Typical U.S. households don’t use most of their bandwidth
wsj.com
wsj.com
Also I definitely saturate my gigabit link on download all the time, and sometimes on upload too, but I realize I'm not the average person in that regard.
Also, behind all these NATs and blocked ports, the whole system is designed to not be used. Update it so everyone has strong connections with consistent bandwidth and low latency with IPv6 and perhaps we would see more possibilities with home internet use.
The upload is so pathetic because cable doesn't have symmetric bandwidth, you have to choose if you want more download channels or more upload channels. Most households don't need much upload, thus the ratio.
10mbps up is a minimum requirement for me though IMO.
I have 3 gbps of upload bandwidth at my house. (1 Comcast fiber line with 2 gbps symmetric, and one Verizon fiber line with 1 gbps symmetric.) I still host everything on One Drive because what the heck is the point of hosting your own servers as a consumer?
Even when I’m working from home and uploading large files to S3, it barely hits 100Mbps on a good day and the CLI automatically uses multiple streams to upload.
My VPN connection to our AWS network also rarely hits 100Mbps.
Actually low upload bandwidth makes it harder to give 3rd parties data :P
Question, does AT&T fiber do fiber all the way to the home? Because I know one of my family members has their fiber offering, but they have serious bandwidth issues around normally busy hours - suggesting even with fiber they're over provisioned.
That said, AT&T has been selling their U-Verse FTTN (fiber to the node) service as "fiber home internet" for many years now. This is still based around DSL technologies but have fiber terminated much closer to the house than at a central office. If they're not on a Gigapower plan with a true optical network terminal inside their house, they probably don't actually have fiber.
The central office is connected by a single fiber to a spliter that services up to 64 homes.
So when you buy 1Gpbs internet, it actually goes through a 2.5GBps fiber shared with up to 63 other houses.
In the context of this article, I feel like most readers don't fall into this category and probably aren't getting that amount of return on their higher speed investments.
Though, your comment brings up an interesting point - I wonder if internet speeds would play a factor in getting more users to run their updates? In general they're disruptive so there are other issues, but it could be part of the overall frustration. Personally, I have a fast connection so I rarely have this specific problem.
I've seen some ridiculous download speeds from Steam, but never enough to saturate my gig pipe even during a full game installation. I just can't see Steam providing that kind of bandwidth to it's users when the filesizes can get upwards of 50gigs. They would DDOS themselves.
Not that it’s a big deal all of our bedrooms, living room, and office are wired for gig-e.
I'm not convinced here in the US, although maybe it is slightly more common in those who download lots of games or updates
A percentage of HN readers perhaps. Gigabit isn't even available here in Indy for the vast majority of people.
Fastest I can get is '100mbps' for 60$ a month plus fees with a 1TB cap and it's not even close to actually being 100mbps from AT&T. Netflix degrades itself probably once an hour on average while watching HD (not 4K) and if nothing is running I'm lucky if I can pull 500-750 kilobytes a second (a whopping 4-6% of my advertised speed) from my gigabit server I rent (but a friend in another city with gigabit can almost max out his advertised speed pulling from it).
Allegedly AT&T has up to gigabit for about 20% of the city if you happen to live in a fiber neighborhood. If I went witha business line, at a considerably higher cost (if they'd even allow it at a residential address) I could get up to '300mbps'.
I've been seeing people talk about gigabit at their homes for years no and I'm just like "whatev!".
I’ve known many people who perceive stuttering, slow page loads and game lag as a result of a slow connection. The ISP’s could solve this but I’d imagine it works in their favor. While I’m more than capable of tweaking SQM/Cake (OpenWrt) values and testing (keeping ping times below 40ms), I believe a simple consumer friendly (read: automatic) solution is sorely needed.
Incidentally I think Windows Updates are getting better in regard to disruptiveness. What I wish they would do though is implement some kind of "reboot as many times as you need to apply the update and then just power down once it's done". I will hit 'Update and shutdown', then turn on my PC the next day and have to wait for the second stage of the update to run. Though again, it seems vastly improved as of late - that second stage takes very little time at all.
The real difference is streaming almost everything vs needing to wait until a download finishes.
Sounds like an inconsequential detail, but I can't readily think of any recent experience where I actually did have to wait for a download to finish before I could continue doing anything. Most things are either streaming or background, nowadays.
Perhaps Steam?
I'm on 400/25 and I always dread installing Battlefield 4 after a fresh install. I think it's around 60-70GB right now and takes around 45 minutes to get everything downloaded.
Steam can hit 40MBps (over 300mbps) regularly for me.
I find what you say to be true though, most services can't saturate my link - but I'd double check because exactly 100mbps is suspicious.
