# Internet Connection Speeds (Was: Articles Worth Reading)



## nestux (Oct 22, 2014)

Thanks,

That Google Fiber is a dream.


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## DutchDaemon (Oct 22, 2014)

I'm not complaining about my regular fiber... 100 Mbit/s / 100 Mbit/s.


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## nestux (Oct 22, 2014)

I'm from the third world Dutch, here that kind of connections are a myth.


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## protocelt (Oct 22, 2014)

Good luck finding that kind of bandwidth in a lot of the U.S. also. And if you do, good luck being able to afford it a lot of the time on a median income... Parts of Europe are starting to look very promising in regard to living as compared to the U.S. this last decade or so for this and other reasons.


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## scottro (Oct 22, 2014)

Yes, here in the US, bribing politicians is legal (though it's called lobbying). The ISPs usually manage to block any competition, so there will be bandwidth limits and relatively slow Internet speeds. The best representation of what goes on in the US can be found here in this theoretically satirical video (with strong language). I didn't want to post the media, just a link to the YouTube page. However, on the new forums it seems to create a media link, and I'm not sure if that is allowed.

Blah, adding URL tags didn't work either.  For the moment I'll just say do a search for 'honest cable ad'.


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## Crivens (Oct 22, 2014)

nestux said:


> I'm from the third world Dutch, here that kind of connections is a myth.


It*'*s also pretty hard to come by here, and I am sitting in Germany. You would _think_ that it would be somehow a political priority to do something about that. But I see the problem - I mentioned politics and thinking in the same sentence. My bad. This is also a third world country when it comes to the Internet.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 22, 2014)

We get 100 Mb/s down and 4 Mb/s up for $55/month at home and business. That's fine but I was doing well when it was only 30 Mb/s. I don't know why a home user needs that much speed. Sometimes they download big files, yes, but that's rare.


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## DutchDaemon (Oct 22, 2014)

Would you be able to resist 100 Mbit/s up/down for 40 euros per month though? With a static IP?


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## TiberiusDuval (Oct 22, 2014)

100 Mbit/s for 40 euros, and static IP? That's very cheap. I have had 100 Mbit/s up/down included in my rent, but the IP is dynamic. Soon when I'm moving the connection would be 21 Mbit/s down, 4 Mbit/s up, dynamic IP. And the cost would be 21 euros per month.


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## phoenix (Oct 22, 2014)

nestux said:


> I'm from the third world Dutch, here that kind of connections is a myth.



You're American?    You can't get much more third-world than the US of A when it comes to Internet access.


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## wblock@ (Oct 22, 2014)

American companies were recently lobbying to have 5 Mbps considered "broadband".  It makes the numbers of who has "broadband" less embarrassing.


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## protocelt (Oct 22, 2014)

drhowarddrfine said:


> We get 100Mb down and 4Mb up for $55/month at home and business. That's fine but I was doing good when it was only 30Mb. I don't know why a home user needs that much speed. Sometimes they download big files, yes, but that's rare.



Must be nice. Where I'm living similar is only available through one ISP, only as business class, and costs $160/€126. Also when you have a family all watching cats on YouTube for half the damn day bandwidth can matter...



phoenix said:


> You can't get much more third-world than the US of A when it comes to Internet access.



Ain't that the truth.


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## nestux (Oct 22, 2014)

Here you get 100 Mbit/s up/down for $150 USD/month and only as business class too.


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## jrm@ (Oct 23, 2014)

The situation isn't spectacular on the east coast of Canada. There are two choices: Option 1 (or Option 1 if fiber isn't available in your area) and Option 2.


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## protocelt (Oct 23, 2014)

jrm said:


> The situation isn't spectacular on the east coast of Canada.
> 
> There are two choices: Option 1 (or Option 1 if fiber isn't available in your area) and Option 2.


Over 10x less bandwidth for almost 25% more in price between plans from the same company? Yikes! Are you sure you're not in the U.S.?


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## youngunix (Oct 23, 2014)

I'm going to go with that Europe and Asia have better/faster bandwidth per currency than here in the States. They all claim "up to _x_ Mbps" and you'd be lucky if you get 1/4 of that. My connection is 20 Mb/s down and the highest I've gotten was 7.214 Mb/s, that's $60/month.


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## DutchDaemon (Oct 23, 2014)

`# speedtest --server 4358`

```
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Fiber Nederland B.V. (x.x.x.x)...
Hosted by KPN (Amsterdam) [14.43 km]: 10.649 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 87.28 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 82.61 Mbit/s
```

This is while the wife is watching Netflix HD to the tune of 7 Mbit/s, so these numbers are slightly lower than they should be.







When my (American) wife moved to the Netherlands she was concern-trolled by some of her American acquaintances: 
"Do they have Internet there?"
"Why yes, they do."


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 23, 2014)

phoenix said:


> You're American?    You can't get much more third-world than the US of A when it comes to Internet access.


It needs to be mentioned that the US is 10x larger and more than most of the countries who brag about their Internet access. Plus, it's often mentioned that there are areas that can only get dialup but those areas are rural countrysides and not cities.

