The fiber isn't to the pole outside your house (9 times out of 10, the 10th being your house is next to the node).
The Node is the part the fiber connects to. Think of it like a hub that converts from one type of cable to another. From the Node coax cable is run through the neighborhood, from 30 to 200+ houses depending on the configuration. That node and coax cable is what would have to be replaced first, followed by a junction box on the house to allow for all the coax connections in the home to connect.
It's more complicated then that, but that's the basics of why they don't just slowly replace (more) coax with fiber.
I meant in the last mile, ala Fiber to the premises. (FiOS, for example). If it wasn't a couple hundred bucks a house to convert we'd have done it years go. Convincing the number pushers is why it hasn't happened, and why everything listed by kbolino above is true.
Now I'm going back to Diablo 3. Good night.
Early on, cable lines broadcast exactly the same signal to everybody in a city. These days that is no longer true. Cable internet basically requires that the city be broken up into multiple signal domains, perhaps as small as one per neighborhood. This is also used to provide targeted commercials, and on demand content.
Now that we have targeted areas, it is possible in theory to only send the channels in use in that area, and letting the system reuse the space for unviewed channels as DOCSIS channels. Indeed this technology has existed for a while. Yet, correct me if I am wrong, I believe this system is not in active use.
This is true, to an extent.
Targeted area's are really only as accurate as the provider makes them, and its filtered more by the physical line that they're on vs the IP address that they have. For example if CMTS 1 Services Central PHX and CMTS 2 Services East PHX, you can know what area's a node on each is going to affect down to the street addresses if you have an outage.
The problem is Analog broadcasting. The FCC says that if you aren't transmitting for older TV's on your lines, you have to provide an Analog converter. In many smaller systems its cheaper to supply a digital converter and do away with analog entirely since the equipment costs for side by side broadcast are more than just putting out a couple hundred converters (that the government gives a tax credit on).
There's the final part of the problem. The internet switches (nodes) only control the access so long as the equipment exists in three places. The office, the node and the modem at the user. In order to broadcast digitally in the same manner that the internet works, every TV for every customer must be compatible. That means the big, expensive converters the government doesn't subsidize. You know how you pay 5$ a month for them right now? If they threw that switch, there's a good chance the FCC could interpret the rules of the digital cut over to provide those for free, since now they're 'necessary' to have any TV connected. By keeping it simpler its easier to charge more money. *
*Note: I never said I -agree- with any of the practices in place. However, show me a for-profit business that isn't out for money and I'll show you a lie.
South Korea is smaller Geographically than 39 United states and has a population of close to 50 million.
Kentucky, which is slightly larger geographically has a population less than a 10th of that.
Population dictates cost. Economically South Korea can support that. because for every mile of network they build they potentially support 10x more people than in Kentucky. The cost to bring that speed to all area's of Kentucky then would increase 10 fold. There is a reason that we don't have high speed in our rural areas - it costs too damn much.
*Disclaimer: I've worked in Cable for years*
They have been innovating. You can only fit so many channel frequencies into a line before you have to upgrade the line your using or find a new way of transmitting over the existing infrastructure. Any innovation that would allow for an exponential addition of channels to the existing infrastructure would be a gold mine. They're trying, and they're all in it together. When was the last time you heard of any one cable company inventing anything? They don't. They have a group dedicated to research which helps all of them.. Anything that the group comes up with is made an industry standard, basically IEEE for cable.
But going back to the infrastructure: cable companies are obviously bound to this. And it costs a lot to both maintain and upgrade. The first half of the 2000's many companies used cable internet and later cheap phone service to multiple advantages.
1 was generating more revenue by increasing the amount of services their customers subscribed too. This also lead to increased customer loyalty, since its one thing to cancel just your internet service if a company pisses you off but another all together to consider dropping a company that hosts your TV, Internet, and phone.In upgrading a system of say, 50k subscribers you could double the amount of money it generated, which means
2 the increased revenue offset the costs of upgrading systems to support the new features. Think back 10 years ago, what was the fastest speed you saw in major cities? 3-5 Mbps if that. Some area's have 50+ Mbps now.
