Once your speeds are throttled down to dial-up levels, the majority of users will cease using the service until their speeds are restored. ( Can you imagine loading web-pages of today on the equivalent of a 56k modem ? The Ads alone would make it impossible. )
Thus, X users not utilizing Y bandwidth equates to more available bandwidth to oversell to other customers without having to upgrade the infrastructure. It's far cheaper to save bandwidth by throttling users than it is to install new hardware and capacity.
You really should get a whole house monitor and get ready for an eye opener on how much power draw all those little " trivial " devices can have.
Believe me, they do add up quickly. Also great for showing your significant other why you don't set the thermostat to 75+ in the Winter. My heater pulls 11Kw when running:|
The one I use is called TED ( The Energy Detective ). It's not the current generation model, but it gets the job done. The newer one is more accurate and has a few bells and whistles I don't have. Go read about it here I'm not sure if they make them for overseas customers ( it's US based ) or if you all have similar products available to you.
Once the thing is up and running, the first thought you have is what the hell is drawing all this power ? You then wander around the house turning various things on and off to see what the power draw actually is. My entire entertainment center is now on a power strip that I can kill with a single switch. ( Except for the damn cable box, rebooting those means a 10-15 minute wait while it goes through it's boot process:| )
In the end, I was able to get the power draw down to ~250-280 watts when we're not at home. Some things I simply cannot shut off. ( Bird cage lights, aquarium lights and pumps, alarm, etc. ) The fridge is the only thing that really cycles on / off as we have the hot water heater on a timer of its own.
"Finally, one last bit of advice. Before you go quacking out that Nobody owes anyone a job, remember that nobody owes a company any business either. If you're going to go by third-world market rates and lay off the greedy locals, don't be surprised if the unemployed locals can no longer afford your products and the third-world potential customers don't want to pay first-world prices."
Could not possibly agree with this statement more. Companies look at the short term too much anymore. If no one local has a job / career that pays well, then no one local can afford your product. The offshore solution you hired for pennies on the dollar certainly can't afford it so who exactly are you planning on selling your product to ?
No need to quantify the NSA problem. It's a US based company, therefore any data stored within their cloud really just needs to be heavily encrypted by default. It's not even really a discussion point anymore, just one of those things you do.
Though, to be fair, as long as your country allows it, all data should probably be encrypted regardless of where it is stored if it has any value whatsoever.
Curious what flavor of Cisco Gig switch you're running.
I have a twenty four port Cisco 2970 Gig switch that sits unused in my closet because it draws ~70 watts all by itself at idle. The ASA will pull down about ~20 watts at idle, but will ramp up to about 90 or so under sustained load.
Prior to landing on/. for the Nth time today ( is a slow day ) I finished reading an article about password complexity and a system called " DiceWare "
The main article can be found here with the Wikipedia version here
The system doesn't rely on crazy levels of complexity in a password, rather longer and random words combined to form phrases which are far easier to remember. If only we could get some sort of standard in place so that every website you visit doesn't use their own in house rules for password length, complexity and storage of the hashed and salted versions. Would be nice to know using a thirty character passphrase would work across the board ( different for each site obviously ) instead of having to hop through the password rules for every site:|
Fun Comcast story. My next door neighbor decided to plant some trees without knowing where their coax cable was buried. They found it pretty quickly after they cut through it with their shovel:|
So they call up Comcast who sends a tech out X days later.
The way he " fixed " it was to disconnect my line from the pedestal and connect my neighbors new line instead. Knocking out my TV, Internet and Alarm System all in one fell swoop.
When I called Comcast to tell them what happened, they informed me it would take two weeks before a technician could be dispatched out to " fix " my problem. Even after I told them it was their GD technician who caused it not half an hour ago.
I ended up fixing it myself after toning out the lines ( since the pedestal is in my yard ) but the incompetence of the entire support process is amazing. ( The thought hit me about how much havok you can cause were you to connect a high voltage source to any cable that feeds the pedestal.:| )
They just don't care because their monopoly status pretty much means they don't have to care.
