They don't do it directly but attempt to play with words.
So they don't say it, but you want them to have said it, so you will assume they did and go from there. They didn't say it directly or indirectly. Nobody advertises what speed you will be able to get data from arbitrary sources across the internet. They can't. THAT would be false advertising, and their lawyers are smarter than that.
No, instead, they are pretty explicit in telling you that the speeds they quote are for your connection to their network. Nothing past that. And they can't guarantee anything past that. Nobody can, and it is lunacy to assume that they could.
I wouldn't say "quite explicit" at all.
I quoted the statement from CenturyLink example that the service speed they were offering was from your end of the connection TO THEIR CENTRAL OFFICE. That's pretty explicit. Not "from you to the world", and not even "from you to our network". It was limited to the central office -- a specific place.
Oh please. Reasonable person?
Yes. Unreasonable people can make all kinds of specious and moronic arguments about anything that is advertised and the law protects the advertiser from them. This is just one example. "Gee, you said "internet" and "20 gigs" in the same ad, so that "20 Gigs" must mean that you can get anything from anywhere on the Internet at "20 Gigs." Wow. That would be so fantastically impossible to guarantee that no reasonable person would believe such a claim was being made, especially given the clear limit of "from your home to our central office".
Before you start with the false advertising claims again, you should look at any of the ridiculously outrageous ad claims that are so obviously parodies that no reasonable person would believe them, and thus no lawsuits are ever filed. Do you remember the "money out the wazoo" ad for eTrade, I believe it was? Do you REALLY think that using the eTrade product will cause hundred dollar bills to spew from your rectum? That's what the ad showed. Then why would you believe that a service that is advertised as "up to 20 Gigs" means "exactly 20Gbps from anyplace on the planet"?
Deity religious is one of them.
Wow, way to turn a technical discussion into an anti-religious rant. When have you seen a company advertising "deity religious", whatever that is, and are they advertising bit rates for a connection to it?
So stop using "reasonable person" as an excuse to say that misleading/falsify ads are OK
It's not false advertising, so I'm not trying to excuse it as such. Don't tell me to stop doing something I'm not doing.
I understand that you come from technical point of view that there is no guarantee on Internet speed.
That is not just a "point of view". That is an indisputable fact. It is true whether you choose to believe it or not.
But at the same time, you completely ignore psychological point of view
Yes, I ignore the false facts from ignorant people who ignore not only the fact that the speed cannot be guaranteed to such an extent, but the fact that they are told the specific limits of that guarantee. Ignore the words at your own peril. Yes, I've been bit by that. I bought a radio from eBay at what I thought was a great price, thinking it was the VHF version. When it showed up and I realized it was UHF, I felt cheated. Then I reread the eBay listing. Yep, the information was there, I just ignored it. That was MY fault, not the seller's. Why is it not YOUR fault if you don't bother reading the information about the service you are buying to see what it actually is?
there shouldn't be advantages or disadvantages but rather a co-exist that help each other to grow.
So Hyperloop's business model should be building billion dollar trains to connect rural towns, just to get a "foothold" in the market?
"The 10:15 Hyperloop from Pixley to Hootersville is now boarding on track 5. All aBOARD!" "Conductor, does this hyperloop stop at Petticoat Junction?"
A hint: when you stay at the Shady Rest, don't drink the tap water. I hear that the girls bathe in it.
What did God say when he saw Eve swimming in the river? "I'll never get that smell off those fish." Thank you, try the veal, tip your waitress.
I agree that they lose network speed control outside of their network.
Then how can using a speedtest server outside of their network be suspicious, unfair, unethical, or "cheating"? That's what the claim is.
That doesn't mean the way they advertise on Internet speed is acceptable.
Here's how CenturyLink, as one example, talks about their "internet speed" (which they don't actually say): "Private, Direct Connection and Speed Claims: Private, direct connection and/or speed claims are based on providing High-Speed Internet customers with a dedicated, virtual-circuit connection between their homes and the CenturyLink central office."
Between their homes and the central office. Nothing about "internet globally". Also: "Speed Demo Chart: Speeds provided above may not be typical or standard and each user may not experience the exact same results as depicted for each category. Listed broadband speeds vary due to conditions outside of network control, including customer location and equipment, and are not guaranteed."
It seems like CenturyLink is quite explicit in saying "not guaranteed" and "due to conditions outside of network control". I've see the same kind of disclaimers on other ISPs ads, so CL is not unique in this honesty.
The meaning of the word "Internet" gives you the sense of global (around the world).
Oh, please. Anyone who thinks that the use of the word "internet" in some advertising makes every claim about the service being sold a guarantee that applies to everywhere on the Internet is just, well... there has to be a reasonable person test to every ad, and if a reasonable person would not think that his 100MBps fiber internet meant he could get data from a server in Lower Elbonia on a 56k dialup at 100MBps, then that passes the test.
You don't even comprehend the role that traceroute plays in investigating their reports,
I know what traceroute is, what it does, and what it measures. I don't have to "comprehend" what role "they" thought traceroute plays in "their reports", I know what role it CAN play, and measuring bandwidth is not it. I also understand, apparently better than you, that latency and bandwidth are not the same metric.
Your insults notwithstanding, the fact remains. Proving that someone is "gaming speed tests" based on traceroute is nonsense.
What people want it an impartial metric to compare the performance of different ISPs to.
No. Most people have one ISP. How do they compare two if they don't have service from both?
But even if they do have two ISPs, then comparing between the two is something very different than verifying if the service you are paying for is what you are getting. If you want to know if your connection to ISP A is running at "up to 100MBps", you test that connection using a source on ISP A's network. You don't use a source on ISP B, because that makes it trivial for ISP B to "game the result" by being slow in sending you data. You don't trust A to be honest, but you trust B -- who could benefit by lying to you and getting you to switch to B.