Also don't use speedtest.net, try fast.com (run by netflix) - ISPS are known to "cheat" on speedtest.net (they can host a speedtest server inside their network) but fast.com downloads actual movie fragments from netflix's cdn.
Dropbox does not throttle at 100mbit/s either.
Maybe it's a problem with your ISP or your router?
Trust me, once you get a faster connection you definitely won’t want to go back to 100.
It’s kind of like high DPI displays.
I had a 1G connection, but my most often used desktop would often switch to 100M, and it would take me weeks to notice. I would absolutely get a 1G connection again if it were reasonable, but a solid 100M is fine for everything other than really large up/downloads. Symmetric 10, with decent latency isn't that bad either.
> It’s kind of like high DPI displays.
Yeah, I've had those too, and I don't find them worth it. A slightly higher than 'normal' dpi, that I can run at 1:1 was pretty nice until my eyes got older.
100 is good most of the time but then happens the moment you need some big chunk of data (ex: a game of 150 GB) and then you need to wait quite a bit.
Also, if you have a larger household with everybody streaming and playing games, 100Mbits can saturate pretty quickly.
As I don't have kids, 100Mbits is mostly OK for me but occasionnaly I wish I had more. Like when I moved my photo backup, 500GB to upload was a pain at 100Mbit/s, but obviously this is not something I need to do everyday.
It's just preferable, of course, if people who use the service more, effectively pay more for it. As someone who's in the top few percent of Internet users, I know this would mean I would pay more, but I'm okay with that. Seniors who check their email once a week shouldn't be spending $60 a month on Internet.
Just think of all the crypto mining out there for example, imagine how many people could accidentally allow crypto mining software to be installed and all of that data being transferred for half a month and then BAM big bill.
Or someone makes malware that just transfers junk data purely to rack up data charges for kicks, or worse someone at an ISP does it to boost earnings or because they hate their employer and want them to eventually get 'caught doing it'.
Not to deride your point, but crypto mining typically uses very little data since you only need the data contained in the block header, and don't need all of the transactions.
Fine, change my crypto malware thought to a distributed storage malware. Several years ago there were a handful of distributed peer-to-peer file storage and backup system programs where you'd select how much of your storage you wanted to donate to the pool and that would determine how much you would get to use in the collective cloud for storing stuff.
It wouldn't surprise me if someone had malware out there doing this for their own uses, if you had a botnet of 100k computers and took 1 gig from each, and had a 100x redundancy you've got 100 gigabytes of distributed storage for whatever which you might be using for your own backup or for file sharing...
Actually I bet you could do this for hosting stuff on the darknet, if you had a decent amount of machines on a botnet, say 10,000 machines, and needed just 100mb for your entire darknet site, you could have all 10,000 machines hosting it and serving it via 10,000 tor connections... interesting. This would be a hell of a plot device or potentially even a practical deployment for espionage use or general criminal activity. Have one machine somewhere under your full control randomly loading 1 or more of the sites at random to load the actual darknet site.
Ideally, the per usage rate you pay for Internet should both be much more granular than mobile ISPs use (by the MB would be nice), and so inconsequential that you don't need to worry about it as a daily aspect. (Nobody spends serious thought about the cost of turning on the light switch when they enter a room.)
Most of my software updates run in the background.
Xbox/Steam is the only thing I notice downloading and I usually just play a different game if it needs a big update.
Work is the only reason I pay for 300mbps. Otherwise, 100mbps would be more than enough for me.
Upload is where I really feel the lack of bandwith. I don't have fiber avaialable at my new apartment, and the cable companies only offer 20-25 mbps upload. Hard to run a plex server for my parents and inlaws with that little bandwidth.
I'm probably not going to apply that MacOS update until the weekend, so I can download it at 3AM. I don't care if it takes 2 minutes or 20 minutes (or, heck, 200 minutes!) to download season three of The Wire as long as I can start episode one "quickly enough" because the rest will follow.
That's just a small example, but not having to plan my life around large downloads is in and of itself a benefit of the fast connection.
But then redownloading a non-new game from playstation network goes only a few mbps, and my playstation 4 is the only wired connection I maintained
Some of the services that you would think have highly connected CDNs or could leverage multi participant torrent like downloads just... dont? Games are like 40gb+ these days but I still expected it to take 20 minutes
Any way thats what I’m paying a premium for
Spoil me
On a recent trip to Sweden, I saw multiples of the bandwidth I'm used to advertised for a fraction of the price. For that definition of "it," I'd pay "it" in a heartbeat.
With neighborhood deals you can push those prices a bit.
Most (major) train lines have fiber buried next to them that is leased by the various telecoms which helped the expansion.
[Edit] Looked it up and a rural town in the southern parts where I used to live offers 1000/1000 from 5 different ISP's who are apparently fighting. They've all lowered prices recently, cheapest is at ~$30/month.