3 by increasing the capacity when HD came around many systems where already ready for the initial wave of channels. They did innovate, which is why many area's have 50+ HD channels available now if you have an HD converter. Without the investment into rewiring many area's, cable would never be about to touch satellite as far as competition in many area's.
Upgrading systems costs an insane amount of money. That more than anything is the reason that cable monopolies exist, the cost of entry prohibits competition. To install a new plant in an town of 50k takes something to the tune of 2-3 million dollars, with zero guarantee on how long it will take to recover that cost, if ever.
Cable lines have reached their limit unless someone comes up with a new way of multiplexing, and if its that significant a step up you'll see it deployed very rapidly. Some companies are switching to fiber but the cost is insane. And where as if someone cuts a cable line the service could be back up in an hour, if someone cuts a fiber line it could take significantly longer.
Having said all that, the "Usage Allowance Plan" is a crock of shit. It is exactly what it is being labeled as, a stop gap measure to keep people from dumping the TV service. Because cable companies get charged by the broadcasters based on their install base*, which includes internet only customers in some cases, they're trying to stop the current trend of "Internet for everything" since it inverts #1 & 2: less revenue generated, but now node capacity has to be increased. Does it make it fair for the consumer? Of course not. Are the amounts for the usage plans in use by the larger companies fair? Considering that a large % of the subscribers never come close to the cap, it depends. COULD they offer an 'unlimited' package? Yes. Which is why its a crock of shit, their could be a way to pay more if you use more, but thanks to other industries showing that micro-payments for additional service is a viable model for monopolies that isn't likely to happen. Hence this whole hullabaloo, they're trying to have their cake and squeeze money out of it too.
*ask anyone who's worked for a Cable call center about NFL network. Just don't do it when they're holding something stabby.
Uhm, Ninja doesn't take 17 poeople. I did it with one friend who was 42 at the time.
Also, if you level the support job for Ninja to 30 to get Ninja, there's half the work done for you & you get expierence at being a better tank to boot.
Personally I can't play wow becuase of the crap camera and the extreme lack of appeal, becuase *shock* I'm happy with my MMO!.:P
I found it helpful. Also, other people started the blackmailing SE spin off, not the artcle. My post was in response to saying SE used port 25 to run the game off of - not only was it stupid to say that, but that wasn't what the article they linked to said.
Read the article you posted more carefully. The person saying that playonline used port 25 put the words "I think" before the sentance for a reason. Many ISP's block 25, this was one specific ISP. I believe they found a router somewhere that was acting wonky causing the issue.
Its newsworthy becuase i've been playing this game for a year and this is the second time the servers have had issues. Ever. Also, each game server is running on multiple machines, so whoever is doing this is going to great lengths and may move on to other MMO's.
Don't.
Sony has been kind of bending SE over as of late*, and I wouldn't blink twice if SE starting making more of their RPG's multi-console. They've already announced a fairly interesting looking PC -only- MMO** this year. ALso, the many GBA/DS/Cell phone games that SE has announced, with nothing yet offical for the PSP?
I'm not saying that SE is going to do nothing with the PS3, hell no. What I highly doubt we'll see is anything on the scale of that FF8 demo that bitch slaped everything else at the time. Most defenitly not 3 FF games announced at the same time, and lots of the other stuff that we saw early on for with the PS2 from them.
*Taking the HD out of the PS2 redesign, dragging ass releasing the HD in the states.
**Which may or may not see the light of day outside JPN, who cares?
Addmenudium: If you read the books, especially the one dealing with Halo, there are things not mentioned in the Game.
#1 - The second "Reclaimer", a marine not listed on the Pillar of Autumn.
#2 - The flood are sentient, and some humans infected retain some degree of expression.
I see alot of confusion above, and rationalazation from those not familiar with what the big deal is.
Firstly, They banned the PlayOnline accounts, not the characters. Which means, potentially they banned 25600 characters, with each POL account having the max of 32 characters per account. So its possible that in doing this they removed a signifigant amount of money from some of the servers. That is to say, if they got the POL account that had the character with all of the gil-sellers money (unlikely), its gone. As the prices on IGE are the same, I'm guessing they didn't manage this.