If google.com takes 5 minutes to load on my PC I could not give a crap that your internal metrics tell you your network is amazing, because it is not, it is shit.
And you will ignore the fact that the google.com servers could be suffering a meltdown right at that moment, and you will blame your ISP for every fault you find in any data service you try to connect to. This is "impartial" and "accurate". Sure.
The dipshit friend of yours is incorrect to use the standard of how fast it takes him to get home even if he is more accurate
Not when you're testing the claim of which road is faster for him to get home.
Why? Because that standard is not useful in this context.
Exactly what standard is useful when you want to test whether your connection to your ISP is providing the bandwidth you are paying for? No, I'm sorry, but "google.com loads slow" isn't it. There are simply too many outside actors involved that all can slow things down. If you don't understand why you try to eliminate all the interfering effects from irrelevant sources when making a measurement, then there is nothing left to explain.
You make a good argument, but it has been proven that T-Mobile has been gaming the system of speed tests.
Did you even bother to read what that link points to? The article you linked is a story about someone finding a hole in a network access filter. T-Mobile allowed access to websites that contained the string "/speedtest" even after paid service had run out.
That's not "gaming the system of speed tests". That's allowing people to run speed tests using devices that currently don't have service, as a way of evaluating the network performance. The only "gaming the system" going on was when the person who found this error started hosting web data with "/speedtest" in the URL so he could get access through T-Mobile without paying.
Correct, it is,however, suspicious to anyone who is familiar with the concept of impartiality that they get to choose their own reference.
It isn't supposed to be impartial, it is supposed to be accurate, and there are technical reasons why using a server on their own network results in more accurate measurements. That removes the suspicion.
Double suspicious that they choose references that are not standard for their end users own personal tests.
I don't understand what you mean by this. If you mean it is suspicious because they aren't using the same distant servers from other people's networks to test their own network performance, well, no, it isn't. We've been over that point.
Triple suspicious that the results never align with real world experiences.
"Real world experiences" are mostly subjective, and depend on all kinds of factors that are not under the control of the ISP. They also change from minute to minute based on network usage. Why is it suspicious that quantitative answers from "calibrated" sources differ from subjective experience with arbitrary data generators?
Here is what retchdog wrote in the GGGP of this posting: "when i called my cable company to complain about the speed of my home internet service". "They" didn't say nothing about "internet speed".
You sound like a Verizon lawyer.
Where have I been talking about Verizon? Are they retchdog's cable company?
If private network speed is all that counts,
I didn't say that, and you know it. What I did say is that when testing your connection to the internet, measuring your connection to the internet is what is important, not measuring the output of someone's web server somewhere on the other side of the planet.
they could just sell you a gigabit LAN router with a dial up modem attached.
Then your connection to the internet would be at dial-up modem speeds, now wouldn't it? Or do you really believe that because your router is gigabit on LAN it will always do gigabit on WAN, and so such a connection would fulfill the actual promises made about your connection to the internet? Yes, they COULD just sell you that kind of connection, but it is irrelevant because that is not what they do and it is not what they claim.
While the cost of damage would be very high, the risk to life isn't really any different than a bus or train full of people.
Perhaps you missed that TSA is involved with trains. Hyperloop, due to its huge pricetag and high tech, will be a prime target. While you can't hijack a car, you can certainly make it disintegrate in a spectacular way.
It will not be TSA that pushes for their control of security checkpoints for Hyperloop terminals, it will be people, once the first hyperloop train is destroyed by anyone who can have a political agenda attached to them. Even if not. There are already calls for tighter security in HOTELS because of the Las Vegas shooting. How COULD anyone get so many guns into a hotel room? (Carry them in. Next question?) Doesn't this show a need for gun control? (He was using AK-47s if what I heard is correct, one of the guns that is already heavily controlled, so no. Next question?)
How hard would it be to derail a passenger train with an IED on the tracks?
Passenger trains are low-tech commonplace things. The first (and second and probably third) public Hyperloop will be the opposite.
We're discussing the bandwidth of your connection to the ISP. That you want to turn this into personal insult shows a lack of support for your argument, not your superiority.
the ISPs, by and large, lobbied to have the definition of "internet" changed
Of, for goodness sake. No, they haven't.
to include preferential peering, traffic shaping,
By "preferential peering" you mean gateway congestion, of course. And "traffic shaping" has always been a part of the TCP/IP standard. "Internet", as you call it.
and literally every hypothetically possible trick imaginable,
Hyperbole is your friend.
and yet they want to advertise "internet speed" in the most advantageous way (to them) possible
The do not advertise "internet speed". They have always advertised the speed of your connection. They cannot advertise "internet speed" because there is no such measurement. What is "internet speed"? Is it 100MBps? Gigabit? 10Gbps? Different parts of the internet run at different speed. No ISP can advertise speeds for any other network than their own, and they don't even do that. They are always referring to your little connection to their network. If you don't understand that, well, there are books and stuff to look things up in.
if "internet" now includes gaming the shit out of connection metrics,
You can run your own software to measure the speed, and how they can game that is anyone's guess.
Now, if you can show that the number their speedtest sites report do not match the measurement you make during the same test, you'd have an argument. But somehow the ISP is gaming your software and you can't.
Yes, it is. The ISP having control over it means that it's likely within the provider's network.
Yes, I think we've said as much. Why is this a problem?
