German Cable ISP First To Deliver 4700Mbps Internet Connection

40,960 Mbps has already been done. by Internal+Modem · 2012-05-31 00:56 · Score: 1

Not the first:
A 75 year old woman was first.

Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by azalin · 2012-05-31 01:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of backup tapes.
Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by L4t3r4lu5 · 2012-05-31 01:42 · Score: 2

I hear the latency is pretty high, though.

--
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by Rainbowdash · 2012-05-31 01:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yup, we Swedes will always be strong in the "internet scene." A friend of mine just got his 1GBPS connection :( And he pays half my price :
Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by kthreadd · 2012-05-31 02:18 · Score: 1, Redundant

GOOD FOR YOU!
Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by Catbeller · 2012-05-31 02:32 · Score: 3, Informative

Translation: Since I will lose the argument vis-a-vis USA vs. The Way Everyone Else Provides Internet, I will shut down the conversation preemptively by spouting something meaningless yet somehow jingoistic. Good for you.
Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 03:28 · Score: 1

But don't expect to get this kind of speed tomorrow; right now there's no demand for it among home users, and you probably couldn't afford the bandwidth anyway.
Never underestimate the amount of freaky porn on the Internet.
Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 05:07 · Score: 0

Well, not quite everyone else. Internet service also sucks pretty badly up here in Canada.
Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by isorox · 2012-05-31 09:24 · Score: 1

Well, not quite everyone else. Internet service also sucks pretty badly up here in Canada.
The the rest of the world, Canada == USA
Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by EdIII · 2012-05-31 16:41 · Score: 1

I'm not sure who that insults more....
Re:40,960 Mbps has already been done. by davester666 · 2012-05-31 17:58 · Score: 1

Not if you have a big enough trebuchet.

--
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!

Wow, I'm amazed... not. by imagined.by · 2012-05-31 00:57 · Score: 5, Informative

They used 12 modems and thus 12 seperate channels which means in reality, they only transmitted about 400mbit per "subscriber" (cable).

While this is nifty, Kabel Deutschland subscribers' bandwith is often shared, which means at peak time you don't even get 30 of the promised 100mbit. In addition to that, they slow you down after a 10gb quota/day. And in addition to that, they often throttle certain protocols, namely torrent.

This is one of the worst ISP in Germany who just made a totally useless world record.

Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-05-31 01:12 · Score: 4, Interesting

These 'ISP record' attempts are doubly pointless(in addition to the fact that they never indicate the slightest enthusiasm to actually offer something even approaching that speed, at any reasonable price, to any of their customers) because they typically are markedly slower than the already-standard high-speed interconnects that tie more central sites together.

If you are going to play pure speed-racer games, it really makes more sense to just have a set of categories based on medium(eg. 1km legacy POTS copper, 1km legacy coax, 1km single-mode fiber, 10km of each, etc.) There are real engineering challenges, and nontrivial advances, in the ability to shove more data over a link of a given nastiness; but 'records' based on unrealistic location stunts are just pointless(Telco B could just pull some fiber to a convenient school tomorrow and pull off a 'first-to-deliver 10,000mbps internet connection! and Telco C could just pull a few more strands and deliver twice that, and so on).

If you want to boast about how cool an ISP you are, you need speed, breadth, and price. If you want to boast about your super-sneaky transmission methods, just tell us about the medium, the distance, and the bitrate; but this nonsense is a pure stunt.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by a90Tj2P7 · 2012-05-31 01:15 · Score: 2

Even if it had been one modem and line, being able to use multiple channels for downstream and upstream traffic was pretty much the point of DOCSIS 3.0. Assuming the network itself has the bandwidth, getting higher speeds is really just a matter of using more lanes - for 4700 Mbps down, I think that'd be around 90. It'd be cool and all, but raising the max bandwidth of a DOCSIS 3.0 device doesn't really take much other than network capacity and a modem that will use that many channels - channel bonding isn't new.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by Bengie · 2012-05-31 01:19 · Score: 3, Interesting

subscribers' bandwith is often shared
All ISPs are shared at some level. I'm assuming you mean the node bandwidth is shared/over-subscribed?

They used 12 modems and thus 12 seperate channels
Many modems can bond up to 8 virtual channels on the down stream. As far as we know, it could have been anywhere from 1-8 8mhz channels per modem. Even with a single 8mhz channel, DOCSIS3 can bond 8 virtual CDMA channels for a combined bandwidth of 8X50Mb/s=~400Mb/s (EuroDocsis). DOCSIS3 has no limitation on how many channels may be bonded, but I'm not sure of any modem that supports more than 8 right now.

Still cheaper/simpler to use fiber, but cable can manage some crazy high speeds if you throw enough tech/money at it.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by AngryDeuce · 2012-05-31 01:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

While this is nifty, Kabel Deutschland subscribers' bandwith is often shared, which means at peak time you don't even get 30 of the promised 100mbit.
Still better than what I am pulling down during peak times here in Wisconsin. I pay for 25 Mbit and the only time I ever seem to be able to get it is when I'm running Charter's speed test on their web site at the behest of the CS people when I call to complain (how convenient, am I right?). Any other time, my 25 Mbit connection tops out at 12, and that's off-peak. Between 5PM-9PM, I'm lucky to pull down 3 Mbit and usually have
The last Charter tech that came out to my house (and I have them out at least once a year for service issues) told me to my face that my node was way over-saturated (due to the high volume of apartment communities in this area, there are 300 units in my complex alone and there are a dozen complexes along this street) but Charter doesn't upgrade their shit until enough people start dropping the service to make it worth their while. I guess QoS means jack shit to them...I know, surprise, surprise. Still, it's irritating because my only other choice is shit-tier DSL and from what other residents have told me, the phone lines in this building are piss-poor, too.
God what I would give for some real competition in this area. I imagine our Charter issues would evaporate virtually overnight...
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by networkBoy · 2012-05-31 01:46 · Score: 2

I lived in an apartment with shitty wiring, makes for some very frustrating DSL experience. Since I was at the perimeter of the complex and near the junction box the tech was able to work some voodoo magic and get my 3Mbps connection to work at at least 2...
I have always wondered why an apartment wouldn't pay for a fast connection then resell to the residents (or use it as a perk). Mine had close to 300 units, they could have made a killing by just slightly undercutting DSL/Cable internet fees.
-nB

--
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by Skarecrow77 · 2012-05-31 02:00 · Score: 2

4700mbps = 587.5MBps
10GB = 10240MB
10240MB / 587.5MBps = 17.4s
17.4 seconds a day. you could use that magical connection for seventeen seconds a day.
sounds like the worst superpower on earth. can you imagine if the flash could run really fast for 17 seconds per day? superman could fly for seventeen seconds per day? it's like the megalixer you never use in a video game cause "what if i need it for the next fight?!"
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by peragrin · 2012-05-31 02:14 · Score: 1

I don't get quota but 10gb a day and then slow is better than some.
Personally it should be 2-3gb an hour and then slow for an hour. That will cut on torrents but still allow multiple streaming movies.
Of course torrents can handle the slow downs.

