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Verizon Boosts FiOS Uploads To Match Downloads
An anonymous reader writes Verizon is boosting the upload speeds of nearly all its FiOS connections to match the download speeds, greatly shortening the time it takes to send videos and back up files online. All new subscribers will get "symmetrical" connections. If you previously were getting 15 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up, you'll be automatically upgraded for no extra cost to 15/15. Same goes if you were on their 50/25 plan: You'll now be upgraded to 50/50. And if you had 75/35? You guessed it: Now it'll be 75 down, and 75 up.
The 150/75 plan? What will my upload speed be???
But they'll throttle my uploads to Netflix, right?
They still have a long way to go to catch up to gigabit up/down though.
biggest problem with upload is you send it over free links with Tier 1 networks, or you pay them to take your traffic. with all the user generated stuff now like Twitch, flickr, video calling and other services where you want a fast upload speed that's a lot of data to be paying for.
with the current L3/Verizon dispute i wonder if they struck a deal where verizon will allow the connections to be upgraded for netflix to work on their network in exchange for L3 taking all their uploaded data for free.
I hope all Internet service company in the world to adopt this fair service to all their customers. No more upload limit :)
Will this only apply to consumer FiOS plans, or are they rolling this out to Business FiOS, as well?
This makes services like Amazon's Glacier (and other cloud storage in general) more appealing.
Glacier specifically, because I tend to shovel data that is important, but I likely won't access much (last year's tax records, for example) onto there.
Of course, I end up "packaging" the records, first with WinRAR, then PGP/gpg for encryption, then WinRAR again for the added error correction, and then upload that and a separate PGP signature file. That way, I have fairly decent protection against damage, tampering, and snooping. Even if the outer WinRAR archive gets some damage, if the inner PGP file's signature validates, all is well.
So I'm a Verizon customer, etc. How is this anything more than free advertising? What is the compelling need for this to be all over the media, etc?
It is great to have a symmetrical connection, finally. It is bs not to. Just watch those monthly caps. Cloud backups of any substance and regularity will, along with your throttled Netflix, speed you toward the limit pretty quickly.
As a FiOS customer this would matter to me if Verizon wasn't actively trying to extort money from Tier 1 providers.
No doubt about it, if other ISPs will do the same. Obviously I promise this upload-bandwidth increase will serve only legal and mpaa-approved purposes, and right now there's an UFO outside my house, it has 2 huge boobs.
Symmetric upload/download will help him a lot because he runs OpenGL 3D graphics clients displaying CAD/CAM geometry over this connection. So this automatic upgrade to 50/50 should be a great news for him. Except he is in ISP giveth IT taketh away situation. Should call him, send this link and rub some salt into his wounds. Schadenfreude never felt this delicious.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Now all Netflix needs to do is get a FiOS account at their house.
Many of my neighbors have gone back to BrightHouse, despite their Internet service being slow and flaky compared to FiOS. Why? Price. Verizon turn the screw over and over, and try to force you into bundles and contracts you don't want. When I finally canceled, I was paying $93/month for a 50/25mbps net service with no other services. That was 6 months ago. They offer come-back deals, but they're all limited periods or require me to have TV with STB rental and phone. No thanks.
"you'll be automatically upgraded for no extra cost"
That's funny, because my bill just went up with no notice. How exactly is that "no extra cost". Oh right, the two are completely unrelated, I'm sure.
Who brought us the DMCA, the 1996 telecom act and other such assaults on the internet?
Hint, it wasn't Bush.
Now you can all run TOR exit nodes!
According to this page the 15 got upped to 25 at no extra cost. Pretty sweet deal and I wish it were available where I live
http://www.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/
When my FiOS went from 25/25 to 50/25, my measured rate went from 25/25 to 60/40! I hope that with this "update", I don't end up being downgraded to 50/50.
Our great new feature, the service that we shouldve been selling you all along!
Verizon, now with 10% less lying.
Uploading is still a fraction of what downloading is... Most home consumers, even those with IoT devices or heavy P2P users, are still net consumers of online information. (Think Netflix, Windows Updates, VPN, remote desktop, etc.) I see it as a gift I didn't care to receive but one that I wouldn't pass up. So, I have to ask, what's the point?
A more valuable gift would be continue the lack of symmetry, and bump existing download & upload speeds by some percentage. Until Netflix becomes P2P, most people wouldn't see much of a benefit from this... (e.g. Netflix streaming still sucks but my uploads to YouTube are 40% faster!)
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Asymmetrical connections were always BS.
Now if only they would roll out FIOS to the rest of the country like they have already been paid to do... ah well.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Both Verizon FIOS users were reportedly very happy (other than their experience using Netflix).