This is one of the reasons the big broadband providers fear the Title II regulations so much.
One of the prerequisites under Title II for the POTS systems were you couldn't cherry-pick where you could install them. You didn't get to choose the high density areas where you could maximize your profits, then ignore everyone else. Everyone had to have equal access to a telephone.
The broadband providers KNOW if Title II comes to pass for this technology, the same thing will likely happen and they'll be forced to start providing the service ( with realistic definitions of what constitutes broadband ) to outlying areas they have been carefully avoiding due to the predicted costs involved.
It will be a serious wrench in the profit engine they currently enjoy.
This is why they will fight it tooth and nail. The only way Broadband Title II regs will survive will be to expose the real motivation behind their attacking it in the first place. It'$ all about the profit$ folk$.
A real person created without genetic manipulation still has to LIVE WITH and SUFFER FROM any potential changes you COULD have made, but didn't due to some silliness about what is or is not ethical. I would be even more pissed off knowing I had a disease that could have been eradicated before I was even born but wasn't because of scientific ethical bickering.
Ask anyone who has some sort of hereditary disease or issue and I'm pretty sure I know which side of the argument they will fall into.
Unless networking between local systems, 802.11g is more than adequate for the Wan link speed they're likely getting from AT&T DSL. Since you said you were replacing their router and it's your parents ( if your parents are like mine ), I would wager they're not running NAS backups locally, or doing much else between local systems requiring lots of bandwidth. So I'm not sure I would see a need for them to run N or even AC class WI-FI. ( Mine most certainly didn't. )
What's the top speed offerings on Uverse . . . . 45Mb/sec best case ? ( I have cable and not in AT&T territory so I have no idea )
This was exactly my thoughts: ( assuming they're not doing exactly the same thing )
What will your connection speeds be on the Xfinity Hotspots ? Are they fixed, or are they faster / slower than what the location hosting it is paying for ?
Eg: If a household is paying for a 60 / 10 connection, does the included Hotspot run at that speed or no ? If it does, it might be worth paying for a low end package just to get the subscription, then connect to your neighbors Hotspot to have access to a faster speed.
They won't do so because of the CC fees that are involved on a per transaction basis.
IF you're going to be dumb enough to sign up for such a silly service, at least make sure you're using an alternate account
with a minimum amount of funds in it so when it does get compromised, it isn't an epic event. Disable overdraft protection,
unlink it from your primary accounts.
Overall, it's a bad idea anyway. It's Facebook lol.
I am somewhat curious what the Law Enforcement / municipalities plans are about revenue generation via Moving Violations and Speed Traps if / when the shift to self driving cars becomes a reality.
Granted we're talking decades to even phase it in once we begin to deploy such systems at all, but there are some towns / cities that rely heavily on that income so I'm curious what their plans are to offset the loss.
Look how well the whole DMCA thing works. Pretty much anyone can toss out a bogus claim and have all sorts of things taken offline without a whole lot of investigation done about the legitimacy of said claim.
Imagine taking a network offline from the ISP level due to some bogus botnet claim. Getting your YouTube video taken down is one thing, knocking your entire business offline is quite another. Some may consider that to be a strawman, but I try to think about what some idiot with nothing else to do with their time would / could do with such a process in place.
Some very well thought out rules need to be in place in addition to requiring more than one entity to make the decision. Otherwise, there isn't anything to stop the government from politicizing said new power to shut down sites they dislike, ( say . . . Wikileaks, or The Pirate Bay, North Korea, whatever ) by simply declaring the network to be a bot-net participant. ( Our government would never lie right ? RIGHT ?:| )
Always, ALWAYS question the motives of any governmental request for additional powers. Like campaign promises, they're only used to get their foot in the door and once given away, they're very difficult to take back.
No offense, but like the Ben Franklin quote about freedoms vs security, the Star Wars reference about applause needs to be buried and never heard again.
