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."

Comments

Vested interests...

[Space cowboy]

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

Re:Vested interests...

[spxero]

I think you're absolutely right on. Of course he would say there isn't any difference. To the average non-techie internet user, there isn't any difference when going to google and searching. But to the person running multiple torrents on one machine, MMORPG's on another computer, and browsing the internet on a third (more than one person, but only one connection) there is a HUGE difference between 1.5Mbps and 6Mbps.

I had two 1.5Mbps DSL lines back at my parent's house(they work for ATT) and the connections were fine. But I couldn't connect too many computers to one connection and run anything more than one or two torrents without bottlenecking the connection. And the ping times were around an average of 100-200ms. Now I'm on a 4Mbit connection with ping times around 50-100ms while running a few torrents.

You can't blame the guy for trying to help his cause, but you most certainly can blame him for being blind about the facts. Sure, I know they're putting fiber down in Southern California with ~30Mbit connections (I have no idea of the cost). But until that happens in my area, I'll stick with my 4Mbps connection (yes, it's not as good as some, but fast enough right now).

Re:Vested interests...

[b1t r0t]

I had two 1.5Mbps DSL lines back at my parent's house(they work for ATT) and the connections were fine. But I couldn't connect too many computers to one connection and run anything more than one or two torrents without bottlenecking the connection.

With bittorrent, your upstream bandwidth is generally going to be more of a problem than your downstream bandwidth. You need to tell your BT client to cap its upload at no more than 85% of your upstream speed, otherwise the dropped ACKs will kill performance for everything else. You didn't say who your 4Mbit connection was with, but if it's a cable modem, you may either have a decent upstream or your ISP is doing some "bandwidth shaping" to limit your BT uploads to a reasonable rate.

Re:Vested interests...

[Garak]

With a simple bit of traffic shaping a single 1.5mbit DSL line can handle the webbroswing of alot of users. Even if a few are using Bittorrent and other bandwidth hungry applications. The big downloads will be a little slow but one shouldn't notice latency on small transfers if its setup properly.

The real problem with Bittorrent on ADSL is on the upload side. The send queue on the modem fills up and packets will take a few 100ms to get through if they don't get dropped. This makes for a painfully slow experience.

Greater than 1.5mbit service only really required when you want to offer services like streaming media. Using a MPEG4 codec like xvid you can stream fairly good quality TV at 1.5mbit but that dosn't leave much for overhead and other applications. Also thats only one channel, these days your typical home may have 4 people watching 4 different things on 4 differnt channels, so then you need 6mbit of bandwidth.

No major provider is going to get behind peer to peer. The idea behind p2p is to avoid the bandwidth cost. Well thats lost income for the provider. Peer to peer is a cool idea but in the long run its going to be squashed.

I can see the day comming when its impossible to get a publicly routed IPv4 address to your home. Some ISP's are already using private addressing for their subscribers. The switch to IPv6 just isn't happening and there really isn't a need. Between virtual hosting and NAT the IP address shortage has been solved. No desktop computer really needs an Internet routable IP and this also adds a layer of security.

As much as I love getting my weekly fix of TV for free off Bittorrent, I just don't see ISP's allowing this to continue for much longer. Once they work out an effective way to stream content I can see them filtering it out all together. They are not going to let people to get what they are selling for free. Both of the local broadband ISP's here already are cracking down on it by heavly throttling all traffic to users who exceed a cerntain threshold.

Very few public sites can supply a single user with 6mbit. Most servers are still on 100mbit ethernet and are serving alot more than 20 clients at a time. Currently the only way to get more than 1.5mbit from the public internet is via bittorrent. Unless you have your own server in a datacenter thats not seeing much load. When I had 5mbit DSL I could download at 500kB/s from my colocated server.

have comcast

[rubycodez]

and I sometimes get 3 - 4 Mbit / sec on sustained downloads. end of argument. AT&T, fix your slow shit.

Re:have comcast

[Pxtl]

Besides, there are other uses for that bandwidth. For example, a friend of mine has experimental "everything over IP" - TV, phone, etc. The TV services aren't going through the larger internet backbone, but are provided directly by his ISP. In that case, a fat pipe, even with a weak backbone, still is very useful.

Re:have comcast

[Burning1]

Sounds like my first relationship. Let me tell you that even if you have a weak back-bone, a fat pipe can be a lot of fun in the right hands.

Deciding is hard!

[feepness]

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!

Faster to deploy?

[JoeWalsh]

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 difference comes when

[Surt]

... 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.

I have Verizon FIOS

[MikeDataLink]

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.

Re:I have Verizon FIOS

[DigiShaman]

*ahem*

Oh behalf of Slashdot, I have one thing to say. I HATE YOU!

Ya, I'm jelous.

Planning ahead?

[Kelson]

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.

So fix it?

[Tadrith]

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.

Not Yet

[spazoidspam]

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.

Upload

[Ark42]

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.

Re:Tell that to my Familly

[MyLongNickName]

Did I have first post?

No. Apparently your cable speed is too slow.

Not everything travels through the backbone

[radical_dementia]

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.

Connection not so important

[a_nonamiss]

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.

BS Alert!!!

[the eric conspiracy]

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?

Let the customers decide what they *want*

[Zedrick]

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.

One at a time..

[squison]

"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?

Re:One at a time..

[MonMotha]

ATSC channels (USA over-the-air digital broadcast) have a total data rate of a little over 19.5Mbit/sec. Using MPEG2 video compression (see below), most stations fit a main HD feed (their network feed) at either 720p or 1080i and a standard def subchannel at usually 480i, maybe 480p if you're lucky, into that channel.

However, using h.264, HD 720p video can be run at rates as low as 4Mbit without significant artifacting, mostly due to h.264's incredible behavior when presented with resolution bumps. SD channels can be run as low as 384kbit (yes, you read that right...) at acceptable quality. However, set-tops capable of decoding HD h.264 are currently expensive and not widely deployed, and currently employed digital cable and broadcast standards in the USA call for MPEG2, so this is not likely to be used when compatibility with existing infrastructure is required.

However, even using h.264, 15Mbit leaves you with room for 3 HD channels and no extra internet bandwidth. That's really pushing it. The cable companies have really got the edge in infrastrcuture here. Their infrastructure was built to move high-bandwidth signals directly into the home (most cable systems have an available bandwidht of at LEAST 400MHz), while the telephone infrastructure was originally designed to carry only baseband voice (bandwith ~= 10kHz).

nonsense..

[ShaniaTwain]

What possible reason could he have for downplaying a competitors speed advantage?

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!
 
..good luck getting dates though.

Having used both

[NFNNMIDATA]

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.

Time to retire Bill's quote...

[Volante3192]

"640kbps ought to be enough for anybody" --AT&T COO Randall Stephenson

I'd look into a replacement for SpeakEasy.

[ClioCJS]

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)

I have Fiber to the House...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

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.