidth may windup being moot if the people that want to end network Neutrality and or switch to bandwidth used pricing models have their way.
why is it people in korea have like 20000000000Mbs connections for $10 a month (ok maybe i exaggerated slightly)
and in the US we will be lucky to keep only paying $50 a month of 3.0Mbs connections.
We in the US are getting Screwed on data pricing and speed.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Lets pretend that you have virtually unlimited bandwidth to your house. What are you (as a consumer) going to do with it? Forget businesses and industrial use, what would a consumer do with it? Video is a good option for IPTV, but that's a hard financial sell against a deployed coaxial cable network. (not impossible, but hard) What else? Play quake with no lag? Seriously, there is a point of diminishing returns until the software has a valid reason to use that much bandwidth.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
It is important to note that the speed loss described in the article is in single point to single point communication. If you are downloading multiple pieces of a file coming from many different locations (read: bittorrent) you will be able to acheive much higher speeds on fibre as each individual incoming connection travels a seperate path through the connected networks.
I can say that I certainly noticed the difference when I upgraded my DSL service.
For a fact, you don't know what you're talking about.
I've lived in several countries with national health, and they're uniformly underfunded, overworked, and have deeper chasms than anything you'll find in the States. Go to one of the major hospitals in any city. Ask how many patients are foreign nationals. The number will shock you.
Canada's health system is laughable. The British NHS is far worse. Only in Sweden have I seen anything coming close to the quality of health care available in the USA. No, I'm not an anti-socialist, rather a realist.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Actually there IS a huge amount of dark fiber. Dark fiber is not the problem. Lighting it up is the problem. HUGELY expensive. Then you need to upgrade your routers to handle 10 times more traffic. Again, not cheap. You end up having to redsign your network from scratch if you up the last mile speed that much.
I do agree that the backbone is lagging behind, but don't butcher the users' capabilities simply because the telecos can't get their fingers out. Especially as it seems to be the telecos who are complaining. Doubly so, when it is the lack of multicast at the home that prevents users from making better use of what backbone there is.
A gigabit to the home is about the most that can usefully be used using current technology. None of the providers listed do full-duplex gigabit. Until that time, everything is excuses. If home computers can push/pull ten gig before even a single gig is on tap, then that would be the new minimum before excuses can possibly be acceptable.
When the providers don't provide, don't blame the users if they don't use. They can't, whatever their choice might be, even if they knew what that choice would be.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I have 30Mb/5Mb Verizon Fios (Fiber optics to the house) and i absolutely love it. To say there is no difference is absolutely retarded. You cant pull 30Mb/s from easynews.com with AT&T's 1.5Mb or comcasts 6Mb service, but you can with Fiber.
You not only can upload faster, but you also do not get capped for using your service. Try that with a cable broadband provider. Sure they may advertise 6/1, 10/1, even 15/1 and 30/2 now (optonline) But if you use that upload bandwidth for even an hour straight, you will get capped down to ridiculous levels and your bill will not reflect it. Nothing is worse than having Optonilne's 30Mb/2Mb service and realizing you've been capped down to 6Mb/15KB/s AND you're bill is still the same $60 a month price.
For some reason cable broadband providers love to charge you full price even though they've capped your service down to near 56k speeds.
Fiber is the future. Anyone claiming other wise is not up to par and is affraid of it. They cant deliver the speeds the market demands. Frankly the market demanded it years ago, and only a few have stepped up just recently. Verizon being the major player. Bravo Verizon.
Coax can do a lot of things but everyone should laugh at these companies when they tell us that we dont need speed.
The net would be so much more if we had faster speeds.
Just look at what verizon is doing. They're delivering HD TV through Fiber to the house at a much cheaper package price than cable providers.
The sooner we get faster speeds, the sooner we have a more advanced civilization with new developing markets and utilities that make our lives far better than yesteryear.
Anyone holding us back, should be left to die like the peice of shit company they are. No hand outs. You suck. Build up your infrastructure or find a different market.
Capacities of internet bandwith now are limited not by last mile users, but by the bandwith between nodes that are in place between users and the servers. And it is a lot more expencive to fix, than to give home access to fiber optics.
Oh.. and in REALITY,
we have a system that is failing due to companies not providing health plans.
frankly, we are left with bankrupting people or having the government cover health care costs for people. I think that the second option is the best option... unless you are a social Darwinist.