There is quite a bit of new gear rolling out to compete with Google, but infrastructure isn't really a standalone expense. I can drop epic pipe sized Sonet multiplexers all over the place, but you also have to house them, power them, protect them and feed them fiber. Then you get to upgrade the other parts of the network to handle the tidal wave of data that will be flowing across those systems. This all costs equally epic amounts of $$$$ to do so. Nor does it happen overnight on a telco / carrier sized network. ( Trivia: Limiting the query to a single vendor only, the company has over twenty THOUSAND routers / switches in its network. This isn't something you can just upgrade and / or replace overnight. )
AT&T is investing plenty in the markets where most of its profits come from. The business / commercial markets. They know Google poses a serious threat to that revenue stream, so that's where all the investment is going currently. If I told you AT&T is in the process of installing at least ten THOUSAND sites across the country including all the infrastructure required to support it ( this is for Gigabit Ethernet btw ), would you still think the company isn't investing in its infrastructure ?
Granted, their focus probably isn't what it should be for the average consumer, but the data world is in a big transition period and technology is evolving faster than many can keep up. Hell, think about what a fast connection speed was ten - twenty years ago. The technology to even provide today's slower connection speeds didn't even exist. Ripping out and replacing everything every five years or so is pretty much impossible to do financially for a network this size.
The focus going forward is likely to be in wireless and broadband ( which is why the Title II thing scares the hell out of them ). They will, like the other telcos, probably exit the wireline market in the near future. The copper plant is simply no longer profitable and is cost prohibitive to maintain. ( Especially for a service that sees fewer and fewer customers every year. )
Do we need competition? Absolutely. It's what lights the fire under the behemoths to actually get up and do something once in a while. They get used to being the only player on the field and doing what they want. Then someone shows up and threatens the business model and all hell breaks loose. This is pretty much where we are today.
Don't worry, the CEO and upper echelon of executives at AT&T know exactly what their goals are.
Now, whether those goals align with the public's perception of what those goals SHOULD be are another matter.
AT&T is against the whole Title II thing because it takes away their choice and / or power for the matter at hand. For a long time AT&T has been able to interpret ( and sometimes influence ) the rules and play the game as they wanted. They know that once the regulators start getting involved, those days are over. They also know that playing the game according to the governments rules will cost them dearly in the profits department.
Make no mistake about it, the only reason AT&T would do anything to counter the Title II regulations is based solely on projected profits. Nothing else.
"Read the news. It is not hard to find an accidental shooting every single day in this country that involves a child. Hell, there were three accidental shootings in Houston involving children over the weekend [cnn.com]. It does happen every day, and it is the fault of irresponsible gun owners."
By the same token, car accidents and medical illness deaths are so commonplace that we don't even bother reporting them in the news because if we did, there wouldn't be any room for anything else.
People of all ages die from all sorts of irresponsibility every day, yet many continue to focus on firearms even though other issues kill far more every year.
In 2010, about forty thousand deaths by suicide occurred in the United States. Only about half of those were from firearms. ( 19,392 actually ) The CDC states there are about eleven thousand homicides by firearm in the United States in the same year.
While noteworthy, those numbers aren't even playing the same game as the issues that really kill us in large numbers:
So, while the intentions are good, focusing on firearms as a high priority issue is a bit misguided when considering the numbers above. We would do a lot more by pouring money into medical research if saving lives is truly the goal.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 for the Dune reference :D
Curious if the cameras that actually read the plates block the infra-red spectrum or not.
If not, would it be plausible to ring the LP with high powered IR LEDs to effectively blind the cameras to the plate or no ?
The reasoning is actually quite simple.
Once your speeds are throttled down to dial-up levels, the majority of users will cease using the service until their speeds are restored.
( Can you imagine loading web-pages of today on the equivalent of a 56k modem ? The Ads alone would make it impossible. )
Thus, X users not utilizing Y bandwidth equates to more available bandwidth to oversell to other customers without having to upgrade the infrastructure. It's far cheaper to save bandwidth by throttling users than it is to install new hardware and capacity.