That is, no peering agreements involved. That's not even really "Internet" speed. That's just private network speed
Yes, no peering gateways that connect to other networks. I think we've said as much. Yes, it's "private network speed", but it also the speed that the ISP has sold you. They haven't sold you "gigabit to every place on the planet".
And they may even further cheat by geo-routing DNS for the test to a server at the nearest hop.
As long as the limiting factor is your connection to their network, then it doesn't matter where in their network the server is.
How fast can you connect within your ISP's network to the nearest city?
No faster than I can connect to it in this city. If the test shows I have a connection that manages 100Mbps to the local city, then I know that any throughput less than that is caused by something else.
Anyone who is honestly trying to measure the bandwidth of their current network connection.
My ISP doesn't host anything I'm interested in. They could deliver me gigabit speeds to their network and it won't do me any good unless the speeds from outside their network are good too.
Do you want to verify that you have a gigabit connection, or just whine about it not being fast enough because other networks are slowing you down?
My Tasker script samples the GPS periodically and when it sees it's not in an area I've defined as OK, it turns the WiFi off. Otherwise it turns it on.
So you've programmed your phone to track your location because you don't want to use WiFi where you don't want to use it? Sounds complicated, and you are left with trusting the permissions so apps won't track your location and report it back to Momma when they are able.
Wouldn't it be much simpler to just leave the WiFi turned off unless you actually wanted to use it? Then you turn it on for as long as you want to use it, then turn it back off again. And when I say "turn it off", I don't mean use the iOS menu that disconnects you from the WiFi hotspot, I mean actually turn it off.
That's how I manage my device's WiFi radio. Pretty simple. One button on, one button off. No GPS involved.
yes, i will give more credence to the speedtest which reflects the poor performance i observe in practice rather than the suspiciously specific speedtest my provider tells me to use,
When I get home tonight I will set up a data source on one of my Raspberry Pi systems that connects via a 10MBps link to my home router. Please set up a conference call including me when you call your ISP and complain that you aren't getting the 100MBps throughput you are paying for based on testing with my indisputably unbiased data source. I'd almost pay to hear that conversation. I'll mute my mic because I will certainly be laughing when you try to get them to act based on that data, and I'll laugh even harder if they do act on it.
It is not suspicious to anyone who understands networks that they would want you to use a known source when testing your network connection. On the extreme, it would be like complaining that your network connection is down because you get no response when you ping 192.168.20.20. The fact that the "test source" happens to be unroutable if it is not on your own internal network is significant, just like the fact that the speed test site you prefer to use is on someone else's network that your ISP has no control over.
Your comment made sense 15 years ago. Now it is just a lie.
No, it is quite true that it reasonable to use a standard measure and not an unknown. Maybe experiment design is a skill that isn't taught anymore, but when it is, removing extraneous effects that will lead to incorrect results is always a major design element. That means not testing against an unknown.
Since I didn't claim that they didn't game anything, calling me a liar for denying it is a bit, well... ad hominemish.
There are lots of examples online using traceroute.
Traceroute measures latency, not bandwidth. In many cases not even that, given the routine blocking of ICMP TTL expired response packets. The fact that it takes 30s to get a '*' back from a distant server during a traceroute doesn't mean it is taking 30s for packets to get there and back, you know.
Depending on the endpoints of the bandwidth tool, you can be measuring your connection, your ISPs network, the network of someone unrelated to your ISP, the bandwidth of the source, or a combination of all four. Usually it is the latter. And I forgot to include "border gateway available bandwidth".
Yes, I've seen people say "well, I've measured the throughput from site A somewhere in the world to my local system and it proves that Comcast is deliberately throttling Netflix", or whatever they think the target dejoure might be. It doesn't, but that doesn't stop it from happening over and over again.
The only way to get a real number for your connection to your ISP is to use a server on the ISPs network that is set up to perform such tests. The fact that it is set up to do those tests and belongs to the ISP proves, to some, that it's a rigged game. Yeah, rigged to give more accurate numbers for your connection and try to ignore other networks' issues.
The real gem during one of these discussions was the fellow who used his home connection to his business connection to measure the bandwidth of his business connection. Even though he was paying more for business class speeds, and the ISP was the same for both, the results for his business connection were never better than those for his home. That proved that the ISP was throttling his business connection. Pure gold. You can't make that kind of stuff up.
So, yeah, the ISP can demand speed test results from a specific source so they could game the system. They could also demand speed test results from a known source so they can actually determine if the problem is on their network or somewhere else. Telling the difference between the two is hard, but assuming the worst is not always the right answer.
Would you accept a complaint if you were selling service that someone's video stream to some server somewhere was buffering a lot, when you probably have no control over the network to that service? Or would you want a standardized test that shows what your service is providing? What value would you put on the statement "my data connection to Obfuscant's web server is running at only 50kbps"? If you spend time debugging that, then you've wasted your time, since my web server is passing through a 10Mbps connection and is serving 100 people.
Yes, they could be gaming the speed tests by looking at the destination, but it is reasonable that they'd want a known source to test your speeds against, not something they don't know.
The wet rate for a small airplane is in the $100-$170 per hour range. Compared to what the drones cost,
If you're going to compare purchase cost, then do so. That would be a quarter of a million dollars for a small manned aircraft with a reasonable set of avionics that would allow it to be operated in most weather. $100k otherwise. Plus pilot training. And insurance. And when a small plain goes down, there are a couple of lives at stake. But those are human and not bird so they apparently don't count.
If you want to compare operating costs, do that. $170 for the plane per hour, salary for the pilot and other occupant who is doing the mapping, versus a lot less for the drone.
The drone wins in both purchase and operating expenses.
Being able to hover and descend below safe flight levels to get better pictures might be a factor.