--
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:22 · Score: 0

So? You downloaded 10 Gig of content in 17 seconds; now go read / watch it / do whatever which should take a lot longer than 17s.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by djdanlib · 2012-05-31 03:28 · Score: 1

That sounds like the sort of thing you'd forward along to the town hall. The utilities might not care about you, but they do care about upsetting the government.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by JustSomeProgrammer · 2012-05-31 03:39 · Score: 1

I actually lived in a new apartment building for a while. I moved in on the first day it was available to move in. They actually wired the apartments specifically for internet. Fiber to each apartment, nice switch panel that allowed a router in one room to provide internet to the entire apt etc. It was pretty nice. I moved... mostly because it was in New Jersey and living in Manhattan is so much cooler.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 04:24 · Score: 0

Stop on over here in Wisconsin. I get my 30Mb all the time from Charter, even during peak. Local ISP has 50/50 uncapped fiber for $90. Soon they'll have 100Mb+ symmetrical uncapped. No announcements on new tier speeds or pricing yet. BTW, they have a sub 15ms ping to Chicago and they use L3 as their upstream.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by EdgePenguin · 2012-05-31 05:17 · Score: 1

That is capitalism for you; everything is margins, and margins are dependent on costs. Aside from well known premium brands that can charge high price (e.g. Apple) everyone makes money by trying to provide the absolute worst serivce that won't make you jump ship and take another supplier.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 05:17 · Score: 0

It does not matter the ISP you'll have that problem with all of them. My ISP does the exact same thing. About four months of each year I get the speed promised. Then they sell to more people and the speeds sucks for the rest of the year. The only ISP in my area worth a crap does not provide service where I live.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by Salamande · 2012-05-31 06:56 · Score: 1

I'd love to run as fast as the Flash for 17 seconds a day. Doesn't sound like a lot, but if you can move that fast, it's plenty of time.
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 11:21 · Score: 0

Man, they slow you down after 10 GB per DAY? That's just...
I have 8 MBit/s down and most plans where I live offer something like 10 GB per month!
Sigh...
Re:Wow, I'm amazed... not. by negge · 2012-06-01 19:50 · Score: 1

While I'm in no way surprised, I'm sorry to hear about the state of over-saturation in your area. I Just wanted to share a recent experience regarding these things.
I'm currently on a 200/10 Mbit/s cable connection. Previously it would max out at around 10.5Mbit/s pretty constantly, so I had set my QoS settings to regard that as the maximum upstream bitrate. Suddenly a few weeks ago I noticed the packet queue grew way out of size and started dropping packets. I kept raising the max bitrate until I reached 12500 kbit/s. Apparently my ISP had upgraded their pipes. Wouldn't you know, a few weeks later they announced a new 350/20 Mbit/s connection type.

I'm so glad by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 00:57 · Score: 0

" internet connection speed of 4700Mbps (Megabits per second)"

If they had not defined Mbps for me, I wouldn't have known what it meant.

Re:I'm so glad by jellomizer · 2012-05-31 01:30 · Score: 1

Well being that most consumer/business workstations only have gigabit network adapters. 4700Mbs is more then we can handle. Unless you have some expensive routers/switches that will give network connection to say 100 system (for normal internet use) (5 high end servers that are taking a huge load)
Most professional networks that take an average business load have a Gigabit router, and they are hosting a heck a lot of data off that router.

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:I'm so glad by networkBoy · 2012-05-31 01:50 · Score: 2, Informative

I will tell you from my time working in a company that designed Ethernet PHYs and MACs, that most high end desktops and consumer gear can only maintain a 1Gpbs link, but can accommodate no where near that much BW. The best PCs can only sustain ~500Mbps throughput. Most on-board LAN and sub $100 PCIe LAN cards fall closer to 200Mbps. This is because they do not support DMA and are using Polled IO and the host OS for the LAN stack, much like the old winmodems did.
-nB

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whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Re:I'm so glad by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:36 · Score: 0

Some of your info is horribly outdated, the rest is flat out wrong.
~500Mbps real world throughput was what you could get with decent PCI 32bit/33MHz NICs. A decade ago.
To my knowledge, there never was a GbE NIC that didn't use DMA in desktop equipment.
Nowadays even a $15 PCIe x1 NIC or the crappy realtek on a $60 mainboard get ~850Mbit/s without jumbo frames and happily saturate the line with 9000 MTU.
Try it.
Re:I'm so glad by networkBoy · 2012-05-31 02:42 · Score: 2

PCIe x1 has the same throughput as PCI32/33, so you're going to see the same issues. I have TWO NICs in my system (three if you count the LOM).
The PCIe x1 NIC gives me 500Mbps, the PCIe x4 one with TCP offload gives me 950Mbps on the same workload (server they are connected to has a TCP Offload NIC as well.
The LOM NIC uses a single PCIe lane, so again it's slow.
Sorry to disagree with you, but with a IEEE compliant 1518 byte frame on a normal NIC you're going to have crap performance. Yes you can use jumbo frames if your app supports it and you will see vast improvements, but a TCP offload engine on the NIC will do even better.
-nB

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whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Re:I'm so glad by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:57 · Score: 2, Informative