You really should get a whole house monitor and get ready for an eye opener on how much power draw all those little " trivial " devices can have. Believe me, they do add up quickly. Also great for showing your significant other why you don't set the thermostat to 75+ in the Winter. My heater pulls 11Kw when running :|
The one I use is called TED ( The Energy Detective ). It's not the current generation model, but it gets the job done. The newer one is more accurate and has a few bells and whistles I don't have. Go read about it here I'm not sure if they make them for overseas customers ( it's US based ) or if you all have similar products available to you.
Once the thing is up and running, the first thought you have is what the hell is drawing all this power ? You then wander around the house turning various things on and off to see what the power draw actually is. My entire entertainment center is now on a power strip that I can kill with a single switch. ( Except for the damn cable box, rebooting those means a 10-15 minute wait while it goes through it's boot process :| )
In the end, I was able to get the power draw down to ~250-280 watts when we're not at home. Some things I simply cannot shut off. ( Bird cage lights, aquarium lights and pumps, alarm, etc. ) The fridge is the only thing that really cycles on / off as we have the hot water heater on a timer of its own.
Very useful little gadget imo.
"Finally, one last bit of advice. Before you go quacking out that Nobody owes anyone a job, remember that nobody owes a company any business either. If you're going to go by third-world market rates and lay off the greedy locals, don't be surprised if the unemployed locals can no longer afford your products and the third-world potential customers don't want to pay first-world prices."
Could not possibly agree with this statement more. Companies look at the short term too much anymore. If no one local has a job / career that pays well, then no one local can afford your product. The offshore solution you hired for pennies on the dollar certainly can't afford it so who exactly are you planning on selling your product to ?
Chuckle.
No need to quantify the NSA problem. It's a US based company, therefore any data stored within their cloud really just needs to be heavily encrypted by default. It's not even really a discussion point anymore, just one of those things you do.
Though, to be fair, as long as your country allows it, all data should probably be encrypted regardless of where it is stored if it has any value whatsoever.
Curious what flavor of Cisco Gig switch you're running. I have a twenty four port Cisco 2970 Gig switch that sits unused in my closet because it draws ~70 watts all by itself at idle. The ASA will pull down about ~20 watts at idle, but will ramp up to about 90 or so under sustained load.
LOL
Mere moments after posting this does a full story show up on the front page discussing this very subject :|
Prior to landing on /. for the Nth time today ( is a slow day ) I finished reading an article about password complexity and a system called " DiceWare "
The main article can be found here with the Wikipedia version here
The system doesn't rely on crazy levels of complexity in a password, rather longer and random words combined to form phrases which are far easier to remember. If only we could get some sort of standard in place so that every website you visit doesn't use their own in house rules for password length, complexity and storage of the hashed and salted versions. Would be nice to know using a thirty character passphrase would work across the board ( different for each site obviously ) instead of having to hop through the password rules for every site :|
Chuckle.
Fun Comcast story. My next door neighbor decided to plant some trees without knowing where their coax cable was buried. :|
They found it pretty quickly after they cut through it with their shovel
So they call up Comcast who sends a tech out X days later.
The way he " fixed " it was to disconnect my line from the pedestal and connect my neighbors new line instead. Knocking out
my TV, Internet and Alarm System all in one fell swoop.
When I called Comcast to tell them what happened, they informed me it would take two weeks before a technician could be
dispatched out to " fix " my problem. Even after I told them it was their GD technician who caused it not half an hour ago.
I ended up fixing it myself after toning out the lines ( since the pedestal is in my yard ) but the incompetence of the entire support :| )
process is amazing. ( The thought hit me about how much havok you can cause were you to connect a high voltage source to any
cable that feeds the pedestal.
They just don't care because their monopoly status pretty much means they don't have to care.
This is one of the reasons the big broadband providers fear the Title II regulations so much.
