[funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)

Tue Mar 13 16:05:36 UTC 2007

Jeff Shultz wrote:
> 
> Alexander Harrowell wrote:
>>
>>
>> 768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock!
>>
If you don't like it, you can always return to dialup.

> It certainly is - just ask the CALEA folks.... and as for who is pushing 
> the bandwidth curve, for the most part it seems to be gamers in search 
> of the ever shrinking ping time. I suspect they make up most of our 
>  >1536kb/sec download customers.

Gamers don't really need much in bandwidth. They need the low ping times, so 
they *must* ensure that there is no saturation or routing overhead. Granted, 
there are some games that are bandwidth intensive, but everyone's busy playing 
WoW. Gamers are great for detecting those really hard to spot problems that only 
effect gaming and voip.

> What "parts of the world" have long since upgraded to those speeds - and 
> how do they compare size-wise to the USA? We've got an awful lot of 
> legacy infrastructure that would need to be overcome.

Japan has, for one. Definitely a size difference. In US metropolitan areas we 
are seeing a lot more fiber to the home. The cost will never be justified in US 
rural areas. Just look at Oklahoma. Most connectivity in Oklahoma will actually 
be from Dallas or Kansas City.

> I will happily agree that it would be nice to have higher upload speeds 
> than DSL generally provides nowadays. What are cable upload speeds like?

I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be 
used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload 
instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? 
Can't I have 12 and 12? Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the 
download range couldn't be variable and negotiated and that's it's completely 
impossible for one to have 20Mb up and 1.5 Mb down.

Jack Bates