Yes indeed. Most people don't know that. Here's a little piece of related trivia:
Long before wireless was a thing, people wanted to bypass the AT&T long distance voice telecom monopoly. Actually, long before voice communications were a thing, people wanted to send telegrams.
Hmmm ... as you note, there are train lines all over. Perfect for right of way to run telegraph wires, and eventually to run long distance fiber.
A relatively modern name arising from that: Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications
Sprint for short.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_Corporation#Southern_Pa...
If you do online backups you better get the backup plan that will be coming soon from a range of supported backup providers. /s
and that reason is that DOCSIS allocates more channels for down than up. and DOCSIS does that because that's what most consumers want.
Are backbones usually heavily asymmetric? Or do the ISP's just have say, 10gbit symmetric lines that barely get used on one side, with the odd content host saturating?
Without getting into super deep detail, on cable internet, there is a balance between spectrum allocated for Tv content, and internet bandwidth. The system will have a finite amount of spectrum available, which can be divided between TV content, downstream internet, and upstream internet.
Given that most peoples usage is mostly downloading, the CATV carriers allocate more spectrum/bandwidth to downloads vs uploads.
2) The cable is a shared medium (like wifi) so it’s not just a matter of what you’re doing, but what everyone else is doing.
Finally 'full duplex' DOCSIS 3.1, renamed to 4.0, promises up to 10Gbps symmetric transfers thanks to echo cancellation (V.34 dialup modem says hi). Of course we barely switched to 3.1 and its unlikely cable networks will jump on the 4.0 bandwagon any time soon.
It's mostly about the connection from the local node to your house, not the backbone.
People who are downstream limited tend to be on the consumer side. Even if they might be willing to pay more for higher bandwidth it's more a convenience than something they really need. So in order to actually get them on a more expensive tier, the ISP has to offer an upgrade with a relatively high bandwidth per dollar difference in downstream.
People who are limited primarily by upstream however tend to be be more of the productive side and, if what they have is not enough, there is probably some form of urgency for more. They will jump on higher tiers for much smaller upstream deltas than their downstream-limited counterparts.
I don't know if there is an actual technological or logistical reason forcing ISPs to only offer one up/down ratio per price tier, but if they offered selectable asymmetry or symmetric, they would either get less money from downstream users (not attractive enough to upgrade) or from upstream users (problem solved at a lower tier).
Having asymmetric connections in most homes I feel severely limits how we utilize the internet. I'm definitely a power user and would choose to run multiple game servers and web servers along with some video streaming if my connection was symmetric instead of the 400/25 that Spectrum offers in my area. However, I feel like there's a ton of missed potential for home-based consumer server appliances. Maybe companies like Apple would be more inclined to take platforms like Synology and create something that's even more user friendly.
Pretending you get the advertised speeds reeks of industry shilling...
If you're regularly getting less than your advertised speed, either the local distribution is over-extended and badly in need of an upgrade, or the line to your house is trash. Either way, you should be complaining.
Also, note that if you have 1 Gbps service from Xfinity, you have fiber out at the street, they just bring coax into your home.
I get a peak speed of slightly over my 35Mbs limit on my Vodaphone FTC - can sustain 30-31 Mbs for big downloads eg from steam.
My parents have an actual 1Gig link but you’d never be able to tell unless you removed the router because it just can’t keep up.
I measure from my actual elderly laptop running over the Fastest devolo POE kit.
I do need to investigate getting a better router than the standard one Voda provide.
And once you get to the multi-hundreds speeds, wifi might literally not be able to support the speeds.
Otherwise, most placed I've lived, the cable modem was so close to the TV, that it's easier to just run a short wire instead of messing with WIFI passwords.
Really wish I had the option to pay for better latency and less jitter, which matter much more for my needs. I know the ISPs probably don't even have the infrastructure to offer reliable internet, which is 100% on them even if the general consumer only cares about Netflix getting throttled. Funnily, Verizon claims to offer "Fios" in my building with plans that are clearly not FTTH.
The major service provides frequently lie out their teeth by abusing "up to". 1mbps is a speed that fits into "up to 100mbps".
Further, due to the corruption of the FCC through Ajit Pai, they are not required to give you any particular level of speed that you'd expect depending on where you talk to.
The ISP can willfully and intentionally degrade your service you bought and paid for to certain providers unless that provider also pays.
From the first paragraph, which says it all right there. If journalists aren't making use of all available resources, then more mustn't be worth it. Nor do I see the price comparisons of related internet service globally.
I'd love to double my 20Mb/5Mb connection, and I would get real benefit from doing so. Doubling a 1Gb/1Gb connection doesn't have the same effect nor benefit.