I will tell you from my time working in a company that designed Ethernet PHYs and MACs, that most high end desktops and consumer gear can only maintain a 1Gpbs link, but can accommodate no where near that much BW. The best PCs can only sustain ~500Mbps throughput. Most on-board LAN and sub $100 PCIe LAN cards fall closer to 200Mbps. This is because they do not support DMA and are using Polled IO and the host OS for the LAN stack, much like the old winmodems did.
-nB
I find your statement about lack of DMA and low throughput very hard to believe. I worked at Marvell Germany until September 2007 as a device driver developer and *all* of the then-current Marvell Gig chips (Yukon-II) *easily* managed 900+ MBits/sec, the Windows driver actually peaking at 980 megabits/sec. This was both for onboard controllers (e.g. Asus Mobos) as well as Ethernet cards, for all operating systems supported (Windows*, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, Aix and HP/UX).
Furthermore, *all* the drivers used DMA; only the Linux and Windows drivers offered the option of polled operation to *increase* throughput (no, not a typo, although it's counter-intuitive).
Note, however, the above numbers apply to proper Ethernet speed testing, using an in-memory data generator for the transmit side and a corresponding receive program on the receive-side, avoiding any reads or writes to a disk. Otherwise you'd just be testing the disk read and write speeds, which was a common mistake made by testers, and could well account for your low cited speeds.
Meaningful throughput tests may be performed by tools such as ttcp.
--Gerald
Re:I'm so glad by Bengie · 2012-05-31 04:31 · Score: 1

Anecdote: My PC is 5 years old, cost around $600 from Best Buy, has an integrated Intel NIC, and IPerf can do about 1.5Gb/s(up+down at the same time) for ~10% cpu(almost a full core). You should see SMB2.0 transfer a sustained 116MB/s at 1.5% cpu load from my harddrive.
Re:I'm so glad by Bengie · 2012-05-31 04:42 · Score: 1

PCIe x1 has the same throughput as PCI32/33
PCIE 1.0 1x-lane is 250MB/s up and down and is dedicated between the chipset and device. Peak bandwidth ~500MB with very little overhead
PCI32/33 is 133MB/s up or down and has a shared interrupt style TDMA to the chipset. Peak bandwidth ~133MB minus a decent amount of overhead
Re:I'm so glad by Bengie · 2012-05-31 04:48 · Score: 1

Go look at my post http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2886193&cid=40168401
The data on my NIC, according to Intel's documentation, is that it takes up about 1mm^2 of the 45nm based chip. I don't know how many transistor you can pack into 1mm^2 on a 45nm process, but I don't expect it to be too complex. The whole-sale value of my NIC was listed about $5. You need to purchase some decent NICs.

Modest? 100Mbit? by Camaro · 2012-05-31 01:00 · Score: 4, Funny

It brings a tear to my eye to see the "modest" and "100Mbit" used in the same sentence. Yes, I realize that compared to 4700Mbit it is but I just got upgraded to 5Mbit so I still think you're insensitive clods!

And yeah, I'm sure I could find a use for 4700Mbit.

On reading the future by Max+Romantschuk · 2012-05-31 01:01 · Score: 2

I have a 200Mbps connection at home, and for now it's fine for, well, everything. But it's really hard to tell what kind of speeds will be useful in the future. Let's imagine a virtual tailor service... Assume that you could go online, image yourself with a high res 3D webcam, and order custom clothes, complete with a virtual mirror to try them on. I'm guessing my 200Mbps connection would fall short at that point.

This is the kind of chicken and egg problem we have with broadband right now. The next generation of online services can't be profitable because the infrastructure isn't there, and at the same time there is "no demand" for really high speed connections, since there are no services that need them.

But at least one can stay positive and hope for cool sci-fi tech, right? ;)

--
.: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/

Re:On reading the future by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 01:12 · Score: 0

200Mbps? Where do you live and what does it cost? Is it symmetrical?
And yes, I am jealous.
Re:On reading the future by networkBoy · 2012-05-31 01:28 · Score: 1

I'll re-iterate the AC on this one.
Where do you live?
I am (possibly) looking to move in the future, and my choice of location is dictated by the following criteria:
*Sane legal system (I'm in the US now, so we'll use the due process portion as our comparison of sane).
*Reasonable weather.
*Cheap and fast BW to the home.
*English as a recognized language (Let's face it, I'm a [stereotypical] Yank, and never did well learning a foreign language) .
I've actually been looking at the Isle of Man or Iceland, the latter fails the weather test, but seems to excel on the other parts, Isle of man has a scotch distillery, but I am a Speyside fan...
-nB

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whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Re:On reading the future by Joce640k · 2012-05-31 01:30 · Score: 3, Informative

His sig says "Finland".
This doesn't surprise me. Most of the fastest speeds I ever see on torrents are Scandinavian countries. No, I don't know why that is, or how Nokia ended up making most of the world's telephones. Maybe they have an extra Telecommunications chromosome.

--
No sig today...
Re:On reading the future by rolfc · 2012-05-31 01:37 · Score: 1

It's because we pull a fiber in to the living room. I have 100 Mbps that way. 200 SEK/month
Re:On reading the future by NumLuck · 2012-05-31 01:42 · Score: 1

Let's imagine a virtual tailor service... Assume that you could go online, image yourself with a high res 3D webcam, and order custom clothes, complete with a virtual mirror to try them on. I'm guessing my 200Mbps connection would fall short at that point.
Bad example: in the future, when 200Mbps connections are affordable for everyone, no one would require a tailor since everybody will pass their time in their basement, in underwear, enjoying their connection...
Re:On reading the future by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 01:49 · Score: 0

He has a ".fi" email address so I'm guessing Finland. I live in Estonia and I have 100mbit/20mbit connection with no capping or throttling and I can max it out every time I want to (and I do regularly). There are several ISP-s here that offer similar services and these connections are available in almost all towns however usually in the areas with more apartment buildings. Estonia is quite poor though with only $16k nominal GDP per capita so I think it makes sense that those connections don't reach absolutely everywhere. Our richer neighbors Swedes and Finns have much better connections and coverage.
Re:On reading the future by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 01:51 · Score: 0

Oh and it's I think quite reasonable 24€/month ($30).
Re:On reading the future by mikael_j · 2012-05-31 02:14 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure the virtual tailor service thing could be done quite easily with less than 200 Mbps.
Take lots of photos from different angles but in the standard "relaxed standing" pose used when doing 3D modeling. Use this data to create a 3D model of the user and to create and map textures. Take a few extra shots/some extra video in certain poses or with certain movements to determine rigging data. Send the data to the tailor.
The bandwidth needed wouldn't be very much at all, in total I'm guessing you could get pretty damn good results without transferring more than 20-30 MB of data.