Oh, helicopters are $250/hr minimum, and insurance costs are much higher. Yes, they can hover and descend, but there's a price for that.
they managed to raise cattle and mine before anyone invented drones.
And people managed to travel before they invented the horseless carriage, and travel across country in the US before the interstate highway system was developed. They managed to talk to other people before cell phones were invented, and they even managed to write and publish books prior to the computer text editor or Gutenberg. People survived bleeding as a cure for bacterial infections, many times, and TV really did pre-date cable and satellite.
I mean if the purpose for this is improving the flow of commuters then you'd focus on the shortest time and scheduled path between any two stations.
But that might not be what the people are doing. At all.
For example, during my recent vacation in Munich I would often enter the system at Marienplatz, ride to Karlzplatz Stachus or Hauptbahnhof, then ride back out to Isartor. For those who don't know the system, that's getting on in the center of the city, going west, then going back east. I did that almost every day. Now, Munich does not track riders by ticket because you don't need to show anyone or any machine a ticket. At most you stick a paper ticket in a timeclock that stamps the time on it. At best, you carry an IsarCard in your pocket that nobody ever sees except you. If they WERE tracking entry/exit, they'd have a very distorted picture of how I used the system.
Now, on a practical level, suppose you measure actual riders and see that a large percentage of them ride line 1 from A to D through B and C, then change to line 2 for D to Z via C, B, etc. It's shorter to go AB-Z but they're going ABCDCB-Z. Why? Poor signage? Bad maps? Does the change at B require a long walk or is the escalator always broken? Or does the station at D have the only KFC on the route and people are stopping there?
If you look only at entry/exit, you will gather none of that data and not know that you need to study a potential problem at B and/or C.
Consumers on average aren't stupid enough to want to spend any more time in the tube than absolutely necessary.
"On average" is not "peak demand".
Whether someone has fallen asleep on the line, or is going around in a circle really shouldn't matter for any of their scenarios.
Of course he does, because he is a physical object consuming a seat on a limited resource. WHY he's consuming it isn't measured, only that he IS, and unless they can identify that HE is the same person they won' t know there might be a problem that can be fixed and reduce delays for others.
Another Munich example. Visitors fly into an airport well outside and then take the S1 or S8 in. If they monitor entry/exit they'll get a count of how many people enter and leave where they do. If they monitor the entire trip, they may find that a lot of people take the S1 all the way to HBf (Hauptbanhof) and then they take the U2 to Hasenbergl. But they could have changed at Feldmoching and had a much shorter trip. Why didn't they? Were the on-train announcements not clear enough, should everyone who buys an IsarCard at the airport be given an MVV map, or what?
And suppose that visitor leaves by taking the S1 out to Freising, says WTF?, gets back on the S1 to Neufarhn, and then goes to the airport. If they count entry/exit, it is just another rider from city to airport. If they track the path, however, they find out that maybe the information that the S1 splits at Neufarhn and the front half goes to Freising instead of the airport isn't being presented well enough.
You can get a lot of data from monitoring entry/exit, yes. You get a lot more by tracking individual pax, even if you don't know their name.
I'd wager it would be almost impossible to ever tell if you were in a simulation unless it had some bugs that were brought to light.
"Cancer" is a bug in the part of the simulation dealing with entity replication. We have "identified" it as a disease, but nobody takes the leap to calling it a bug in the simulation. So, your "unless" clause is moot. There are already bugs "brought to light", but the simulated entities are not programmed to think "simulation bug", therefore they do not.
As far as I know, there is no mathematical algorithm to generate true randomness. So would it be possible to write an algorithm simulating the universe?
Were you to write an algorithm that depends on true random numbers, you can use any number of true random number generators that exist in hardware.
Would testing the universe to see if it is random or pseudo-random tell us anything about whether it is a simulation or not?
Given that we have no means of defining "random" that does not already fit our view of the universe, it would be a tautology at best. I.e., we call the radiative decay of nuclear isotopes "random" because we cannot predict when it will happen, not because there is no underlying clock controlling the process. There may be a clock in the external simulator in which our universe runs, but we cannot detect it.
As long as our universe's time doesn't run 1:1 with the simulator's universe,
For all we know, "time" may only be a side effect of the simulation and not exist in the real universe at all. From here:
"One could, however, ask the question in a slightly different way. By putting together G (Newton's constant of gravity), h (Planck's constant) and c (the velocity of light), one can derive a minimum meaningful amount of time, about 10-44 second. At this temporal scale, one would expect quantum effects to dominate gravity and hence, because Einstein's theory links gravity and time, to dominate the ordinary notion of time. In other words, for time intervals smaller than this one, the whole notion of 'time' would be expected to lose its meaning. "
In other words, the universe of the simulator is processing increments of 10-44 second in the simulation, while that universe itself runs on a continuous non-quantized level -- simply because simulating our universe is too computationally complex for them to do it all in one step.
Physical modelers (atmospheric, ocean, etc) select their time steps carefully so as to not create artifacts that draw the results too far from the ground truth. Would someone "living" in an ocean circulation model, e.g., even have a concept of "time" shorter than "hour" or "six hours", when the model is run with such large time steps? Would such a denizen even think of needing to "anti-alias" his world to one minute intervals? What would it mean were he to try to do such mathematical processing? It would not create any additional reality for him, it would only create time(s) for which no real data is available.
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Who said I claim that?
Nobody, including me. I said that was the claim.
They don't do it directly but attempt to play with words.
