BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs:
 ·Comcast
| reply to HMS1
Re: Translation
said by HMS1  :All your points are reasonable. If it were just a matter of policies or business decisions on the part of the ISPs you would be right on target. There are other factors to be taken into consideration tho:
• There are technical reasons that cable, in current form, can't handle upstream nearly as well as downstream. I don't recall the explanation (maybe someone will fill in this part), but it has to do with it being designed years ago when it was all about delivering TV with little need for up.
•It's way expensive to improve the "last mile" infrastructure. In the long run, hopefully we'll have fiber and big, symmetrical bandwidth. But it takes investment by either the providers or government. The providers need a good ROI to do it, and we don't have a political climate for government to do it. And either way it takes time.
•Competition theoretically would improve things, but in most cities there is a cable monopoly (maybe even legally forced) and a telco oligopoly at best. Also this factor is in tension with the "last mile problem" - practically speaking, only one entity can own each connection from the individual residences or businesses to the central office (or whatever it's called).
Consumer connections are mostly asymmetrical in nature. So uploading in general usually takes the beating.
It costs more to send traffic then to receive because of the peering agreements made by isp's to tier 1's and some tier 2's.
If I told you give me 10 k a month and id carry 100 mbit both ways to another peer you would say hell no thats to high my customers don't use that. I say ok then we will give you 45 mbit for 5 k.
Now downloading is mostly used and is burst type traffic. Meaning it is not sustained , it is only sustained by the server sending the content. So more can be downloaded without worries of sustaining. And to be clear downloading does include web surfing.
Uploads are more sustained. Usually since the servers are sending out to more then 1 downloader at a time. It's all relative. And since the transport is all bunched together your server may be on your backbone and helping saturate the upload you want so bad.
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"It's always funny until someone gets hurt......and then it's absolutely friggin' hysterical!" |