--
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Re:On reading the future by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 03:23 · Score: 0

It must be a friend of Peter's mom: Sigbritt, 75, has world's fastest broadband
Something Scandanavians seem to desire is high-powered space heaters and clothes dryers and someone to exchange their HDTV video with during the long winter nights.
Re:On reading the future by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 04:30 · Score: 0

Until last year I've worked for a company that does offer exactly this as a service.
Body scanning, measuring your body size, virtual 3D try on and ordering of custom made clothes. Even the cloth cutting is optimized to waste as little cloth as possible for your measures. All in a nicely integrated process.
It works offline, though. The problem here is not the bandwith, I'm pretty sure your 200Mbps would be more than enough for that.
But you need the right hardware for taking precise measurements. We've used calibrated laser scanners for that. We've also tried an array of kinects, but for really good results the calibration is important, so the hardware is the big hurdle. Simply using your webcam wouldn't give you good enough results for custom fit clothes.
Re:On reading the future by Goateee · 2012-05-31 05:06 · Score: 1

Have had 1000/100 available in my last three apartments. 55$/month currently, basic cable and phone included. A benefit of living in sweden :D
Re:On reading the future by Max+Romantschuk · 2012-05-31 05:08 · Score: 1

Like some pointed out, Finland.
Unfortunately moving here is not a trivial process, and the language is a huge hurdle. But I do love it, personally. Still, there are a lot of other good options too. :)

--
.: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
Re:On reading the future by Max+Romantschuk · 2012-05-31 05:10 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure the virtual tailor service thing could be done quite easily with less than 200 Mbps.
For a simple implementation: Definitely. For photo-realistic real time images mirroring you posing in real time? Maybe, maybe not.
I don't claim to be an expert on these things. :)

--
.: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
Re:On reading the future by jones_supa · 2012-06-01 00:56 · Score: 1

I get fiber to the basement (which is then routed into the apartments as VDSL2 connections over the good old copper).
Part of the cost being included in the house maintenance charge, that gives me a 12/12Mbit connection for 10€/month, Finland.
Re:On reading the future by negge · 2012-06-01 19:53 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure he's using DNA (an ISP). 200/10 Mbit/s costs 54,90 € / month. The also offer 350/20 Mbit/s (yes, the uplink sucks) for 69,90 € / month. That is probably the most expensive consumer Internet connection in Finland right now.

I really couldn't care less about speed by i_ate_god · 2012-05-31 01:02 · Score: 2

What's the point if all they are going to do is cap your usage.

--
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...

Re:I really couldn't care less about speed by TraumaFox · 2012-05-31 01:05 · Score: 1

So you can reach that cap faster. Zoom!
Re:I really couldn't care less about speed by SJHillman · 2012-05-31 01:08 · Score: 2

"Well, we got our 2 minutes of browsing time today, but at least it was fast!"
Re:I really couldn't care less about speed by wisnoskij · 2012-05-31 01:10 · Score: 1

It really is getting ridiculous. The speed is pretty much the least important number.
And real home consumer lever plans are already getting so bad such that you can use up your cap in an hour or 2 if you actually use the speed advertised.

--
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Re:I really couldn't care less about speed by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:10 · Score: 0

That's true for my UMTS data plan. I could use up my 5 GB cap in 1.5 h. But I consider the 21€/month to be a fair price.
Re:I really couldn't care less about speed by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 03:12 · Score: 0

I told my ISP that and none of the first, or second level tech support could understand why.
They called me and told me I used 400GB one month, they're implementing 250GB caps for "heavy users" on everything but 20Mbps plans. And implementing $10 / GB over that. On my business line. And I'm a web developer.
I said, "If I use that at capacity, I'll hit the cap in a week and owe you $2000 per month (rough estimate, I had figured it out at the time) so I'm obviously not going to be doing business with you anymore."
They said "Call Bell (the only other ISP above 5Mbps in the province) then. They'll do the same thing.
Needless to say, I went back to 20Mbps (from 100Mbps.) My bill dropped ~$80 per month too, and the speed difference isn't all that noticeable most of the time.
I fucking hate Canadian telecomms.
Re:I really couldn't care less about speed by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 05:50 · Score: 0

An hour or 2? Lucky you, I guess. With some of the faster plans here in Canada you can hit your cap, proceed run up the maximum in overage charges, and get your connection dropped, all in under a minute.

Wait, what? by Kjella · 2012-05-31 01:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

4700 Mbit/s = 4.7 Gbit/s, how's that a record? The Gathering here in Norway had a 200 Gbit/s Internet Connection, topping Dreamhack in Sweden's 120 Gbit/s. Maybe it's some silly 4.7 Gbit over cable, but that's like the wold's fastest subcompact. And for all of us that have fiber to the home, yeah we know it's just what equipment you put on both ends. The cable itself could probably pull 100 Gbit/s with the right equipment.

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings

Re:Wait, what? by networkBoy · 2012-05-31 01:35 · Score: 1

With the assumption that they are using single-mode fiber, you will cap out at roughly 40Gbps to the home. If it's multimode, you could pull 100, but the max lengths are so much shorter, I'm not sure that is what they are using. Also, I suspect that FTTH uses the same link aggregation that DSL uses. A block's worth of homes all wire to a cabinet, from there to a switch, and a single (hopefully with redundant pairs) link back to the CO. That last link is important because it represents the maximum all the connected devices can add up to. I am positive this link is oversubscribed (which to be honest is likely just fine in this setting).
That last link is likely OC12 ATM, so 622Mbps shared amongst everyone (this is what ATT does for my DSL service BTW.)
from Wikipedia:

OC-12 / STM-4
OC-12 is a network line with transmission speeds of up to 622.08 Mbit/s (payload: 601.344 Mbit/s; overhead: 20.736 Mbit/s).
OC-12 lines are commonly used by ISPs as Wide area network (WAN) connections. While a large ISP would not use an OC-12 as a backbone (main link), it would for smaller, regional or local connections. This connection speed is also often used by mid-sized (below Tier 2) internet customers, such as web hosting companies or smaller ISPs buying service from larger ones.