Where I live, in a suburb of Vancouver, BC. I have no options even remotely like this. I have 100/10 cable internet right now, and that's the best I can get. Uploading anything is almost an exercise in futility.
.
Will Comcast catch up to Verizon? If so, when?
It's a shame that this "Republican poster" gets so many replies when it is clear even to casual followers of Slashdot that he is a troll who posts the same thing ("Republicans hate X", "Republicans took away Y") in various thread on a daily basis.
For me, a real sign of the death of Slashdot is the predictability of the trolls. The Republican troll and the Space Nutter troll (who may be one and the same, though I've never counted), offer only this invariable single-issue shtick instead of making things wacky and unpredictable like classic trolls of yore.
I think it's because here in America at least, asymmetric is very common. So common that a lot of us think of it as "normal" and it has programmed people to think of Internet as something they "consume." Even in "ordinary times" this would be somewhat noteworthy development, though maybe not front-page news in non-nerd circles.
What makes it possibly extra interesting right now, is Verizon's recent drama with L3/Netflix about their limited connection to L3. Verizon users having good upload speeds could end up essentially solving the problem, by giving those users some better tools to cache data on their side of the limited Verizon/L3 gateway. Imagine if those peoples' Netflix client said "The Verizon gateway to L3 seems congested. Enable P2P?" Verizon customers could cooperate to solve their problems (all nice and efficiently on Verizon's under-utilized network), without Verizon having to spend money to improve the gateway to L3. Everybody wins.
And then another way to look at it, would be that if you're a Verizon user, this might improve your seed ratio on your private trackers, so that you have to rely less on streaming services such as Netflix.
Wow, I wonder, if my fellow citizens of the command-and-control persuasion still think, the government mandating the higher speeds would've been more effective in delivering the bandwidth to consumers...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
interesting to see how fast internet connections are. I remember the days of 56 kbps modems that connected at about 48 kbps. I watched Real Video using the player. There was no flash video plugin that I remember. My dad's friend was lucky enough to have an 128 kbps ISDN line. lol
I just checked my wireless 2.4 GHz connection. It is connected to the router at 130 Mbps. I don't think I have download a file that fast from the world wide web. I may have download a file fast from the local area network though.
Call me when I can get more than 3 Mbps. Bastards.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm on Verizon. Fark has been unreachable all day. This appears to be Verizon's problem, not Fark's, so... the fark is going on here? How does a major ISP lose connectivity to a major news-like site?
The problem isn't in the upstream, it's in the downstream. Specifically their L3 interconnects.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Verizon Broadband is evil because
1. They manipulate the public and competitors into thinking the issues with slow speed are the result of competing ISPs for which video services are using when in fact the reality is Verizon has a self-serving interest in reducing competition. so while there is some legitimacy to the claim it's inadequate to fully justify the demands.
2. policies on use of service (ie no servers, and, I get that the competition is also got similar policies, including Google, but none-the-less)
3. support for legislation that eliminates or puts up hurdles for potential competition (however little that is, or in markets which the company doesn't even service due to inadequate opportunities to profit)
Others may exist... but these are the ones I know about.
Though Comcast worse provider because:
1. interfering with and impersonating you or others your communicating with in order to disconnect traffic
2. false and severely misleadingly advertising about the speds being sold to consumers (forced to change advertising to 'up to' and still not really honest as you can't get those speeds during prime time hours when most people are actually on, bandwidth caps, X times faster than ADSL, when they only utilize the slowest speeds from competing providers, etc)
3. responsible for and/or support for legislation that limits competition
4. terrible service (have you ever called them or tried to cancel?)
5. compression on many TV channels reduces quality below that of even over the air reception
6. imposed increased costs on analog cable subscribers during the analog to digital switch and lied saying lower costs/better service/etc. to gain additional bandwidth, channels, etc and profit from such services users now have to pay for a cable box as they only provided 'free' boxes for 3 TVs
7. non-optional digital boxes add significant costs to electric bill
8. digital restrictions on premium channels (DRM is unethical)
9. digital restrictions on non-premium channels (channels which you can get over the air can't even be viewed in many areas and the imposition is totally optional on Comcast's part, it's not being imposed by somebody else on Comcast)
10. they force non-free software on you (all cable boxes and all cable internet boxes are dependent on non-free software)
11. support for bad legislation that limits competition
12. merging issues with other companies that would further entrench the company as a monopoly/duopoly/etc which would give it leverage over other companies even in areas for which it does not serve
13. bad policies for use of service (ie no servers, etc)
14. hi-jacking DNS, email, etc
15. blocking of certain ports. they are not providing a true internet connection. this is fraud if you ask me. they shouldn't be able to advertise it as they do. if I provided email service only it wouldn't be reasonable for me to advertise it as internet access now would it? while your able to send email via servers connected to the internet your not honestly providing internet service even if you are providing internet services. the difference between the two being the one is 100% open internet and the other is providing a service utilizing the internet/over the internet.
