FCC: Please Define Broadband > Here's what I wrote last night.

Here's what I wrote last night.

quote:

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Well, I'll answer to the information Wired posted up here.

* Where in the network do they measure speed?
At the backbone for the area from the connection, is where I think it'd be best tested at. Line sync won't mean a thing if local congestion such as what is seen in Cable is causing slowdowns.

* How much does latency, jitter, reliability and mobility matter?
In my opinion, being a PC gamer who plays a ton of shooters online in large servers, I have to say that Latency, Jitter and Reliability are extremely important for me. Latency is obvious, as for games you need to get the lowest latency possible. This includes things such as having the best and quickest routing possible over links that are least congested (which also means none of this get sent halfway across the country to get to a server nearby crap that happens all the time, adding latency and more potential bottleneck points), and of course, infrastructure in your area that can take on the load, and lastly, a lot of local peering to servers in your area. Jitter is also important as if a line has too much jitter (poor QoS), not only will my latency be affected, but I will see lag in games, and things such as VoIP and streaming will be affected. Again, I'm stressing great routing and networks that can take on the capacity, both in backbones and at the last mile. For reliability, who doesn't want a reliable connection? I of course want a reliable route to any server I'm connecting to that doesn't have or has minimal latency and jitter spikes, and I want a connection that is fast but reliable here in my home (which is what my DSL lines are already providing, maybe not speed wise though). Mobility isn't too important to me though as I don't need my connection to go everywhere. When on vacation I can typically find Wi-Fi that I can use which will allow me to stream some videos and do what I want to do (not play games though since my laptop isn't built for that. The desktop stays home!).

* Is there one definition, or is it different say for wired versus wireless connections?

Well, if Wireless connections weren't prone to more interference and troubles than wired connections, I'd have to say leave them with the same definition. However, wireless I say could be cut a bit of slack due to it's nature, but obviously speeds/latency, jitter, reliability and mobility all apply with Wireless.

* What are the minimums necessary for classes of applications, such as internet telephony, online video, video chat, gaming, telemedicine, remote learning?

Internet telephony from what I know can work just fine off of a 128kbps/128kbps line for a high quality stream, so that wouldn't need anything more than an ISDN line. Online video is starting to progress more towards HD, so I'd have to say 4Mbps and higher for a connection for a start. 7Mbps for true 720p content, and 15Mbps+ for true 1080p content. For uploads for HD content, of course a few megabits will be needed on a connection, but if it's symmetrical to the download that would be the best. Video chatting is still in the standard definition period, but I have no doubts it'll be moving to HD one of these days. I'd put it under the 2-4Mbps downstream category at the moment for both download and upload, but of those this is a bit high to what is really used. I'm leaving some bandwidth for headroom . For gaming, speed isn't necessarily needed, but I'd say at least 768kbps download and upload would be minimum for gaming. Obviously this is just for connecting to game servers itself and not for things such as the downloads. For the game downloads, patches, betas, etc, I'd say a 10Mbps connection would be at least needed as the size of these files can be MASSIVE. For uploads, 5Mbps and higher would be nice to see. Telemedicine, I wouldn't know of of the top of my head but whatever gives sufficient enough bandwidth to complete the job as best as it can be done. Remote learning is the same a telemedicine, whatever gives the best experience.

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I say the minimum should be 20/10. Our country is soooo far behind in this...

And I agree with you. I was just answering those questions directly to what I saw in the wired.com article. Heck, if we can get 100Mbps/100Mbps uncapped and unthrottled connectivity via fiber for even $60, I'd love that.
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