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whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Re:Wait, what? by Kjella · 2012-05-31 02:04 · Score: 1

With the assumption that they are using single-mode fiber, you will cap out at roughly 40Gbps to the home.
They've done 111 Gbps on a single channel in the lab, but yes "only" 40 Gbps is more likely but I can live with that. Normally I can reach 5-6 MB/s actual transfer rates on my 60 Mbps fiber so it can't be that oversubscribed, I suspect the backbone hookup is far more than a OC-12. I could get 400 Mbps for about $1000/month, 1000 Mbps is available at "call us" prices so it's technically possible to get something ridiculously fast already.

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Re:Wait, what? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:07 · Score: 0

Sure it's cable, they're using Docsis 3.0 which is a cable standard.
Re:Wait, what? by networkBoy · 2012-05-31 02:16 · Score: 1

60Mbps Fiber == 6MBps ethernet. (Fiber uses 10bit encoding, not 8 bit) You are not oversubscribed at all, I envy you.
-nB

--
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Re:Wait, what? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 03:56 · Score: 0

Your equation is right but your reasoning is wrong. The various ethernet standards use different encodings, but all of them transfer more than 8 bits for every "useful" octet carried over the wire. However, ethernet speeds are always quoted in "useful" bits; the actual data transfer rate is in reality a little higher than the advertised rate.
Re:Wait, what? by Shinobi · 2012-05-31 06:53 · Score: 1

The area I live in currently, has 21 apartment buildings, with several hundred apartments(the house my apartment is in has 60 apartments). The structure here is a VLAN'd ethernet in every building, with the switches down in a strongroom in the maintenance section of the basement. From there, it's multimode fiber pairs to the nearest CO, that runs redundant links to the router(s), 10GigE if the router(s) is in the same hall, fiber if it's remote. The ISP recently upgraded switches etc in the buildings and are now offering 1Gb/s connections. So just because US ISP's deploy with some extreme bottlenecks doesn't mean that that is a universal problem.
The thing is, I've never run into any congestion on my end even during peak times. We can download stuff at more or less our full speed (we get around 11.5MB/s practical download speed, when overhead etc is factored in).
The ISP is Bredbandsbolaget, one of the first commercial Fiber-to-the-home/house/premises ISP's in the world. No caps at all(In may, I've downloaded a total of 7TB, and uploaded about 1.5TB. April was roughly similar). Now, if only the norwegian owners would become a bit more IPv6-friendly.......

Sad trend by tanveer1979 · 2012-05-31 01:15 · Score: 0

Unfortunately, this is true worldwide
For example I pay 1399 INR for a 4mbps ADSL connection in India (25$ approx).
However, monthly quota is 30GB, after which you get throttled to 256kbps

Some countries have 200-300GB quotas as the norm, while people like us are at 30GB.

The 20$ plan from the same ISP gives you around 10GB/month quota.
I expect the problem to get worse in the future.

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Re:Sad trend by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 01:30 · Score: 0

Canada: 25$CAD for a 2Mbps connection with a download+upload combined cap of 35GB per month. And the ISP has a monopoly in the region, there's no alternative.
Re:Sad trend by Kjella · 2012-05-31 01:47 · Score: 2

Prices here in Norway:
Uncapped 5 Mbps ADSL: Around $50
Uncapped 60/60 fiber: Around $90
Okay quite a bit more than you're paying but Norway is in general an extremely expensive country overall, an average full time salary is $75k so by our standards it's cheap. And I once downloaded a 500GB torrent, it really is uncapped. And this country has a population density of 13/km^2 as opposed to India with 368/km^2, delivering broadband there should be much much cheaper. I honestly wouldn't worry it seems mostly like a US problem, all of Europe is constantly upgrading. For example here's from an article I recently read on Britain:

BT said that 7 million premises are now on its fibre network, and this year that number will grow to 10 million. The ultimate target is two-thirds of the UK by the end of 2014.
Oh and they'll also triple top speed from 100 Mbps to 300 Mbps. Any new apartment block or any new housing field is wired with fiber and it's being retrofitted to a lot of old housing too. It's not a question of whether it's the future, but how long it'll take.

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Re:Sad trend by Creepy · 2012-05-31 01:57 · Score: 1

Look at the bright side - the US FCC chief wants to charge users by usage with no throttling and no cap, so if, for instance, your kid downloads 100GB of data, you may be paying a variable rate of, say $1000. Making internet access into something like a 2 dollar a minute 1-900 number terrifies me more than bandwidth caps.
Re:Sad trend by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 03:09 · Score: 0

The more I hear things about Norway, the more my desire to move there grows.
Some of the best democoders are from Norway, Netherlands, etc. Seems like a nice corner of the planet.
Re:Sad trend by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 08:36 · Score: 0

just do it already, i heard there was a town in Norway that is giving away either houses or land, or both because they can't get people to stay, go figure, probably a good reason for that, but whatever, .. either way: good luck!
Re:Sad trend by cheater512 · 2012-05-31 10:45 · Score: 1

I get 500gig here in Australia, but I am paying 3 times the amount you are.
Re:Sad trend by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 10:50 · Score: 0

Huh.... Rural Oklahoma, US, 10Mbps (average tested throughput to a device in the datacenter at the colocation facility but outside the vendor's network ~7Mbps) uncapped. $29.00USD/mo.
21.3/km^2 average for the state, 7/km^2 for my county/parish/burrough.
Your mileage will vary wildly in US, they are looking at a different antenna setup that will allow them to push 70Mbps per customer (I am a customer and sometimes help them troubleshoot or beta products, but I am not employed by said company.)
Re:Sad trend by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 19:00 · Score: 0

[...] terrifies me more than bandwidth rape.
Fixed.

You can imagine where it goes from here... by StormDawg · 2012-05-31 01:17 · Score: 2

He fixes the cable?

Re:You can imagine where it goes from here... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:27 · Score: 0

Cloitus?