Secondly, the gil sellers monopolized the drops using hacks and exploits. Everytime SE fixed an exploit or tried to circumvent it,another aspect of the game ended up suffering. See: Fishing botters. Everytime they tried to comprimise, the method of operation has changed. I do not believe that a 'fix the problem' is entirely nessecary, the people who play the game for fun are not the ones actively cheating.
On the point of the static spawn zones - the monsters in question do not spawn staticly at cordinates XX:YY. They can spawn anywhere in on a square of the map, covering a pretty substantial distance. Gil Sellers got around this by haveing 2, 3, or 6 camping depending on the number of spawns.
The problem is that when competing with a Gil-Seller, you'd see them use an ability or cast a spell on the monster before it would load on your screen. I saw one where the monster spawned DEAD. They where not doing this becuase they where better, they did this through using hacks and bots. When a monster is 'claimed', no one else can attack it. In essence, if the monster wins you get your shot, if the player wins too bad.
SE could not fix the way this worked without changing the fundamental way that claiming monsters worked, which in turn would affect the way the entire game played.
It was not written into the TOS that camping a mob is bad. Its no where in there actually that you cannot camp monsters. As other have stated though, many of the gil sellers took extreme actions on ensure that they where the only ones who got the items. They not only made it a hassle to try for these, they made it dangerous.
Solutions mentioned: Put level limits on areas.
This is not possible on the level where the problem actually is. There are many areas in which the monsters span a 20-30+ level range. They do have special level restricted areas for parties go to in order to fight for rare treasure drops. The gil sellers to my knowledge left these alone, and even if they had tried its not possible to interfer with other parties as they fight in these.
Simply limit the distance a mob will pursue a target
This is done to an extent. If you get far enough of a mob so that it cannot see you it gives up. If you leave an area it gives up. If you are a much higher level and stop so it can catch up, it will follow you until you do one of the previous two mentioned activities. The mobs in some cases are slower than the player, and can be outrun. The mobs that people have to worry about, and train on others, can keep up.
Fix the modified DLL issue.
Nothing more I can say. That needs to be addressed. The fact that it hasn't been fixed suggests that there may be technical limitations (Affect the PS2 version perhaps).
On my server they banned many of the major sellers, lots of the AH prices have stared to flux. SE has done a very good thing.
They banned the POL accounts, not the characters.
Meaning potentially they banned 25600 characters, with each POL account having the max of 32 characters.
Yes, well I had a point, and then I only had about 10 seconds of which to type. What should have gone there was
"With a wider source of reviews there is a higher margin of accuracy." Meaning Half life 2's could go down with more bad reviews, while Halo 2 is slightly more grounded where it is.
My bad for hitting -submit-, not -preview-, and then not correcting myself.
According to gamerankings.com, Half Life 2's average review is higher than Halo 2's. Half Life 2 has recieved a 96.6% overall rating wheras Halo 2 came in with a 95.1%."
As a point, Half life 2 has 29 reviews, while Halo 2 has 67. As with any percentage, the more chances of change the different the outcome
Valve Employee #1(who may or may not exist): Wow, look at that
Valve Employee #2: Whats that Phil?
V-Emp#1:Apparently, Bob Barker just registered 30 of those bit torrent Half Life 2's, in 13 states, all at the same time!
V-Emp#2:Ah. I why they though people would actually put real information into an obviously illeagal copy.
V-Emp#1:Well, they did take a lot of acid before decideing on it...
I was reading an article the 16'th about MGS4 and it mentioned this was coming out today. I was all Huh? This is probably the worst release in any franchises history. Next to no advertisements about it, coming out a week after Halo2 and the DAY of Half Life 2; a game which while not in the same genre pretty much counter balances MGS to a T*. Someone droped the ball here.
In my area at least, This channel will survive. It's being pushed into the "sports and info" teir, which is just disgusting.
Basically, its going to be getting the money from everyone who wants to watch the sports channels and pays into that package. God I hate local cable monopolies.
Slashdot Mirror
The fiber isn't to the pole outside your house (9 times out of 10, the 10th being your house is next to the node).
The Node is the part the fiber connects to. Think of it like a hub that converts from one type of cable to another. From the Node coax cable is run through the neighborhood, from 30 to 200+ houses depending on the configuration. That node and coax cable is what would have to be replaced first, followed by a junction box on the house to allow for all the coax connections in the home to connect.