One of the prerequisites under Title II for the POTS systems were you couldn't cherry-pick where you could install them.
You didn't get to choose the high density areas where you could maximize your profits, then ignore everyone else.
Everyone had to have equal access to a telephone.
The broadband providers KNOW if Title II comes to pass for this technology, the same thing will likely happen
and they'll be forced to start providing the service ( with realistic definitions of what constitutes broadband ) to
outlying areas they have been carefully avoiding due to the predicted costs involved.
It will be a serious wrench in the profit engine they currently enjoy.
This is why they will fight it tooth and nail. The only way Broadband Title II regs will survive will be to expose the real motivation
behind their attacking it in the first place. It'$ all about the profit$ folk$.
LOL
No need for a lottery. This is why BEER was invented :D
Historically speaking:
I can't show you where doing things the natural way got it completely right either.
Even letting nature do its thing doesn't guarantee a perfect outcome. We're simply trying to give nature a little bit
of help where we can.
( Personally, I would have loved to see the gene responsible for my need to wear glasses by age 10 removed )
Exactly.
A real person created without genetic manipulation still has to LIVE WITH and SUFFER FROM any potential changes you COULD have made, but didn't due to some silliness about what is or is not ethical. I would be even more pissed off knowing I had a disease that could have been eradicated before I was even born but wasn't because of scientific ethical bickering.
Ask anyone who has some sort of hereditary disease or issue and I'm pretty sure I know which side of the argument they will fall into.
Hmmm
Unless networking between local systems, 802.11g is more than adequate for the Wan link speed they're likely getting from AT&T DSL.
Since you said you were replacing their router and it's your parents ( if your parents are like mine ), I would wager they're not running
NAS backups locally, or doing much else between local systems requiring lots of bandwidth. So I'm not sure I would see a need for
them to run N or even AC class WI-FI. ( Mine most certainly didn't. )
What's the top speed offerings on Uverse . . . . 45Mb/sec best case ? ( I have cable and not in AT&T territory so I have no idea )
This was exactly my thoughts:
( assuming they're not doing exactly the same thing )
What will your connection speeds be on the Xfinity Hotspots ? Are they fixed, or are they faster / slower than what the location hosting it is paying for ?
Eg: If a household is paying for a 60 / 10 connection, does the included Hotspot run at that speed or no ? If it does, it might be worth paying for a low end package just to get the subscription, then connect to your neighbors Hotspot to have access to a faster speed.
They won't do so because of the CC fees that are involved on a per transaction basis.
IF you're going to be dumb enough to sign up for such a silly service, at least make sure you're using an alternate account with a minimum amount of funds in it so when it does get compromised, it isn't an epic event. Disable overdraft protection, unlink it from your primary accounts.
Overall, it's a bad idea anyway. It's Facebook lol.
In the department of removing access to birth control for population reasons. . . .
Iran is ahead of the curve I think
I am somewhat curious what the Law Enforcement / municipalities plans are about revenue generation via Moving Violations and Speed Traps if / when the shift to self driving cars becomes a reality.
Granted we're talking decades to even phase it in once we begin to deploy such systems at all, but there are some towns / cities that rely heavily on that income so I'm curious what their plans are to offset the loss.
Dunno.
:| )
Look how well the whole DMCA thing works. Pretty much anyone can toss out a bogus claim and have all sorts of things taken offline without a whole lot of investigation done about the legitimacy of said claim.
Imagine taking a network offline from the ISP level due to some bogus botnet claim. Getting your YouTube video taken down is one thing, knocking your entire business offline is quite another. Some may consider that to be a strawman, but I try to think about what some idiot with nothing else to do with their time would / could do with such a process in place.
Some very well thought out rules need to be in place in addition to requiring more than one entity to make the decision. Otherwise, there isn't anything to stop the government from politicizing said new power to shut down sites they dislike, ( say . . . Wikileaks, or The Pirate Bay, North Korea, whatever ) by simply declaring the network to be a bot-net participant. ( Our government would never lie right ? RIGHT ?
