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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.
Yeah. Wouldn't be awesome of Netflix enabled a P2P client on the Verizon network? They should do it. The technology exists. It would be glorious.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Advertised: 150/150
Actual: 112/112
As a FiOS customer this would matter to me if Verizon wasn't actively trying to extort money from Tier 1 providers.
Now all Netflix needs to do is get a FiOS account at their house.
Unless you have netflix.
Then it's the 400k/112MB plan.
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See the press release here:
http://newscenter.verizon.com/corporate/news-articles/2014/07-21-fios-upload-speed-upgrade/
Short answer: new and existing business customers will be getting it too "later this year".
The biggest issue I have with Verizon Fios is the TV service. All of the video channels are so compressed that you inevitably get pixelation and tearing. This is particularly infuriating when it happens during playback for video on demand shows that you are paying extra for.
And Verizon customer service is a complete joke. They don't even understand that it is their compression causing the problems, and their only solution when you call to complain is to reboot the cable box. After never less than 35 minutes on hold, then 30-50 minutes working with the idiot in Mumbai, then getting "accidentally" disconnected... makes me want to scream.
But the 75/35 is pretty flash.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
This is fiber. I don't have Verizon myself, but in general everything people complain about in regards to ISPs goes away once you're fiber. They'd have to have some pretty serious congestion issues for FiOS to start having trouble.
It matters not how fast your download speed from your ISP is if said ISP's connection to the content you are requesting isn't able to deliver it.
Along that same line though, I've no idea why they had asymmetric on fiber to begin with. The point to ADSL (Asymmetric DSL) has to do with crosstalk on the copper lines in the DSLAM. This isn't an issue, at all, for Fiber. So it makes little sense to have asymmetric fiber service other than for marketing purposes.
Consumer ISP's are all about getting content to you. They don't want you throwing up a server at your house to stream data to the ethers. They want you to stream media from them. So much so most have U NO RUN SERVER clauses in their TOS. An asynchronous connection allows them to advertise higher bandwidth "download" speeds and keeps those nasty server runners with paltry pipes to get their filth up to the internet.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I built that network (Pando Networks) a few years ago. The content companies were generally pretty slow to adopt p2p technology, but game companies are all over it. One pleasant aspect was that the advantage of p2p wasn't just economics, though those were great, it was performance. Because downloading from dozens of sources is much more resilient, and on good networks more performant, than downloading from one source. And, with an intelligent network, it could connect you with peers that are close to you in the network, reducing network congestion at the interconnects by 80%. When we ran a large scale test across all the major ISPs, we in fact saw that p2p clients were able to reduce inter-ISP data exchanges (for the p2p network) by 80%, simply through intelligent peer selection, which ISPs loved, and download performance was better, which downloaders loved.
And symmetric fiber networks are awesome at p2p.
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