So they don't say it, but you want them to have said it, so you will assume they did and go from there. They didn't say it directly or indirectly. Nobody advertises what speed you will be able to get data from arbitrary sources across the internet. They can't. THAT would be false advertising, and their lawyers are smarter than that. No, instead, they are pretty explicit in telling you that the speeds they quote are for your connection to their network. Nothing past that. And they can't guarantee anything past that. Nobody can, and it is lunacy to assume that they could.
I wouldn't say "quite explicit" at all.
I quoted the statement from CenturyLink example that the service speed they were offering was from your end of the connection TO THEIR CENTRAL OFFICE. That's pretty explicit. Not "from you to the world", and not even "from you to our network". It was limited to the central office -- a specific place.
Oh please. Reasonable person?
Yes. Unreasonable people can make all kinds of specious and moronic arguments about anything that is advertised and the law protects the advertiser from them. This is just one example. "Gee, you said "internet" and "20 gigs" in the same ad, so that "20 Gigs" must mean that you can get anything from anywhere on the Internet at "20 Gigs." Wow. That would be so fantastically impossible to guarantee that no reasonable person would believe such a claim was being made, especially given the clear limit of "from your home to our central office".
Before you start with the false advertising claims again, you should look at any of the ridiculously outrageous ad claims that are so obviously parodies that no reasonable person would believe them, and thus no lawsuits are ever filed. Do you remember the "money out the wazoo" ad for eTrade, I believe it was? Do you REALLY think that using the eTrade product will cause hundred dollar bills to spew from your rectum? That's what the ad showed. Then why would you believe that a service that is advertised as "up to 20 Gigs" means "exactly 20Gbps from anyplace on the planet"?
Deity religious is one of them.
Wow, way to turn a technical discussion into an anti-religious rant. When have you seen a company advertising "deity religious", whatever that is, and are they advertising bit rates for a connection to it?
So stop using "reasonable person" as an excuse to say that misleading/falsify ads are OK
It's not false advertising, so I'm not trying to excuse it as such. Don't tell me to stop doing something I'm not doing.
I understand that you come from technical point of view that there is no guarantee on Internet speed.
That is not just a "point of view". That is an indisputable fact. It is true whether you choose to believe it or not.
But at the same time, you completely ignore psychological point of view
Yes, I ignore the false facts from ignorant people who ignore not only the fact that the speed cannot be guaranteed to such an extent, but the fact that they are told the specific limits of that guarantee. Ignore the words at your own peril. Yes, I've been bit by that. I bought a radio from eBay at what I thought was a great price, thinking it was the VHF version. When it showed up and I realized it was UHF, I felt cheated. Then I reread the eBay listing. Yep, the information was there, I just ignored it. That was MY fault, not the seller's. Why is it not YOUR fault if you don't bother reading the information about the service you are buying to see what it actually is?
there shouldn't be advantages or disadvantages but rather a co-exist that help each other to grow.
Here's
Got its start by concentrating in rural towns.
So Hyperloop's business model should be building billion dollar trains to connect rural towns, just to get a "foothold" in the market? "The 10:15 Hyperloop from Pixley to Hootersville is now boarding on track 5. All aBOARD!" "Conductor, does this hyperloop stop at Petticoat Junction?"
A hint: when you stay at the Shady Rest, don't drink the tap water. I hear that the girls bathe in it.
What did God say when he saw Eve swimming in the river? "I'll never get that smell off those fish." Thank you, try the veal, tip your waitress.
I agree that they lose network speed control outside of their network.
Then how can using a speedtest server outside of their network be suspicious, unfair, unethical, or "cheating"? That's what the claim is.
That doesn't mean the way they advertise on Internet speed is acceptable.
Here's how CenturyLink, as one example, talks about their "internet speed" (which they don't actually say): "Private, Direct Connection and Speed Claims: Private, direct connection and/or speed claims are based on providing High-Speed Internet customers with a dedicated, virtual-circuit connection between their homes and the CenturyLink central office."
Between their homes and the central office. Nothing about "internet globally". Also: "Speed Demo Chart: Speeds provided above may not be typical or standard and each user may not experience the exact same results as depicted for each category. Listed broadband speeds vary due to conditions outside of network control, including customer location and equipment, and are not guaranteed."
It seems like CenturyLink is quite explicit in saying "not guaranteed" and "due to conditions outside of network control". I've see the same kind of disclaimers on other ISPs ads, so CL is not unique in this honesty.
The meaning of the word "Internet" gives you the sense of global (around the world).
Oh, please. Anyone who thinks that the use of the word "internet" in some advertising makes every claim about the service being sold a guarantee that applies to everywhere on the Internet is just, well ... there has to be a reasonable person test to every ad, and if a reasonable person would not think that his 100MBps fiber internet meant he could get data from a server in Lower Elbonia on a 56k dialup at 100MBps, then that passes the test.
You don't even comprehend the role that traceroute plays in investigating their reports,
I know what traceroute is, what it does, and what it measures. I don't have to "comprehend" what role "they" thought traceroute plays in "their reports", I know what role it CAN play, and measuring bandwidth is not it. I also understand, apparently better than you, that latency and bandwidth are not the same metric.
Your insults notwithstanding, the fact remains. Proving that someone is "gaming speed tests" based on traceroute is nonsense.
What people want it an impartial metric to compare the performance of different ISPs to.
No. Most people have one ISP. How do they compare two if they don't have service from both?
But even if they do have two ISPs, then comparing between the two is something very different than verifying if the service you are paying for is what you are getting. If you want to know if your connection to ISP A is running at "up to 100MBps", you test that connection using a source on ISP A's network. You don't use a source on ISP B, because that makes it trivial for ISP B to "game the result" by being slow in sending you data. You don't trust A to be honest, but you trust B -- who could benefit by lying to you and getting you to switch to B.