Always, ALWAYS question the motives of any governmental request for additional powers. Like campaign promises, they're only used to get their foot in the door and once given away, they're very difficult to take back.
*groan*
No offense, but like the Ben Franklin quote about freedoms vs security, the Star Wars reference about applause needs to be buried and never heard again.
Not entirely true.
There is quite a bit of new gear rolling out to compete with Google, but infrastructure isn't really a standalone expense. I can drop epic pipe sized Sonet multiplexers all over the place, but you also have to house them, power them, protect them and feed them fiber. Then you get to upgrade the other parts of the network to handle the tidal wave of data that will be flowing across those systems. This all costs equally epic amounts of $$$$ to do so. Nor does it happen overnight on a telco / carrier sized network. ( Trivia: Limiting the query to a single vendor only, the company has over twenty THOUSAND routers / switches in its network. This isn't something you can just upgrade and / or replace overnight. )
AT&T is investing plenty in the markets where most of its profits come from. The business / commercial markets. They know Google poses a serious threat to that revenue stream, so that's where all the investment is going currently. If I told you AT&T is in the process of installing at least ten THOUSAND sites across the country including all the infrastructure required to support it ( this is for Gigabit Ethernet btw ), would you still think the company isn't investing in its infrastructure ?
Granted, their focus probably isn't what it should be for the average consumer, but the data world is in a big transition period and technology is evolving faster than many can keep up. Hell, think about what a fast connection speed was ten - twenty years ago. The technology to even provide today's slower connection speeds didn't even exist. Ripping out and replacing everything every five years or so is pretty much impossible to do financially for a network this size.
The focus going forward is likely to be in wireless and broadband ( which is why the Title II thing scares the hell out of them ). They will, like the other telcos, probably exit the wireline market in the near future. The copper plant is simply no longer profitable and is cost prohibitive to maintain. ( Especially for a service that sees fewer and fewer customers every year. )
Do we need competition? Absolutely. It's what lights the fire under the behemoths to actually get up and do something once in a while. They get used to being the only player on the field and doing what they want. Then someone shows up and threatens the business model and all hell breaks loose. This is pretty much where we are today.
Will see how it plays out.
Don't worry, the CEO and upper echelon of executives at AT&T know exactly what their goals are.
Now, whether those goals align with the public's perception of what those goals SHOULD be are another matter.
AT&T is against the whole Title II thing because it takes away their choice and / or power for the matter at hand. For a long time AT&T has been able to interpret ( and sometimes influence ) the rules and play the game as they wanted. They know that once the regulators start getting involved, those days are over. They also know that playing the game according to the governments rules will cost them dearly in the profits department.
Make no mistake about it, the only reason AT&T would do anything to counter the Title II regulations is based solely on projected profits. Nothing else.
"Read the news. It is not hard to find an accidental shooting every single day in this country that involves a child. Hell, there were three accidental shootings in Houston involving children over the weekend [cnn.com]. It does happen every day, and it is the fault of irresponsible gun owners."
By the same token, car accidents and medical illness deaths are so commonplace that we don't even bother reporting them in the news because if we did, there wouldn't be any room for anything else.
People of all ages die from all sorts of irresponsibility every day, yet many continue to focus on firearms even though other issues kill far more every year.
In 2010, about forty thousand deaths by suicide occurred in the United States. Only about half of those were from firearms. ( 19,392 actually )
The CDC states there are about eleven thousand homicides by firearm in the United States in the same year.
While noteworthy, those numbers aren't even playing the same game as the issues that really kill us in large numbers:
Heart disease: 611,105
Cancer: 584,881
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
Alzheimer's disease: 84,767
Diabetes: 75,578
Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149
So, while the intentions are good, focusing on firearms as a high priority issue is a bit misguided when considering the numbers above. We would do a lot more by pouring money into medical research if saving lives is truly the goal.