Other companies are also awful in some ways, but better in some regards. CenturyLink offers ADSL and while seemingly honest about services provided (that is you can actually get the service sold even during peak hours within the confines of your phone line and distance from provider) they hi-jack at least DNS.
Comcast actually does beat Verizon on residential services, at least when it comes to download speeds. The top FiOS residential plan is 75 down, the top Comcast plan is 100 down. Comcast is also testing 1 gig down for residential.
Business class is a whole other ball game, as both sides can pretty much match each other with their Metro-E services.
As far as symmetrical, Verizon FiOS will always win there, now. DOCSIS technology (at least currently) isn't built for symmetrical services. The upstream RF channels have a much smaller bandwidth than the downstream channels, and you can only bond so many.
I oppose giving consumers huge upload speeds such as this, for the reason that it's going to seriously amplify the DDoS attack capabilities of bot-armies which depend on compromised windows pc's organized. This problem is growing and is not just a problem for the end-user target of such attacks, but also for providers themselves which have to carry 1gbps+ attacks over network connections that are 'only' 1gbps to start with, serving aggregate end user traffic which normally may be 500mbps or less. What do we tell our customers? We can't necessarily block the traffic, because by the time the DoS gets to us, it's already done the damage. The attack traffic has to be stopped before it gets into the network to begin with.
I would advocate seriously the creation of 'risk zones', where high risk (and low accountabillity) users - such as dumbshit home users - are restricted by default and prevented by policy from being ABLE to be sources of DoS traffic in the first place, by filtering them down to 'consumer' access, no server protocols by default, effective 'rate limits', MANDATORY BCP38 (spoofed packet filtering), and WORKING ABUSE CONTACTS at the providers to identify and SHUT DOWN UNTIL FIXED any offenders no matter how loud they complain about being 'off'.
What kind of rate limits? Well... is it a working necessity for any end user connection to be able to emit more than 32kbps of dns queries? You know their routers mostly cache anyways. Same goes for NTP on the rate. And what about SYN floods, is it really necessary to be able to make more than say 10 connections per second? And direct to smtp, although the RBL's are doing a fair job, should end users be able to connect to smtp servers directly....? HELL no. Only viruses and such on consumer PC's want to do that.
Im just pissed that we have so few effective tools. The trust that the Internet was built on, is misplaced. Today it's a hostile cesspool of punk bitch motherfucker script kiddies without a single original talent that needs my boot put in their ass. FUCK!
After having written numerous letters to him, I can assure you Ted Cruz is looking for any and all available means to allow TWC and AT&T to bend you over and give you the business. At best, the man is ignorant when it comes to technology policy; his stance on Net Neutrality is "the internet has always worked fine, leave it alone" which ignores the fact that from its inception until 2005 providers were common carriers, and from 2005 through January of this year providers were under open internet rules from the FCC. At worst, and what I think is the case, is that the man is corrupt and receives a great deal of money from companies to do or not do specific things in the senate. His #1 donor by industry is the oil and gas industry, which I'm sure influences heavily in his refusal to accept global warming as the solid science it is. He gets plenty of money from telcoms too to do their bidding.
No doubt this is because it is taking the NSA too long to suck the data out of your computer(s).
Comcast actually does beat Verizon on residential services, at least when it comes to download speeds. The top FiOS residential plan is 75 down, the top Comcast plan is 100 down.
Last I checked, Verizon's 500mbps download (as part of the 500/500 symmetrical) is larger than the 100mbps download you cite from Comcast.
...you'll be upgraded to pound sand with both hands.
North Carolina was promised FIOS "real soon now" for years. At this point, it's pretty clear that if you don't already have it, you won't be getting it. Google blimps, drones, and sewer lines will bring us high-speed broadband long before Verizon significantly extends their buildout.
If you previously were getting 15 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up, you'll be automatically upgraded for no extra cost to 15/15.
Wow, upgraded from 15/5 to...15/5. What the summary meant to say is if you were getting 15/5, you're now eligible for FiOS 25/25 Mbps, which is a pretty decent upgrade.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
They like to raise their prices constantly. The extra cost will appear later this year - I guarantee it.
Now my online backup service will smash into my monthly usage cap in the first hour it runs.
My current plan is 25/25. Looking at the press release, I don't see any upgrade for that plan.
No sig? Sigh...
They claimed that residential customers could have IPv6 2 years ago.
What will be telling is if they do the same to the DSL customers in the near future as well.