EDIT: I used to own property in a small town with a population of 4600 people in the middle of nowhere. I just looked and they can get 30 Mb/s Internet for US$50/month.


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## protocelt (Oct 23, 2014)

drhowarddrfine said:


> It needs to be mentioned that the US is 10x larger and more than most of the countries who brag about their internet access. Plus, it's often mentioned that there are areas that can only get dial up but those areas are rural countrysides and not cities.
> 
> EDIT: I used to own property in a small town with a population of 4600 people in the middle of nowhere. I just looked and they can get 30Mb internet for US$50/month.



I can agree with that, however I think a large part of the problem in the States is lack of competition in large areas controlled by only a few large ISPs. I really think last-mile pipes should be laid and controlled by each local municipality leaving ISPs to deal only with the service creating better competition, prices, and service throughout. Internet access has now become a necessity, not an option any more and should be built out and regulated accordingly as such.


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## DutchDaemon (Oct 23, 2014)

Note that almost all of the Dutch fiber networks are initiated by towns and built by specialist contracting firms (like Reggefiber, Fype, and Glashart), not ISPs, though these firms may offer triple-play services, like mine does. Telcos are slowly catching on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband


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## wblock@ (Oct 23, 2014)

drhowarddrfine said:


> It needs to be mentioned that the US is 10x larger and more than most of the countries who brag about their internet access. Plus, it's often mentioned that there are areas that can only get dial up but those areas are rural countrysides and not cities.



It should also be added that there has been government funding and a "universal access charge" paid to phone companies that was supposed to fund broadband access to their subscribers.  In rural areas around here, they did not do that.  They could not be bothered to put in a couple of DSLAMs to provide for rural dialup users even a few miles from a fiber optic line.  Lately, they have discontinued dialup service, so the rural people are stuck with only bad options, satellite or cell service.


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## protocelt (Oct 23, 2014)

DutchDaemon said:


> Note that almost all of the Dutch fiber network are initiated by towns and built by specialist contracting firms (like Reggefiber, Fype, and Glashart), not ISPs, though these firms may offer triple-play services, like mine does. Telcos are slowly catching on.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband



The lack of a "Dislike" button on the forums is mildly bothersome after reading that DutchDaemon , but that is exactly how it should work IMO. Unfortunately, here the ISPs own most of the pipes and I don't see them giving up or selling them at any point or for any reason.


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## protocelt (Oct 23, 2014)

wblock@ said:


> It should also be added that there has been government funding and a "universal access charge" paid to phone companies that was supposed to fund broadband access to their subscribers.  In rural areas around here, they did not do that.  They could not be bothered to put in a couple of DSLAMs to provide for rural dialup users even a few miles from a fiber optic line.  Lately, they have discontinued dialup service, so the rural people are stuck with only bad options, satellite or cell service.


What's really sad is it wasn't just a few million dollars funded through federal taxes for this. So far it's been billions with little to no results to speak of that I can see.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 23, 2014)

protocelt said:


> I really think last mile pipes should be laid and controlled by each local municipality leaving ISPs to deal only with the service creating better competition, prices, and service throughout.


Then you'd be relying on the government to become experts in all that, servicing it, and also being directly involved in private enterprise which is not allowed here except for monopolies like utilities. Even then, the utilities run their own lines in and service them but are regulated.

However, if Internet access became a utility, I can see what you said happening, but it would be handled just like water, power, gas and sewer is now, which is pretty good, but I don't think we'd ever see advancements as we do now.


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## protocelt (Oct 23, 2014)

drhowarddrfine said:


> [...]
> However, if internet access became a utility, I can see what you said happening, but it would be handled just like water, power, gas and sewer is now, which is pretty good, but I don't think we'd ever see advancements as we do now.


I'm not sure that would be the case though. ISPs would still be free to continue to do business as they have been. The only change would be the fiber to the home (dumb pipes) would be controlled by local municipalities instead of the ISPs (similar to what DutchDaemon posted earlier). That would create room for smaller ISPs creating competition and further advancements as a result of that competition.


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## TiberiusDuval (Oct 23, 2014)

Here Internet access is provided mostly by private ISP's, but cable owners are obligated to allow access for competitors. So if for example TeliaSonera owns local cables, it may not prevent Elisa from offering Internet service to customers. And it may not demand outrageous rent rates either.  So there is real competition, and it keeps prices quite affordable.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 23, 2014)

protocelt said:


> The only change would be the fiber to the home (dumb pipes) would be controlled by local municipalities instead of the ISPs


That's the part that wouldn't work in the US (I don't recall where you're from). Municipalities provide services but don't own those services. They provide those services by contracting them out to private companies except, usually, in cases like police and fire departments which are civil services.

Now, just to question my own answer, I have read about some small towns that were fed up with their Internet service and built their own system but that is a very small minority and I'm sure there is something substantially different than what we're talking about that allowed them to do that.


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## Uniballer (Oct 23, 2014)

drhowarddrfine said:


> We get 100Mb down and 4Mb up for $55/month at home and business. That's fine but I was doing good when it was only 30Mb. I don't know why a home user needs that much speed. Sometimes they download big files, yes, but that's rare.