It's more complicated then that, but that's the basics of why they don't just slowly replace (more) coax with fiber.
I meant in the last mile, ala Fiber to the premises. (FiOS, for example). If it wasn't a couple hundred bucks a house to convert we'd have done it years go. Convincing the number pushers is why it hasn't happened, and why everything listed by kbolino above is true. Now I'm going back to Diablo 3. Good night.
Early on, cable lines broadcast exactly the same signal to everybody in a city. These days that is no longer true. Cable internet basically requires that the city be broken up into multiple signal domains, perhaps as small as one per neighborhood. This is also used to provide targeted commercials, and on demand content.
Now that we have targeted areas, it is possible in theory to only send the channels in use in that area, and letting the system reuse the space for unviewed channels as DOCSIS channels. Indeed this technology has existed for a while. Yet, correct me if I am wrong, I believe this system is not in active use.
This is true, to an extent.
Targeted area's are really only as accurate as the provider makes them, and its filtered more by the physical line that they're on vs the IP address that they have. For example if CMTS 1 Services Central PHX and CMTS 2 Services East PHX, you can know what area's a node on each is going to affect down to the street addresses if you have an outage.
The problem is Analog broadcasting. The FCC says that if you aren't transmitting for older TV's on your lines, you have to provide an Analog converter. In many smaller systems its cheaper to supply a digital converter and do away with analog entirely since the equipment costs for side by side broadcast are more than just putting out a couple hundred converters (that the government gives a tax credit on).
There's the final part of the problem. The internet switches (nodes) only control the access so long as the equipment exists in three places. The office, the node and the modem at the user. In order to broadcast digitally in the same manner that the internet works, every TV for every customer must be compatible. That means the big, expensive converters the government doesn't subsidize. You know how you pay 5$ a month for them right now? If they threw that switch, there's a good chance the FCC could interpret the rules of the digital cut over to provide those for free, since now they're 'necessary' to have any TV connected. By keeping it simpler its easier to charge more money. *
*Note: I never said I -agree- with any of the practices in place. However, show me a for-profit business that isn't out for money and I'll show you a lie.
South Korea is smaller Geographically than 39 United states and has a population of close to 50 million. Kentucky, which is slightly larger geographically has a population less than a 10th of that.
Population dictates cost. Economically South Korea can support that. because for every mile of network they build they potentially support 10x more people than in Kentucky. The cost to bring that speed to all area's of Kentucky then would increase 10 fold. There is a reason that we don't have high speed in our rural areas - it costs too damn much.
*Disclaimer: I've worked in Cable for years*
They have been innovating. You can only fit so many channel frequencies into a line before you have to upgrade the line your using or find a new way of transmitting over the existing infrastructure. Any innovation that would allow for an exponential addition of channels to the existing infrastructure would be a gold mine. They're trying, and they're all in it together. When was the last time you heard of any one cable company inventing anything? They don't. They have a group dedicated to research which helps all of them.. Anything that the group comes up with is made an industry standard, basically IEEE for cable.
But going back to the infrastructure: cable companies are obviously bound to this. And it costs a lot to both maintain and upgrade. The first half of the 2000's many companies used cable internet and later cheap phone service to multiple advantages.
1 was generating more revenue by increasing the amount of services their customers subscribed too. This also lead to increased customer loyalty, since its one thing to cancel just your internet service if a company pisses you off but another all together to consider dropping a company that hosts your TV, Internet, and phone.In upgrading a system of say, 50k subscribers you could double the amount of money it generated, which means
2 the increased revenue offset the costs of upgrading systems to support the new features. Think back 10 years ago, what was the fastest speed you saw in major cities? 3-5 Mbps if that. Some area's have 50+ Mbps now.
3 by increasing the capacity when HD came around many systems where already ready for the initial wave of channels. They did innovate, which is why many area's have 50+ HD channels available now if you have an HD converter. Without the investment into rewiring many area's, cable would never be about to touch satellite as far as competition in many area's.