I expect that in the future, price differentiation based on speed may go away, and data transfer caps / metering become more commonplace. Data transfer contributes more directly to the ISP's costs, and offering subscribers a faster connection makes it easier to consume.
Someone decides they need some crazy tool in NPM and without a fast connection you’ll be waiting for a while.
My experience is that this isn't where I find myself wanting speed. Rather:
- Downloads. Especially OS updates, though also occasional data-scraping projects. Both rates and service caps impede this, though the needs are occasional. Schedulable updates (quite possible with Linux, slightly less convenient with MacOS) largely address this. (Mac OS and application updates being schedulable, with Firefox as the major culprit, would be a big help here.)
- Podcast downloads. I'll occasionally grab a stash of episodes before heading out for a while, to be able to listen whilst mobile (and disconnected). The difference between my standard 5 Mbps connection and the occasional higher-speed cable, approaching 100 Mbps, is distinctly noticeable. An episode taking a couple of minutes to download is fetched in < 10 seconds. Again, an occasional need.
- VOIP. We're actively exploring more cord-cutting options, and the promise of higher QoS with Internet telephony or video chat is an interest. Existing lower-speed connections are sufficient for voice, but not video. And the voice connection has quite pronounced artefacts. Higher speed would be a boost here.
- Multiple simultaneous household uses. VOIP + streaming audio + streaming video + OS updates being able to occur simultaneously with minimal interference might justify higher-speed service.
- Home-based services. Whether private (VPN over Modem or Router via OpenWRT, Nextbox fileshare, and related services), or public (email, Mastodon, Diaspora, Friendica, and/or web services), the capability to self-host services could be useful. The headache factor remains to be assessed.
Truth is that in the local neighbourhood, slow (ADSL) and faster (cable) service are not hugely disproportionate in pricing, so a substantial service boost might be available at little additional cost. Higher-speed cable service largely isn't necessary, and does have a high price premium.
I suppose it's a case of fools subsidising the discerning....
High quality 4K and 8K streaming isn't widely used because there are not many users. Therefore there is no evidence for demand. Therefore there isn't many providers and content. Therefore we don't really need the bandwidth to support something that doesn't exist yet. We need to wait until other markets prove that this demand exists. Then the companies who provide the solutions can take over our market. Win-Win.
Eg downloading a new game is nowadays something like 20gig, software updates are regularly more than a gig, etc.
Then there’s the more basic a core issue: content latency is still one of the largest drivers of browsing performance, so even when there isn’t a lot of data you want high speed.
The article seems to basically miss the point.
Especially bad is that graph of speed vs average bandwidth used (%). Of course people don't max out a 1000 MB/s line constantly, that'd be nuts.
I really appreciated my gigabit Ethernet connection when I had to reinstall DCS World, which takes over 100 gigabytes of disk space when you own a few extra modules.
(This holds true until the next leap in bandwidth-requiring applications comes along.)
A paid placement from Comcast is more likely to talk about how much better Netflix is without the occasional freeze or how better movies movies are in HD.
As far as I can tell, it is the cable companies that are pushing the higher speeds, not saying they are not worth it.
As far as spectrum goes they are pushing for higher speeds for a very high price. It feels like only being able to buy a Porsche as a car. Certainly a nice car but very expensive for most of us.
Faster internet is worth it. Nobody uses what they have because they don't have much. Everything has been designated to the cloud.
[1] https://www.cablelabs.com/technologies/docsis-4-0-technology
TBH the backend upgrades to support DOCSIS 3/3.1 are way more expensive than its worth to ISPs. Add in the finite spectrum for cable providers and giving up 24 channels per modem to-fill-what-business-need isn’t high priority.
Because that's where the money and power lies.
I want responsiveness, I don't want my traffic to circumnavigate the globe, and inconsistent pings can signal other qos issues.
Gigabit speed residential bandwidth packages allow users who want slightly faster download speeds to pay extra, ultimately they are just using the newer hardware revs and getting the same level everyone else will get in a year or two.
I'm sure on average I don't use even one third of my bandwidth, but it sure gets fully used when streaming a 50GB file from a Plex server or downloading an Xcode update.
I can’t get behind the paywall, but faster internet is definitely worth it.
I have roughly a half a gigabyte of pictures (digital and digitized from films). Before having fiber, it wasn't doable to do backup in the cloud. But now it's just a piece of cake and it doesn't take that long either.
When I moved, I downgraded to 300mbps down, and I haven't notice any practical difference. Hell, for 3 months my download was artificially limited to 30mbps down (don't ask me why) and I really only noticed the issue when uptaking Xbox games. Everything else felt fine.
"their bandwidth" doesn't actually exist.
said no one ever.
this is the same line of argument
any ideas?