The best reason for all that bandwidth is to reduce packet latency so that your file download doesn't squash your VoIP call.  I doubt the network infrastructure would be able to support everybody actually USING that much bandwidth at the same time.


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## wblock@ (Oct 23, 2014)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Now, just to question my own answer, I have read about some small towns that were fed up with their internet service and built their own system but that is a very small minority and I'm sure there is something substantially different than what we're talking about that allowed them to do that.



As soon as towns start to do that, the cable and phone companies scream about how bad it is and try to force through laws that prevent it.  If there is anything that these titans of capitalism hate, it's competition.


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## protocelt (Oct 24, 2014)

drhowarddrfine said:


> That's the part that wouldn't work in the US (I don't recall where you're from). Municipalities provide services but don't own those services. They provide those services by contracting them out to private companies except, usually, in cases like police and fire departments which are civil services.


Right, but what I'm saying is each local city government would lay the fiber to each home throughout the city and then give access to that fiber to ISPs offering service. Each city would then be responsible for maintaining the fiber, but not the service. It's obviously not quite _that_ simple (legal, political, corporate, and infrastructure issues aside), and there are certainly other ways to do it, but that was just the first idea that came to mind. Each ISP would then have to compete on services and price only without being able to block access to competition. Similar to what the utilities are doing now only all ISPs would be renting access to the city's fiber and not a competitor's. I hope I explained that well enough, and I live in the Midwest BTW. 



wblock@ said:


> As soon as towns start to do that, the cable and phone companies scream about how bad it is and try to force through laws that prevent it.  If there is anything that these titans of capitalism hate, it's competition.



I couldn't have said that better myself.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 24, 2014)

Uniballer said:


> The best reason for all that bandwidth is to reduce packet latency so that your file download doesn't squash your VOIP call.  I doubt the network infrastructure would be able to support everybody actually USING that much bandwidth at the same time.


Which is my earlier point. That most people don't use all the bandwidth they have but every time I test my downloads I do get 100 Mb/s.



protocelt said:


> Right, but what I'm saying is each local city government would lay the fiber to each home throughout the city and then give access to that fiber to ISPs offering service. Each city would then be responsible for maintaining the fiber, but not the service.


And I'm saying municipalities in the US can't do that. The government can't compete with private enterprise. The government can't own services sold to others.

Just like the town you live in doesn't own the gas, electric or water lines running throughout the city but those services do run on city property which is rented/leased/whatever to private companies. The government is not set up to provide utility services.


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## protocelt (Oct 24, 2014)

drhowarddrfine said:


> And I'm saying municipalities in the US can't do that. Government can't compete with private enterprise. Government can't own services sold to others.
> 
> Just like the town you live in doesn't own the gas, electric or water lines running throughout the city but those services do run on city property which is rented/leased/whatever to private companies. Government is not set up to provide utility services.


I think we're looking at things from two different angles but that's okay . This is exactly what I'm talking about, and exactly what the largest ISPs are trying to prevent from happening elsewhere.


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## Crivens (Oct 24, 2014)

protocelt said:


> What's really sad is it wasn't just a few million dollars funded through federal taxes for this. So far it's been billions with little to no results to speak of that I can see.


Ohhh, but some inlaw of the minister for communication owns some copper thread factory. You can not be so cruel to cut him from your... ahem - his hard earned money, do you?

And no, this is not a joke. The same with digital ID in your passport. Guess who owns huge parts of the company making the chips...



wblock@ said:


> As soon as towns start to do that, the cable and phone companies scream about how bad it is and try to force through laws that prevent it.  If there is anything that these titans of capitalism hate, it's competition.


Such screaming is, IMHO, a sure sign you are doing something right. The same with anti-corruption laws. Simply keep in mind who keeps on voting negative on these.

When looking around, the best solution seems to be that the district/state/whatever is the owner of such infrastructure and rents it out to service providers. This goes for railway, power, water, heating, fiber, ... everything that you do not want to see in the hands of one sociopath with only money in mind.


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## youngunix (Oct 27, 2014)

I don't know what's worse, private companies handling this matter or governments. Well, they each expose different problems and the end, consumers are the ones to suffer.

Google Fiber is hoped to bring better quality/speed at low prices, but that process is very slow.


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## da1 (Oct 27, 2014)

DutchDaemon said:


> Would you be able to resist 100 Mbit/s up/down for 40 euros per month though? With a static IP?


What about 25E (~31$) for 16 Mbit/s down and 5 Mbit/s up? 

Ah, not to mention that ~ 65% of the Internet in Germany is filtered . Makes for a lovely combo.


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## protocelt (Oct 27, 2014)

youngunix said:


> I don't know what's worse, private companies handling this matter or governments. Well, they each expose different problems and the end, consumers are the ones to suffer.
> Google Fiber is hoped to bring better quality/speed at low prices, but that process very slow.


IMO, there are only two reasons for the existence of Google Fiber. The first is to nudge some of the larger ISPs into improving their network, and the second (arguably only reason) being research. I don't think Google's fiber roll out has a whole lot of importance, except in the few places it exists, at this point of time.


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