Two issues here:
- Verizon’s customers generally don’t have a choice. Literally. No choice.
- Because of 1), Verizon have no reason to give a damn.
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It’s Aliant, a Bell Canada sub-company that covers the Atlantic Provinces.
They don’t have caps, haven’t had them for years; my fiber connection is clocking in at a very reliable 50/30 - which is the slowest I can get order.
They leave almost all ports open. From what I’ve read, only port 22 is blocked (I haven’t tested this myself) because they may be reserving that one so they can log in to their router/modem for update and configuration). That’s pretty easy to work around if/when I need to SSH in to my stuff. I’m running a web server, amongst other services, from my home. I haven’t gotten around to completing the setup of a mail server.
In any case: I’m farther away from the Netflix pipe that the Mr. Nederkoorn is. My connection to Netflix is routed from my house, down to Halifax NS, then by undersea cable to NYC, then off to Netflix. No stuttering. So, in other words, I’m calling bullshit on Verizon.
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You’re implying that at some point there were checks and balances. Look deeper into the history of the FCC - it has never been about checks and balances. From the very beginning the commission has been composed of industry insiders, and has dedicated itself to censorship, corruption, and cronyism. I don’t consider those things to be checks and balances, I consider them to be threats. You don’t fix or replace threats.
This is the simplest, most plausible, and almost certainly correct explanation of what is going on, not throttling.
If you read the Level 3 blog post, it explains in detail that the Verizon-Level 3 peering connections are congested. The VPN behavior is consistent with this–the VPN connection goes from Verizon to a termination point on another provider (avoiding the congested Verizon-Level 3 link), and that other provider accesses Netflix, also without going over the Verizon-Level 3 link. The result–faster speeds because the congested link is bypassed.
Throttling is an unsubstantiated and unnecessary explanation for the evidence already in place.
I wasn’t missing your point at all. No, there is no “guarantee”. Marketing speeds as “up to” while not quite as disingenuous as saying “25 percent more” on a bag of chips when they are talking about the size of the bag and not the contents, still does give a lot of people the wrong impression.
So The net neutrality debate is all about giving more power to the FCC in your mind? I don’t even know where to start on this. There is currently a situation where the FCC under it’s current leadership is promoting a plan where ISPs can create internet fast lanes, giving priority to one content provider over the other. Are you really saying that the debate is the issue?
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[quote=“tropo, post:26, topic:37381, full:true”]
I wasn’t missing your point at all. No, there is no “guarantee”. Marketing speeds as “up to” while not quite as disingenuous as saying “25 percent more” on a bag of chips when they are talking about the size of the bag and not the contents, still does give a lot of people the wrong impression.[/quote]
I don’t understand how plain English is disingenuous. Verizon cannot guarantee the speed between you and the server. To make that guarantee - or to give the impression that such speeds are guaranteed or even offered in any way - would be fraud. The “up to” language simply acknowledges the reality of the situation.
Consider this example: Verizon sets things up so that you have a 100mbps channel entirely to yourself, all the way to the edge of their network. The server you wish to connect to is in a datacenter with a 10mbps cap on their outgoing traffic. Are you going to get 100 mbps from the server? No, and Verizon is entirely powerless to change the situation. Your “average” speed would appear to be 10mbps or less. Should they then sell that connection as 10mbps, because your remote server was limited?
ISPs can already create fast lanes - in fact, they do so routinely, and it’s one of the things that makes the Internet work (VoIP services, for example). They don’t need approval from the FCC to do that, and they weren’t banned from doing it before - the FCC was never in a position to enforce the rules. Think back to the court case - the ruling was that the FCC did not have the authority to implement the rules they established. It was a power grab by the FCC that failed.
Now make the relatively easy assumption that the FCC is in the pocket of the major telecom/cable ISPs. Can you think of a reason they would want to seize the power to govern how traffic is treated by major ISPs? I’ll give you a hint: one major reason starts with the letter G. The power grab is about putting the FCC in a position to block new entrants to the ISP business by using net neutrality regulations - whatever form they take - to raise a “political connection” barrier to entry for new ISP competitors. This is similar to the current political barriers to market entry that protect cable and telecom incumbents. Google doesn’t have those connections, and thus would be at a serious disadvantage.
If you want a good place to start on this, please research the history of the FCC. Some of their first actions were censorship and outright shut downs of independent and community radio stations, and they still do that to this day. Since the inception of the commission, it has constantly worked to the benefit of whoever the major incumbents were of the day - whether it was protecting the big three TV broadcast networks from competitors, trying to prevent FM from emerging as competition to AM stations by repeatedly changing the regulations, attempting to squash the cable industry before it got off the ground, or attempting to kill CB radio. The absolute last thing the Internet needs is the FCC standing over it with a stick suppressing competition and censoring things.
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That was the most boring video ever.
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IF?, I did. And I don’t really need to convince you to disagree. I also added the reasons why I believe "the simplest possibility.
Look, you don’t have to agree with me, I don’t have to agree with you, just don’t pretend you won an argument we are not having.
I’ll just sum up my point in a way that doesnt directly contradict yours, I don’t trust the ISP’s and I see no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Peace, Out.
I know Verizon is throttling my internet, I tether with an unlimited phone don’t ask how, I know because they love to shut off my internet when I watch porn. It’s as if someone somewhere is actually fucking with me in real time. They also do it with netflix and hulu but no where near as bad as porn where they straight disconnect me repeatedly until I decide to watch something more G rated and suddenly my network is blazing fast.
Why the hell is Aliant so good when Bell Canada sucks big sweaty donkey balls in Ontario?
I had a longish conversation with an Aliant supervisor where, after getting a more thorough explanation of why/how there are no caps, I asked her “So, now that Bell Canada has bought Aliant (previously NBTel, MT&T, NewTel, and Island Telecom), can I expect the same continued stellar (no sarcasm) service from Aliant or what passed for service when I had to deal with Bell Canada in Montreal? – Funny, she replied, we had this exact same conversaton in the office yesterday. I hope not that Bell doesn’t change our service.” [edited for clarity]
From that conversation, I learned that during the purchase/takeover negotiations, the Aliant team insisted on keeping the long-standing ‘no caps’ policy in place and wrote it into the contract.
Eight years later, I’m pleased to be able to say: So far, so good.
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