Upgrading systems costs an insane amount of money. That more than anything is the reason that cable monopolies exist, the cost of entry prohibits competition. To install a new plant in an town of 50k takes something to the tune of 2-3 million dollars, with zero guarantee on how long it will take to recover that cost, if ever. Cable lines have reached their limit unless someone comes up with a new way of multiplexing, and if its that significant a step up you'll see it deployed very rapidly. Some companies are switching to fiber but the cost is insane. And where as if someone cuts a cable line the service could be back up in an hour, if someone cuts a fiber line it could take significantly longer.
Having said all that, the "Usage Allowance Plan" is a crock of shit. It is exactly what it is being labeled as, a stop gap measure to keep people from dumping the TV service. Because cable companies get charged by the broadcasters based on their install base*, which includes internet only customers in some cases, they're trying to stop the current trend of "Internet for everything" since it inverts #1 & 2: less revenue generated, but now node capacity has to be increased. Does it make it fair for the consumer? Of course not. Are the amounts for the usage plans in use by the larger companies fair? Considering that a large % of the subscribers never come close to the cap, it depends. COULD they offer an 'unlimited' package? Yes. Which is why its a crock of shit, their could be a way to pay more if you use more, but thanks to other industries showing that micro-payments for additional service is a viable model for monopolies that isn't likely to happen. Hence this whole hullabaloo, they're trying to have their cake and squeeze money out of it too.
*ask anyone who's worked for a Cable call center about NFL network. Just don't do it when they're holding something stabby.
The headline is wrong, this is a Review, not a Preview. Sorry for the double posts, oddly enough I can't click preview when talking about it. Yay.
The headline is wrong, this is a RePre/bview.
Uhm, Ninja doesn't take 17 poeople. I did it with one friend who was 42 at the time. Also, if you level the support job for Ninja to 30 to get Ninja, there's half the work done for you & you get expierence at being a better tank to boot. Personally I can't play wow becuase of the crap camera and the extreme lack of appeal, becuase *shock* I'm happy with my MMO!. :P
I found it helpful. Also, other people started the blackmailing SE spin off, not the artcle. My post was in response to saying SE used port 25 to run the game off of - not only was it stupid to say that, but that wasn't what the article they linked to said.
Yes, I play FFXI actively. And your ignorance on the PS2 matter show you know absolutely nothing of what your talking about for either argument.
Read the article you posted more carefully. The person saying that playonline used port 25 put the words "I think" before the sentance for a reason. Many ISP's block 25, this was one specific ISP. I believe they found a router somewhere that was acting wonky causing the issue.
Its newsworthy becuase i've been playing this game for a year and this is the second time the servers have had issues. Ever. Also, each game server is running on multiple machines, so whoever is doing this is going to great lengths and may move on to other MMO's.
*cough* not that they'd notice at first
Hear that sound? its your credibility falling out of the window.
Don't.
Sony has been kind of bending SE over as of late*, and I wouldn't blink twice if SE starting making more of their RPG's multi-console. They've already announced a fairly interesting looking PC -only- MMO** this year. ALso, the many GBA/DS/Cell phone games that SE has announced, with nothing yet offical for the PSP?
I'm not saying that SE is going to do nothing with the PS3, hell no. What I highly doubt we'll see is anything on the scale of that FF8 demo that bitch slaped everything else at the time. Most defenitly not 3 FF games announced at the same time, and lots of the other stuff that we saw early on for with the PS2 from them.
*Taking the HD out of the PS2 redesign, dragging ass releasing the HD in the states.
**Which may or may not see the light of day outside JPN, who cares?
Addmenudium: If you read the books, especially the one dealing with Halo, there are things not mentioned in the Game.
#1 - The second "Reclaimer", a marine not listed on the Pillar of Autumn. #2 - The flood are sentient, and some humans infected retain some degree of expression.
I see alot of confusion above, and rationalazation from those not familiar with what the big deal is.
Firstly, They banned the PlayOnline accounts, not the characters. Which means, potentially they banned 25600 characters, with each POL account having the max of 32 characters per account. So its possible that in doing this they removed a signifigant amount of money from some of the servers. That is to say, if they got the POL account that had the character with all of the gil-sellers money (unlikely), its gone. As the prices on IGE are the same, I'm guessing they didn't manage this.