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 01:17 · Score: 0

And yeah, I'm sure I could find a use for 4700Mbit.

Are you sure? When I first got a 10Mbps connection I couldn't use it to the max because my old computer couldn't handle it. Now I have a 30Mbps connection but I very seldom max it.
I guess you could stripe a few disks to at least be able to store data at that speed but storing data is not exactly the same as using it.

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 01:21 · Score: 0

Where do you live?? A trailer park in New Mexico?

As a former Qwest customer service specialist, I can advise you that you are being completely ripped off. Please agree to a 3 year term for a lower price that is still a rip off.

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by networkBoy · 2012-05-31 01:23 · Score: 1

Hell I'd be happy with 100Mbps. I'm in on e of the better connected cities in the US and I can only affordably get 12/6 ADSL. I could get 20/10, DOCIS but the cable company is known to be not good (Comcast).
What I want shouldn't be hard to do:
no BW caps, 20/20, metered usage on bulk BW rates. My Colo ISP provides this to me, and I pay $0.04/TB of BW. For residential I'd happily pay 25% more... Hell I'd be willing to bay several times that more, say $1.00/TB. Now, to be fair I also pay for a peering point at my ISP which would be analogous to a service subscription at a home internet account, I pay $25/mo for that. Why can't residential ISPs catch up with the DCs?
-nB

--
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump

depressing .. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 01:34 · Score: 1

Here in the 3rd world (UK) I'm currently getting about 1-2 Mb/s. I live close to Canary Wharf but somehow, the infrastructure is stuck in the past century.
Meanwhile, I can get a much better bandwidth in my house in Zambia. And if I have problems with the ISP in Zambia, I can just switch to 4G, which is publicly available at a humane price.
In contrast, in the UK, they haven't even rolled out 4 G.
I'm stunned by how much a country like the UK lags in infrastructure - truly pathetic.

Re:depressing .. by networkBoy · 2012-05-31 01:57 · Score: 1, Informative

Which infrastructure?
I'm in the US and we routinely bash our countries' performance on internet infrastructure. But if you look at it as a whole:
We have:
*reliable power service
*reliable road service
*reliable rail service (commercial, not passenger)
*reliable POTS service
*reliable medical transport and care (I didn't say good, just reliable)
*reliable garbage service
*reliable food delivery
*reliable fuel
*reliable government (to a point, and again, not good always, bur reliable, there are no coups every other week)
*reliable water service
*many more things (police, fire, parks, schools, etc.)
Many of these we simply take for granted, but face it they are there for us. In many countries these basics are not there with the reliability that we enjoy. 4G and cellular have excelled in Africa, specifically because of the absence of POTS and power.
-nB

--
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Re:depressing .. by Catbeller · 2012-05-31 02:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well, almost all of the things your listed were built by our grandparents. Since our grandparents didn't build fiber-to-the-house infrastructure, apparently it is not possible for us to even attempt to do so.
And a lot of those things, such as roads, garbage service, water supply, rail, and power, were built by our governments using tax money - which is absolutely forbidden in today's climate of economic religious fundamentalism which demands that all infrastructure creation and related services must be done by entrepreneurs - who have shown they cannot do what the governments of our grandparents did for less than an infinitely growing multiple of what the grandparents paid. Governments build and maintain for the lowest possible cost for the maximum possible return, while our new privatization model demands lowest tolerable service levels for a maximum, and ever-growing per quarter, return on investment. We will never have fiber to the house - with the exception of the very wealthy, of course.
Re:depressing .. by ehlo · 2012-05-31 03:11 · Score: 1

Wish I had mod points to mod you up. What is going on in this country?!
Re:depressing .. by djdanlib · 2012-05-31 03:33 · Score: 1

The gradual migration from workers to lawmakers and the subsequent legislation of their greed has left us in a terrible state... Whatever happened to doing a job because you knew it needed to be done???
Re:depressing .. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 04:10 · Score: 0

you really think that Germany doesn't have all of those? or Finland? or Sweden?
Even your bus service sucks.
Re:depressing .. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-01 00:16 · Score: 0

Governments build and maintain for the lowest possible cost for the maximum possible return
That sentence is so wrong that even the opposite is not true. At the least it is EXTREMELY naive and is easily refuted by empirical evidence. THAT is fundamentalism. Telephone/internet was so extremely crappy and overpriced in my country (Germany) before the telco sector was privatized. I remember paying ridiculous prices for phoning to a city that is just 100km away.
Re:depressing .. by Catbeller · 2012-06-01 08:42 · Score: 1

Economic fundamentalism. Refusal to believe government can do anything right, simultaneously believing that business and markets can solve all problems for ever-growing profit. Non-profit operation by government vs. profit model. Without brakes put on by regulation, we are being drained by vampire gods of finance. That giant sucking sound your hear is our money going up and out, not stopping to build or fix anything before it disappears into the Caymans.
Example: Social Security administion costs are something like 1-3% of yearly intake. 401Ks and IRAs demand something like 5-10%. The difference? Sheer profit.
Profits that used to go to the customer in the form of investment in the business and better service and product, or dividends on company shares. That money is now taken out of the company and invested or hoarded elsewhere, anywhere but the company that made it. Conglomerates that buy power companies and cut maintenance drastically, boosting profit and stock price, until the blackouts predictably come. Private investors buying British Rail lines and immediately cutting maintenance costs, and soon came the derailments. There are no consequences for refusing to invest profits, and infinite wealth to be made anywhere but the business itself.
In the 70s, corporations moved from the dividend model, in which they paid shareholders part of the profits, to the new model in which they move the profits out of the company, to the joy of Wall Street which rewards them with higher stock prices. To keep the new model going, they don't require investment in infrastructure; they simply need to keep up the game of musical chairs, prompting people to buy stock on the sole hope that the price will eternally go up - which it can't - and pump all the profits into their own pockets and the accounts of Wall Street financiers. It's a scam, and we've lost our industries, can't build internet infrastructure, and are watching bubble after bubble swell and burst. Tax laws did most of this; they de-regged and sweetened disinvestment in plant on the say-so of the finance lords.
Change the tax laws, drag the money back from overseas, change the stock market model back to dividend payout instead of casino gambling. In short, stablize the financial model and kick out the silver-tongued thieves who built this up for the last 40 years. Mandate that corporations invest in their own businesses, rather than buy others. Mandate that, once and for all, they are creatures of the government, licensed and regulated, and exist for the purpose of employing the people of the nation which granted them the privilege of their sheltered existences. Oh, and nationalize the oil companies, as Norway did. Create a state bank for each state, as North Dakota did. Kick banks out of the stock market and derivatives, and mandate they do their damned jobs, which are to distribute the free money we give them from the Fed, not to make infinitely growing profit. In short, kick out the lying greedy sacks, and go back to 1965's model, when we could actually DO anything. Government didn't do this, the Chicago School of economics did. And oh yes, get rid of the voting computers and go back to hand counts, as Canada does, or you won't be able to vote up the sun rising in the east. No use wanting to change if the voting system is completely owned by the bastards who are destroying your economy. Without the ability to vote, your are playing with mud while the bosses laugh at you. If they aren't altering elections wholesale, they are surely doing it retail. And the future is not today; election alteration will be as common as slapping a bribe on a table used to be.