If google.com takes 5 minutes to load on my PC I could not give a crap that your internal metrics tell you your network is amazing, because it is not, it is shit.
And you will ignore the fact that the google.com servers could be suffering a meltdown right at that moment, and you will blame your ISP for every fault you find in any data service you try to connect to. This is "impartial" and "accurate". Sure.
The dipshit friend of yours is incorrect to use the standard of how fast it takes him to get home even if he is more accurate
Not when you're testing the claim of which road is faster for him to get home.
Why? Because that standard is not useful in this context.
Exactly what standard is useful when you want to test whether your connection to your ISP is providing the bandwidth you are paying for? No, I'm sorry, but "google.com loads slow" isn't it. There are simply too many outside actors involved that all can slow things down. If you don't understand why you try to eliminate all the interfering effects from irrelevant sources when making a measurement, then there is nothing left to explain.
You make a good argument, but it has been proven that T-Mobile has been gaming the system of speed tests.
Did you even bother to read what that link points to? The article you linked is a story about someone finding a hole in a network access filter. T-Mobile allowed access to websites that contained the string "/speedtest" even after paid service had run out.
That's not "gaming the system of speed tests". That's allowing people to run speed tests using devices that currently don't have service, as a way of evaluating the network performance. The only "gaming the system" going on was when the person who found this error started hosting web data with "/speedtest" in the URL so he could get access through T-Mobile without paying.
Correct, it is ,however, suspicious to anyone who is familiar with the concept of impartiality that they get to choose their own reference.
It isn't supposed to be impartial, it is supposed to be accurate, and there are technical reasons why using a server on their own network results in more accurate measurements. That removes the suspicion.
Double suspicious that they choose references that are not standard for their end users own personal tests.
I don't understand what you mean by this. If you mean it is suspicious because they aren't using the same distant servers from other people's networks to test their own network performance, well, no, it isn't. We've been over that point.
Triple suspicious that the results never align with real world experiences.
"Real world experiences" are mostly subjective, and depend on all kinds of factors that are not under the control of the ISP. They also change from minute to minute based on network usage. Why is it suspicious that quantitative answers from "calibrated" sources differ from subjective experience with arbitrary data generators?
They said "Internet speed" in their claim.
Here is what retchdog wrote in the GGGP of this posting: "when i called my cable company to complain about the speed of my home internet service". "They" didn't say nothing about "internet speed".
You sound like a Verizon lawyer.
Where have I been talking about Verizon? Are they retchdog's cable company?
If private network speed is all that counts,
I didn't say that, and you know it. What I did say is that when testing your connection to the internet, measuring your connection to the internet is what is important, not measuring the output of someone's web server somewhere on the other side of the planet.
they could just sell you a gigabit LAN router with a dial up modem attached.
Then your connection to the internet would be at dial-up modem speeds, now wouldn't it? Or do you really believe that because your router is gigabit on LAN it will always do gigabit on WAN, and so such a connection would fulfill the actual promises made about your connection to the internet? Yes, they COULD just sell you that kind of connection, but it is irrelevant because that is not what they do and it is not what they claim.
While the cost of damage would be very high, the risk to life isn't really any different than a bus or train full of people.
Perhaps you missed that TSA is involved with trains. Hyperloop, due to its huge pricetag and high tech, will be a prime target. While you can't hijack a car, you can certainly make it disintegrate in a spectacular way.
It will not be TSA that pushes for their control of security checkpoints for Hyperloop terminals, it will be people, once the first hyperloop train is destroyed by anyone who can have a political agenda attached to them. Even if not. There are already calls for tighter security in HOTELS because of the Las Vegas shooting. How COULD anyone get so many guns into a hotel room? (Carry them in. Next question?) Doesn't this show a need for gun control? (He was using AK-47s if what I heard is correct, one of the guns that is already heavily controlled, so no. Next question?)
How hard would it be to derail a passenger train with an IED on the tracks?
Passenger trains are low-tech commonplace things. The first (and second and probably third) public Hyperloop will be the opposite.
That's what I do, only I automate the process.
That's not what you said you were doing, and automating the process makes it more complicated.
this autistic prick
We're discussing the bandwidth of your connection to the ISP. That you want to turn this into personal insult shows a lack of support for your argument, not your superiority.
the ISPs, by and large, lobbied to have the definition of "internet" changed
Of, for goodness sake. No, they haven't.
to include preferential peering, traffic shaping,
By "preferential peering" you mean gateway congestion, of course. And "traffic shaping" has always been a part of the TCP/IP standard. "Internet", as you call it.
and literally every hypothetically possible trick imaginable,
Hyperbole is your friend.
and yet they want to advertise "internet speed" in the most advantageous way (to them) possible
The do not advertise "internet speed". They have always advertised the speed of your connection. They cannot advertise "internet speed" because there is no such measurement. What is "internet speed"? Is it 100MBps? Gigabit? 10Gbps? Different parts of the internet run at different speed. No ISP can advertise speeds for any other network than their own, and they don't even do that. They are always referring to your little connection to their network. If you don't understand that, well, there are books and stuff to look things up in.
if "internet" now includes gaming the shit out of connection metrics,
You can run your own software to measure the speed, and how they can game that is anyone's guess.
Now, if you can show that the number their speedtest sites report do not match the measurement you make during the same test, you'd have an argument. But somehow the ISP is gaming your software and you can't.
Yes, it is. The ISP having control over it means that it's likely within the provider's network.
Yes, I think we've said as much. Why is this a problem?