DSL works over high frequencies in existing copper phone lines. Far more physical bandwidth is typically allocated to the downstream than to the upstream. Balancing this out would reduce download speeds in favor of upload speeds. Are you sure implementing SHDSL wouldn't require rolling trucks and mailing modems?
Wasn't Verizon supposed to use the $885M in taxpayer money they received over the years to roll fiber out to every home in the USA?
How would it hurt Netflix? Netflix could push its movies like Blizzard pushes World of Warcraft updates. This would involve sending (encrypted) movies to Verizon customers, having the Netflix clients share the (encrypted) movies over a peer-to-peer network, and stream only the decryption key for each frame of video to the subscribers watching the video.
I've wanted FiOS for such a long time -- despite the unfortunate circumstance of necessitating becoming a Verizon customer. Now, I may move just so I can have it...
Imagine if those peoples' Netflix client said "The Verizon gateway to L3 seems congested. Enable P2P?"
And before you start thinking "MPAA would never agree", Netflix could encrypt each frame of video with a different AES key and stream those to the subscribers.
I didn't believe it but ookla resulted in a symmetric 50mbps up and down. Now I have to read the article to see why they did this.
All they offer at my address is 3Mb-256Kb dsl. I am only 800 ft from a CO, which may be the reason, not that that is a reasonable reason.
Some of your "Comcast is worse" points apply equally to Verizon:
6. FiOS TV requires a box.
7. FiOS TV requires a box.
8. All providers offering premium channels have to encrypt. This has been true since the days of analog cable. Blame the channels.
10. You think FiOS boxes run free software?
11. is just 3 restated so we can strike it.
12. The first thing Bell Atlantic did when it became Verizon was buy GTE. Later it bought Alltel.
Whatever price Verizon says it'll give you for FIOS, add $5/mo for the router rental that's forced on you, for absolutely no reason.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Depending on which program you're talking about, it might be available via streaming, perhaps for a fee.
The programs are Morning Joe, The Rachel Maddow Show, and Monday Night Football. Is there a (legal) live stream of MSNBC and ESPN sold separately from pay TV?
For blacked out shows, she goes to sports bars.
That's great for people with no kids under 21.
This is a leftover from what I call the "tv tray generation", people who watch TV shows on the content provider's schedule, with commercials.
There are plenty of "TV tray generation" people in my family. Some are unwiling to spend an extra $180 per year for TiVo service. But I was referring to things like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones, where one may have to actively avoid spoilers that come up in casual conversation at work.
Usually (but admittedly not always) there's a way to get internet without also having to get cable.
Internet without pay TV: $49.99 per month
Internet with basic pay TV: $47.99 per month
If I'm making this up, then so are AC, mrchaotica, and sandytaru.
I live just south of Santa Barbara and I finally weaseled it out of them that Verizon plans no new roll-outs of FIOS anywhere. If you don't have it "in your neighborhood" now, you'll never have it. The "last mile" problem proved too expensive to deal with. (That's the part where they run fiber to each home from the neighborhood "trunk".) I think this is why AT&T U-verse is still growing. They run fiber to a neighborhood and then use the existing copper for the last short run to the home. Definitely a compromise, but it's a helluva lot faster than DSL! Unfortunately, in my area, we don't even have that. Fastest connection I could get was from COX Cable. (DISH was still cheaper for my TV, btw, since we get zero OTA channels where I live.)
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
I've never seen an episode of Under the Dome. Yet, I know how it ends.
That'd be relevant if all dramatic series on pay TV were adaptations, the way Game of Thrones and Under the Dome are. But things like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos are original. (There is a novel titled The Sopranos but it's completely unrelated. And no, I myself don't currently follow any such "things like".)
Let me put it another way: Waiting for the season box set breaks the shared social experience of all being at the same point in an original serial work. Then the question becomes whether this experience is beneficial.
--
I'm sorry, your QUESTION must be in the form of A QUESTION!
I'm aware that this question isn't in the form of a question. But neither was Hamlet's.
It's like, you know, books. We don't all read the same novel chapter by chapter at the same time.
Oh really? One thing that Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio and Dickens's Oliver Twist have in common, other than that Walt Disney Pictures loosely adapted both decades later, is that they were both first published as serials.
This is just a political move because Verizon didn't like all the obvious holes poked in their argument that Netflix/Level3 should carry balanced traffic when that is impossible considering that their customer base is almost all on asymmetric links.
Now Verizon can lie to Congress when they pull out the charts and graphs that conveniently show how Level3 isn't holding up their end to receive 50Mbps uploads from their entire customer base simultaneously over the four 10GB Ethernet links they share. Never mind that consumers have little need to upload high volumes of traffic and private servers are still officially banned on residential.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
don't make me boot you TimeWarner..