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 01:35 · Score: 0

5Mbit is the slowest I can get in my part of Germany. I am so glad I don't live in Florida anymore ;)

Unlimited, no cap, no bullshit + phone service for 20 Euro / Month

100Mbps? I'd settle for 10! by lymang · 2012-05-31 01:41 · Score: 1

I'd like to see 10Mbps at my house, to be honest. Charter makes all kinds of claims but we had to give them up due to down-time and horrible network performance. So we're stuck with Verizon DSL, which is at best 3Mbps. 100Mbps, I dunno what I'd DO with that bandwidth. Well, I guess I'd find something.

--
Meh.

Shaw in Canada by sputnikid · 2012-05-31 01:41 · Score: 1

I am currently with Shaw Cable in Canada and have a 250 Mbps connection with 1TB of download cap per month for $110 CAD.

Re:Shaw in Canada by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:14 · Score: 0

I am currently with Shaw Cable in Canada and have a 250 Mbps connection with 1TB of download cap per month for $110 CAD.
Yeah, but you have to have a router/firewall to support it and c'mon, you're not going to get 250mbit. If you're really lucky, you might hit 100mbit but 75mbit is more realistic.
Re:Shaw in Canada by geekmux · 2012-05-31 02:34 · Score: 1

I am currently with Shaw Cable in Canada and have a 250 Mbps connection with 1TB of download cap per month for $110 CAD.
Man, would I enjoy using a time machine for the purpose of reading sentences like this to geeks 20 years ago...
Re:Shaw in Canada by sputnikid · 2012-05-31 08:06 · Score: 1

You can use the Cisco powered modem/router/firewall/WiFi AP that the ISP provides or you can put the modem into layer-2 mode and use a Linksys/D-Link if you want.
You would be surprised what kind of throughput you can get from an off the shelf Linksys these days.

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by Bengie · 2012-05-31 01:48 · Score: 1

Most rust-bucket harddrives can handle ~100MB/s which is ~800Mb/s, which is quite a bit faster than 30Mb. No striping required. My SSD can handle ~550MB/s which is 4400Mb/s, which is almost the entire 4700Mb/s connection that they have. now finding useful data that you can push at those speeds is quite hard.

When I first got a 10Mbps connection I couldn't use it to the max because my old computer couldn't handle it

Must have been really old. Not only can I peg my 100Mb internet connection with little effort of Steam/Blizzard/Cloud/etc, but I can easily peg my 1Gb ethernet by grabbing a single file to SMB copy on my 5 y/o computer.

That 5-year-old article was posted here back then by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 01:50 · Score: 0

That is a 5-year-old article you linked to (as its says, "Published: 12 Jul 07"). I remember it when it actually happened and the first time a link to the article at thelocal.se was posted at Slashdot.

That connection was purely done as a pr demo (stunt), as the article says.

Still, the article has been amended. In the original article she said that she had no idea what to do with the internet or the speed, but the heat generated by the equipment was useful for drying her laundry.

has to go straight to memory by mapkinase · 2012-05-31 01:53 · Score: 1

With that type of connection, data should go straight to memory without hard disk buffering for may types of hard disk drives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Comparison_to_other_interfaces

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Re:100Mbps? I'd settle for 10! by Life2Death · 2012-05-31 01:55 · Score: 0

Weird, I have 100Mbps Charter at my home and get an average of 85Mbps to the fastest place I can test.

What that means in reality is downloading at 5-10MB/sec

What is the point? by funwithBSD · 2012-05-31 02:04 · Score: 1

Most sites will throttle data to a single user anyway.

It is useful for torrents and other aggregated downloads, but not from a single site usage.

--
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra

Re:What is the point? by ILongForDarkness · 2012-05-31 03:36 · Score: 1

It's not just throttling, chances are their servers don't have something that can handle 4Gbps reliably since their connection likely isn't that large, if they are only serving webpages there is little need (say even a 1MB page) you'd need to get ~500 hits per second to need that bandwidth (43M a day) chances are you don't. People that would go nuts for this: distributed nightly backups, HD content uncompressed I think is pretty close to this size (not talking BR but straight from the cameera streaming) one connection per building kind of setups etc. I can see ISPs adding a box to an apartment building and then selling 250MBps to ~20 apartments rather than having to manage the boxes somewhere else/per flat hookup etc).

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:09 · Score: 0

I have 100Mbit download and I often max out. Its not that hard either. A torrent can get it very fast, what is it, about 10MB per second?

Try downloading a ubuntu right after release, or pretty much any other big opensource pack. Steam updates only a bit slower, but still pretty fast. Same for some other services. Or having multiple downloads running at the same time. Things like updating wow probably get full capacity very fast as well.

And that all is without the things with really good services, like pirating. I still stand that many pirates are it because of a service problem. And those pirates provide one hell of a service. They are so much better at providing fast and stable downloads, for free.

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by KingMotley · 2012-05-31 02:26 · Score: 1

My SSD can write at 1400MB/s, so I'm all set. Where do I sign up, and can you bond 3 of these together?

Wow, at speeds like that by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:27 · Score: 0

it's all the scheisse porn you can eat!

