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Study: Major ISPs Slowing Traffic Across the US
An anonymous reader writes: A study based on test results from 300,000 internet users "found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service providers" in the United States. This group includes Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and AT&T. "The study, supported by the technologists at Open Technology Institute's M-Lab, examines the comparative speeds of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), which shoulder some of the data load for popular websites. ... In Atlanta, for example, Comcast provided hourly median download speeds over a CDN called GTT of 21.4 megabits per second at 7pm throughout the month of May. AT&T provided speeds over the same network of of a megabit per second." These findings arrive shortly after the FCC's new net neutrality rules took effect across the U.S.
You are an idiot. This demonstrates that they were fucking with people's speeds all along.
If the last mile ISPs are going to only allow balanced traffic for free (and last mile traffic is clearly not balanced by its nature) then we should fix the problem for them and generate enough upstream traffic to balance the equation. This is simple - answer one idiotic position with another idiotic position. Have Netflix go peer to peer and then manage traffic flow to create balanced traffic at all of the last mile ISPs. It's what they want ---- we should give it to them.
Since they can't get their way to squeeze more profit from their customers, they'll punish them instead.
Assholes.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Is it:
A. Actively punishing users?
B. The natural side-effect of the legal inability to shut out extreme bandwidth usages?
C. A coincidence?
D. A failure in the process of making changes required by the FCC?
E. Something else?
These studies were done before the FCC's Net Neutrality regulations went into effect.
Actually, I'm lying. I don't know when they were done. The article links to... get this... no study. I can't find a single link on the Internet to the study that this article suggests happened.
So how can we draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of the new policies from this article?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Why the fuck can't slashdot fix the category/comments icons from covering the article title?
What a load of crap. The Major ISPs want to become content publishers, nothing more and nothing less. They want a 30% hit from all the content sold on their networks.
The internet, the digital highway, needs to be as regulated as every other road for smooth traffic flow. Imagine a sick corporate world, where you are forced to pull over to allow a corporate executive through and if you do not move over fast enough, forced straight off the road. Imagine roads run as revenue operations, fines for everything, penalties for excess use, penalties for not using it enough, all you movements subject to review. Imagine wanting to drive to one place only to be forced to drive somewhere else instead. Imagine tolls on every road and footpath. Imagine someone else owning your driveway, front path and garage. Imagine being charge for having more stuff in you car when you use roads, four people four tolls, full boot, extra fees. That is corporate freedom in roads just as they would implement it on the digital highway.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You're right. I followed the relevant links in that article (and several were pointless primers) and none of them including mlab pointed to the study claimed, not even indirectly. I can't find it either. I have no love whatsoever for Verizon or Comcast, but it makes you wonder.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
It's a not very surprising head line really, "Cartel members cheat their customers". The fact that the FCC might start to regulate them a little bit might change their behavior, at least until the next round of "campaign contributions" when the rules will change again.
Most of us don't even have that option. There isn't a "don't suck, if I give you more money" plan. Money ain't what they're into: they're only into suckin', and nothin' else.