Secondly, the gil sellers monopolized the drops using hacks and exploits. Everytime SE fixed an exploit or tried to circumvent it,another aspect of the game ended up suffering. See: Fishing botters. Everytime they tried to comprimise, the method of operation has changed. I do not believe that a 'fix the problem' is entirely nessecary, the people who play the game for fun are not the ones actively cheating.
On the point of the static spawn zones - the monsters in question do not spawn staticly at cordinates XX:YY. They can spawn anywhere in on a square of the map, covering a pretty substantial distance. Gil Sellers got around this by haveing 2, 3, or 6 camping depending on the number of spawns.
The problem is that when competing with a Gil-Seller, you'd see them use an ability or cast a spell on the monster before it would load on your screen. I saw one where the monster spawned DEAD. They where not doing this becuase they where better, they did this through using hacks and bots. When a monster is 'claimed', no one else can attack it. In essence, if the monster wins you get your shot, if the player wins too bad.
SE could not fix the way this worked without changing the fundamental way that claiming monsters worked, which in turn would affect the way the entire game played.
It was not written into the TOS that camping a mob is bad. Its no where in there actually that you cannot camp monsters. As other have stated though, many of the gil sellers took extreme actions on ensure that they where the only ones who got the items. They not only made it a hassle to try for these, they made it dangerous.
Solutions mentioned:
Put level limits on areas.
This is not possible on the level where the problem actually is. There are many areas in which the monsters span a 20-30+ level range.
They do have special level restricted areas for parties go to in order to fight for rare treasure drops. The gil sellers to my knowledge left these alone, and even if they had tried its not possible to interfer with other parties as they fight in these.
Simply limit the distance a mob will pursue a target
This is done to an extent. If you get far enough of a mob so that it cannot see you it gives up. If you leave an area it gives up. If you are a much higher level and stop so it can catch up, it will follow you until you do one of the previous two mentioned activities. The mobs in some cases are slower than the player, and can be outrun. The mobs that people have to worry about, and train on others, can keep up.
Fix the modified DLL issue.
Nothing more I can say. That needs to be addressed. The fact that it hasn't been fixed suggests that there may be technical limitations (Affect the PS2 version perhaps).
On my server they banned many of the major sellers, lots of the AH prices have stared to flux. SE has done a very good thing.
They banned the POL accounts, not the characters. Meaning potentially they banned 25600 characters, with each POL account having the max of 32 characters.
It was the oldest of the shuttles. Wow, I only had to try 5 times before the 20 second filter decided I was worthy. *rage*
Yes, well I had a point, and then I only had about 10 seconds of which to type. What should have gone there was
"With a wider source of reviews there is a higher margin of accuracy." Meaning Half life 2's could go down with more bad reviews, while Halo 2 is slightly more grounded where it is.
My bad for hitting -submit-, not -preview-, and then not correcting myself.
As a point, Half life 2 has 29 reviews, while Halo 2 has 67.
As with any percentage, the more chances of change the different the outcome
After you dear.
Valve Employee #1(who may or may not exist): Wow, look at that
Valve Employee #2: Whats that Phil?
V-Emp#1:Apparently, Bob Barker just registered 30 of those bit torrent Half Life 2's, in 13 states, all at the same time!
V-Emp#2:Ah. I why they though people would actually put real information into an obviously illeagal copy.
V-Emp#1:Well, they did take a lot of acid before decideing on it...
I was reading an article the 16'th about MGS4 and it mentioned this was coming out today. I was all Huh? This is probably the worst release in any franchises history.
Next to no advertisements about it, coming out a week after Halo2 and the DAY of Half Life 2; a game which while not in the same genre pretty much counter balances MGS to a T*. Someone droped the ball here.
* Think: Story make sense = GOOD.
See also: Games released by Square-Enix (Aka Chains of Promathia which we got 3 weeks later than the other continents)
In my area at least, This channel will survive. It's being pushed into the "sports and info" teir, which is just disgusting.
Basically, its going to be getting the money from everyone who wants to watch the sports channels and pays into that package. God I hate local cable monopolies.
Well, it is a review thread about'The Incredibles'. If you don't want to know about the movie, don't read.