That is, no peering agreements involved. That's not even really "Internet" speed. That's just private network speed
Yes, no peering gateways that connect to other networks. I think we've said as much. Yes, it's "private network speed", but it also the speed that the ISP has sold you. They haven't sold you "gigabit to every place on the planet".
And they may even further cheat by geo-routing DNS for the test to a server at the nearest hop.
As long as the limiting factor is your connection to their network, then it doesn't matter where in their network the server is.
How fast can you connect within your ISP's network to the nearest city?
No faster than I can connect to it in this city. If the test shows I have a connection that manages 100Mbps to the local city, then I know that any throughput less than that is caused by something else.
Who cares about that though?
Anyone who is honestly trying to measure the bandwidth of their current network connection.
My ISP doesn't host anything I'm interested in. They could deliver me gigabit speeds to their network and it won't do me any good unless the speeds from outside their network are good too.
Do you want to verify that you have a gigabit connection, or just whine about it not being fast enough because other networks are slowing you down?
My Tasker script samples the GPS periodically and when it sees it's not in an area I've defined as OK, it turns the WiFi off. Otherwise it turns it on.
So you've programmed your phone to track your location because you don't want to use WiFi where you don't want to use it? Sounds complicated, and you are left with trusting the permissions so apps won't track your location and report it back to Momma when they are able.
Wouldn't it be much simpler to just leave the WiFi turned off unless you actually wanted to use it? Then you turn it on for as long as you want to use it, then turn it back off again. And when I say "turn it off", I don't mean use the iOS menu that disconnects you from the WiFi hotspot, I mean actually turn it off.
That's how I manage my device's WiFi radio. Pretty simple. One button on, one button off. No GPS involved.
yes, i will give more credence to the speedtest which reflects the poor performance i observe in practice rather than the suspiciously specific speedtest my provider tells me to use,
When I get home tonight I will set up a data source on one of my Raspberry Pi systems that connects via a 10MBps link to my home router. Please set up a conference call including me when you call your ISP and complain that you aren't getting the 100MBps throughput you are paying for based on testing with my indisputably unbiased data source. I'd almost pay to hear that conversation. I'll mute my mic because I will certainly be laughing when you try to get them to act based on that data, and I'll laugh even harder if they do act on it.
It is not suspicious to anyone who understands networks that they would want you to use a known source when testing your network connection. On the extreme, it would be like complaining that your network connection is down because you get no response when you ping 192.168.20.20. The fact that the "test source" happens to be unroutable if it is not on your own internal network is significant, just like the fact that the speed test site you prefer to use is on someone else's network that your ISP has no control over.
Your comment made sense 15 years ago. Now it is just a lie.
No, it is quite true that it reasonable to use a standard measure and not an unknown. Maybe experiment design is a skill that isn't taught anymore, but when it is, removing extraneous effects that will lead to incorrect results is always a major design element. That means not testing against an unknown.
Since I didn't claim that they didn't game anything, calling me a liar for denying it is a bit, well ... ad hominemish.
There are lots of examples online using traceroute.
Traceroute measures latency, not bandwidth. In many cases not even that, given the routine blocking of ICMP TTL expired response packets. The fact that it takes 30s to get a '*' back from a distant server during a traceroute doesn't mean it is taking 30s for packets to get there and back, you know.
Depending on the endpoints of the bandwidth tool, you can be measuring your connection, your ISPs network, the network of someone unrelated to your ISP, the bandwidth of the source, or a combination of all four. Usually it is the latter. And I forgot to include "border gateway available bandwidth".
Yes, I've seen people say "well, I've measured the throughput from site A somewhere in the world to my local system and it proves that Comcast is deliberately throttling Netflix", or whatever they think the target dejoure might be. It doesn't, but that doesn't stop it from happening over and over again. The only way to get a real number for your connection to your ISP is to use a server on the ISPs network that is set up to perform such tests. The fact that it is set up to do those tests and belongs to the ISP proves, to some, that it's a rigged game. Yeah, rigged to give more accurate numbers for your connection and try to ignore other networks' issues.
The real gem during one of these discussions was the fellow who used his home connection to his business connection to measure the bandwidth of his business connection. Even though he was paying more for business class speeds, and the ISP was the same for both, the results for his business connection were never better than those for his home. That proved that the ISP was throttling his business connection. Pure gold. You can't make that kind of stuff up.
So, yeah, the ISP can demand speed test results from a specific source so they could game the system. They could also demand speed test results from a known source so they can actually determine if the problem is on their network or somewhere else. Telling the difference between the two is hard, but assuming the worst is not always the right answer.
Yes, they could be gaming the speed tests by looking at the destination, but it is reasonable that they'd want a known source to test your speeds against, not something they don't know.
Isn't the whole point of drones to do this stuff on the cheap?
Not the whole point. Maneuverability and liability are big issues. Not putting two or three humans' lives in danger is another.
The wet rate for a small airplane is in the $100-$170 per hour range. Compared to what the drones cost,
If you're going to compare purchase cost, then do so. That would be a quarter of a million dollars for a small manned aircraft with a reasonable set of avionics that would allow it to be operated in most weather. $100k otherwise. Plus pilot training. And insurance. And when a small plain goes down, there are a couple of lives at stake. But those are human and not bird so they apparently don't count.
If you want to compare operating costs, do that. $170 for the plane per hour, salary for the pilot and other occupant who is doing the mapping, versus a lot less for the drone.
The drone wins in both purchase and operating expenses.
Being able to hover and descend below safe flight levels to get better pictures might be a factor.
Oh, helicopters are $250/hr minimum, and insurance costs are much higher. Yes, they can hover and descend, but there's a price for that.
they managed to raise cattle and mine before anyone invented drones.