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 02:43 · Score: 0

Just a few weeks ago I learned my ISP (Shaw Cable) offers a 250Mbps connection in my area.

I live in a fairly small city (~35,000 people) in South Central Saskatchewan Canada.

I also found out we are the only Community in Saskatchewan that Shaw offers this to.

At $120/month, I can dump my digital cable and upgrade to this Internet package and it would still be cheaper than what I am currently paying.

sort of beyond home users by slashmydots · 2012-05-31 02:46 · Score: 1

Of course, the average home hard drive can't write that fast, nor can any home wireless connection or a 1 gigabit ethernet. It definitely sounds business only.

Something wrong mit deine cable? by somarilnos · 2012-05-31 03:13 · Score: 1

If things go wrong with the connection, will they send Karl Hungus to fix it?

That's why they send him. He's an expert.

:-D.... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 03:14 · Score: 0

Drool...

agreed at current price by ILongForDarkness · 2012-05-31 03:26 · Score: 1

Make it $50-100 and you'll see some demand :-)

Forget residential, what about businesses? by sandytaru · 2012-05-31 03:56 · Score: 1

We have a lot of issues with crappy connections to remote offices that would pay mega bucks for this kind of bandwidth. The main office in the big city has a nice fat 100 mbps connection, but their remote offices are stuck on 6 mpbs down and a measly 1.5 up - which means any time the try to transmit data back to the mothership, they're waiting 10 minutes for a single record to update. It sucks.

--
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.

Has the available hardware caught up yet? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 03:56 · Score: 0

The max speed I can get on the off-shelf routers here in 1 Gigabits per sec. It seems 10 Gigabits per second is some distance away from becoming commonplace. In that case how would such speeds be useful to the end user ?

Re:Has the available hardware caught up yet? by Bengie · 2012-05-31 05:01 · Score: 1

Saying an off-the-shelf router can handle 1Gb/s is like saying a smart car can handle 180mph because the speedometer goes that high. Just because they have 1Gb interfaces does not mean the low grade cpu can process and route packets that fast.

Scandinavians had the experience and know-how by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 04:14 · Score: 0

GSM was a shared European project. However two Norwegian researchers wrote the standard (competition), the Swedes and Finns made the best network and handset hardware (Ericsson/Nokia). The Swedes and Ericsson developed a lot of technology we take for granted like Bluetooth etc.

It helped that Scandinavia had a wireless phone network using the NMT standard prior to GSM.

Re:Scandinavians had the experience and know-how by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 08:42 · Score: 0

Americans invented the cell phone - how you dice the packets in not a big deal, if it wasn't GSM it'd be something else, it just a protocol everyone agreed on, not that great of an achievement actually, same goes for bluetooth. (just sayin...:)

4G or WiMAX by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-31 04:20 · Score: 0

There is no real 4G deployed in Zambia or even the US... Zambia's using WiMAX...

They're rolling out some real 4G across Europe now, TeliaSonera has working installations in major cities.

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by Creepy · 2012-05-31 04:23 · Score: 1

yeah - Comcast is OK if you get Cable and internet, and I can get 20/10 DOCIS as well but I had issues with their fees - for instance, if you just want internet they tack on a $10 fee, and I refuse to get their cable service ever again. I had a lot of issues with their network being oversaturated between about 3PM and 9PM at night and getting horrible ping and data rates, as well, but that was before they added a significant fiber upgrade to the area. When I switched they also wanted $10 more for basic TV HD channels as well, which I get for free from DISH. Oh, and everything their marketing says satellite can't do like remote access and on demand programming? I can do every one, so they lie in their advertising too, so I have no respect for them - they're money grubbing, dirty advertising company. I can't say if they've fixed their service reputation since rebranding as XFinity (my parents get it, and they seem happy with it). In contrast, DISH has been nothing but joy to work with for pay TV - can update programming online, got relatively free equipment for HD (had to pay for a $4 service for 6 months to get it installed free, so technically it was $24), - they even threw in a free year of Starz to celebrate their 30th birthday - the best I got from Comcast as a 10 year subscriber was a few free HBO weekends and frequent price hikes as they absorbed more and more cable providers (actually, I went through 3 in the first year I subscribed to cable, with the third being Comcast, and yes it came with a price hike both times).

Incidentally, I would have stuck with Comcast internet because my DSL options were terrible - Qwest literally had no lines in the area so I went with a Rhapsody network provider despite knowing Rhapsody was a sinking ship (I got burned on Northpoint and it was obvious at that point Rhapsody was doomed as well, so I went with a provider that gave a free modem with 2 year subscription). Rhapsody lasted 8 months and the company ditched my contract since the alternate provider they moved to didn't have service in my area, which also happened to be enough time for Qwest to address their saturation problem, so I went with their service next. Qwest was purchased by Century Link, a company with a mediocre reputation (62% favorable on Broadband Reports), but I think Qwest's was worse. I really hope they replace the infernal ActionTec modems because I would switch in a heartbeat if I could (the ActionTec PPPoE modem provides no local loopback, so I can't see any servers on my local network using my domain name or IP, but I can see them from machines outside my network - Qwest said that was intentional, and I told them that was an asinine decision that made no sense and probably made by a PHB). If Clear didn't have such a horrible reputation I may have tried WiMax, but they do, so I haven't.

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by Vegemeister · 2012-05-31 04:50 · Score: 1

12/6? Luxury! I have 10/0.7. The upstream is so anemic that it can barely acknowledge the data coming in. One machine seeding at 50 KB/s cuts everybody else's download speed in half.

Re:Modest? 100Mbit? by Calydor · 2012-05-31 04:58 · Score: 1

Please get off your high horse.

I live in Germany, about ten miles from a major city, and my DSL is incapable of going above a 384/96 connection despite my paying for a 2 mbps connection. Some areas just don't have the population density to make ISPs care.

--
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-

Re:100Mbps? I'd settle for 10! by lymang · 2012-05-31 07:43 · Score: 1

Well, in the small town in MA I live in, we never had anywhere close to that. Even when it did work, it was around 8Mbps (out of a rated 10). I have hopes for FIOS. Someday. Many towns nearby have it. Just not us.

--
Meh.

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German Cable ISP First To Deliver 4700Mbps Internet Connection

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