Why Is the Internet So Infuriatingly Slow?

Anti-Globalism writes "The major ISPs all tell a similar story: A mere 5 percent of their customers are using around 50 percent of the bandwidth, sometimes more, during peak hours. While these 'power users' are sharing three-gig movies and playing online games, poor granny is twiddling her thumbs waiting for Ancestry.com to load."

Comments

Not so slow

[Anonymous Coward]

See? First post

Re:Not so slow

[Anonymous Coward]

the internet is so slow cause timmy touches himself at night

Re:Two words

[badpazzword]

The point is not about the cost, the point is about this mythical 5% group of cancer/hackers/sharers/etc. who are at fault of everything that's wrong with internet. They are killing the music industry, They are killing the films industry, They are killing the videogame industry, They shamelessly copy copyrighted content to their computers, They disrupting the ad industry with filthy plugins, They do not contribute to the OOS movements, and they are the cancer who is killing random boards on weird websites.

It's always Them.

Re:What does this mean?

[ergean]

Do you mean that spam-bot that granny has on her desk is slow accessing internet pages?

Re:Internet Axiom: The internet is slow

[mollymoo]

Ultimately, my point is, and I think the one of the person who started this chain, is that charging by bit or byte is fine, but then the onus is on the ISP to make it very clear both what my costs and usage are. If they did that, then it would be easier for us to adjust to that new model.

Most UK ISPs are limited now and they do provide web pages to check your usage and emails giving you warning as you approach your limit (mine trigger at 50% 75% and 90% IIRC). Better ones also allow unlimited off-peak and allow you to carry over or borrow against the previous/next months allowance.

I use 10-20 GB a month (2 desktops, 2 laptops, one server, one PS3). My dad never uses more than 1 GB a month. He pays less than the old unlimited packages and I pay about the same. People who use hundreds of GB per month pay more.