And people managed to travel before they invented the horseless carriage, and travel across country in the US before the interstate highway system was developed. They managed to talk to other people before cell phones were invented, and they even managed to write and publish books prior to the computer text editor or Gutenberg. People survived bleeding as a cure for bacterial infections, many times, and TV really did pre-date cable and satellite.
What was your point again, Mr. Ludd?
I mean if the purpose for this is improving the flow of commuters then you'd focus on the shortest time and scheduled path between any two stations.
But that might not be what the people are doing. At all.
For example, during my recent vacation in Munich I would often enter the system at Marienplatz, ride to Karlzplatz Stachus or Hauptbahnhof, then ride back out to Isartor. For those who don't know the system, that's getting on in the center of the city, going west, then going back east. I did that almost every day. Now, Munich does not track riders by ticket because you don't need to show anyone or any machine a ticket. At most you stick a paper ticket in a timeclock that stamps the time on it. At best, you carry an IsarCard in your pocket that nobody ever sees except you. If they WERE tracking entry/exit, they'd have a very distorted picture of how I used the system.
Now, on a practical level, suppose you measure actual riders and see that a large percentage of them ride line 1 from A to D through B and C, then change to line 2 for D to Z via C, B, etc. It's shorter to go AB-Z but they're going ABCDCB-Z. Why? Poor signage? Bad maps? Does the change at B require a long walk or is the escalator always broken? Or does the station at D have the only KFC on the route and people are stopping there?
If you look only at entry/exit, you will gather none of that data and not know that you need to study a potential problem at B and/or C.
Consumers on average aren't stupid enough to want to spend any more time in the tube than absolutely necessary.
"On average" is not "peak demand".
Whether someone has fallen asleep on the line, or is going around in a circle really shouldn't matter for any of their scenarios.
Of course he does, because he is a physical object consuming a seat on a limited resource. WHY he's consuming it isn't measured, only that he IS, and unless they can identify that HE is the same person they won' t know there might be a problem that can be fixed and reduce delays for others.
Another Munich example. Visitors fly into an airport well outside and then take the S1 or S8 in. If they monitor entry/exit they'll get a count of how many people enter and leave where they do. If they monitor the entire trip, they may find that a lot of people take the S1 all the way to HBf (Hauptbanhof) and then they take the U2 to Hasenbergl. But they could have changed at Feldmoching and had a much shorter trip. Why didn't they? Were the on-train announcements not clear enough, should everyone who buys an IsarCard at the airport be given an MVV map, or what?
And suppose that visitor leaves by taking the S1 out to Freising, says WTF?, gets back on the S1 to Neufarhn, and then goes to the airport. If they count entry/exit, it is just another rider from city to airport. If they track the path, however, they find out that maybe the information that the S1 splits at Neufarhn and the front half goes to Freising instead of the airport isn't being presented well enough.
You can get a lot of data from monitoring entry/exit, yes. You get a lot more by tracking individual pax, even if you don't know their name.
I'd wager it would be almost impossible to ever tell if you were in a simulation unless it had some bugs that were brought to light.
"Cancer" is a bug in the part of the simulation dealing with entity replication. We have "identified" it as a disease, but nobody takes the leap to calling it a bug in the simulation. So, your "unless" clause is moot. There are already bugs "brought to light", but the simulated entities are not programmed to think "simulation bug", therefore they do not.
As far as I know, there is no mathematical algorithm to generate true randomness. So would it be possible to write an algorithm simulating the universe?
Were you to write an algorithm that depends on true random numbers, you can use any number of true random number generators that exist in hardware.
Would testing the universe to see if it is random or pseudo-random tell us anything about whether it is a simulation or not?
Given that we have no means of defining "random" that does not already fit our view of the universe, it would be a tautology at best. I.e., we call the radiative decay of nuclear isotopes "random" because we cannot predict when it will happen, not because there is no underlying clock controlling the process. There may be a clock in the external simulator in which our universe runs, but we cannot detect it.
As long as our universe's time doesn't run 1:1 with the simulator's universe,
For all we know, "time" may only be a side effect of the simulation and not exist in the real universe at all. From here:
"One could, however, ask the question in a slightly different way. By putting together G (Newton's constant of gravity), h (Planck's constant) and c (the velocity of light), one can derive a minimum meaningful amount of time, about 10-44 second. At this temporal scale, one would expect quantum effects to dominate gravity and hence, because Einstein's theory links gravity and time, to dominate the ordinary notion of time. In other words, for time intervals smaller than this one, the whole notion of 'time' would be expected to lose its meaning. "
In other words, the universe of the simulator is processing increments of 10-44 second in the simulation, while that universe itself runs on a continuous non-quantized level -- simply because simulating our universe is too computationally complex for them to do it all in one step.
Physical modelers (atmospheric, ocean, etc) select their time steps carefully so as to not create artifacts that draw the results too far from the ground truth. Would someone "living" in an ocean circulation model, e.g., even have a concept of "time" shorter than "hour" or "six hours", when the model is run with such large time steps? Would such a denizen even think of needing to "anti-alias" his world to one minute intervals? What would it mean were he to try to do such mathematical processing? It would not create any additional reality for him, it would only create time(s) for which no real data is available.
Nope. My car comes up with FM music stations that buzz and fuzz; the AM 1090 talk radio station is clear the whole ride to work.
Your car radio is fucked. You're basing your evaluation of FM on a moving car radio and pretending that that's the only way anyone ever listens.
It amazes me anyone finds FM listenable at all,
Like I said, you must live in radio hell. And thanks for the lecture after comparing FM to Bluetooth.