 |  | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... Seems the ISPs are going to push their anti-net neutrality agenda one way or another. 
Want to play online games? Pay up.  | |
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deadi
Premium
join:2001-08-26
Perry, OH
| Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... Ya, but most of us have no or limited choice what ISP service to purchase. Really, what ISP is not going to do something like this? The almighty dollar and greed take over here, they will all do it if the opportunity comes about.
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We learn through the exchange of information, tell me more...... | |
| | | | | | | | | PDXPLT
join:2003-12-04
Banks, OR
| Now you city slickers know what it's like ... 160 ms? Heck, I'd kill for that. It's about ten times that on a satellite connection.
Don't like it, and Charter is your only broadband choice? Well do what you guys are always telling us rural folk to do: move.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. | |
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TScheisskopf
World News Trust
join:2005-02-13
Belvidere, NJ | Re: Now you city slickers know what it's like ... Well said. | |
| | | | | 
Cheese
Premium
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL
clubs:
| Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... said by moonpuppy  :said by KrK :said by moonpuppy :Want to play online games? Pay up. What they forget is that gaming is one of the reasons people choose which broadband provider or speed package to buy. This negates that. Very true. I have said many times, there are few reasons to get high speed and the few reasons are being added on as extra charges or excuses to cancel people. There are few reasons? There are new reasons each and everyday for high speed  | |
| | | | | | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... said by Cheese :There are few reasons? There are new reasons each and everyday for high speed Most of the reasons for HSI are for large amounts of data. This will include streaming video, audio, VOIP, etc.
Now, look at some of the threads concerning caps (especially Comcast.) With the incredible amounts of data being pushed, ISPs are crying over how much is too much and getting rid of bandwidth hogs.
If all they want you to do is surf a bit and check email, then what does HSI buy you over dial up? Right now, in my area, Comcast and Verizon FIOS (not DSL), cost about the same as a second phone line and dial up service with MSN or AOL (typical ISPs for those who are not the BBR crowd.) So people free up a phone line and get higher speed. If the price goes up, it becomes a lot harder to justify the cost to the average person who does next to nothing online.
Each one of your "new" reasons all relate to the amount of traffic passed and each day we hear of new complaints from both users and ISPs over how much is too much. Something has got to give and when it does, there will be fallout. | |
| | | | | | | moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD
·Verizon Online DSL
1 edit | Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... said by packetscan :said by moonpuppy :Seems the ISPs are going to push their anti-net neutrality agenda one way or another. Want to play online games? Pay up. Good to see your still here.. Mr. Screw the public. It's a SCUM Bag move on their part. Look at the smilies.
If you still don't get it, I AM AGREEING IT IS A SCUMBAG MOVE!
Guess you weren't around during the days when the phone company wanted to charge people extra to have a "computer" grade telephone line for their 2400 baud modems. I remember when cable modems were some sort of fad and DSL was some idea brought about this new thing called the Internet. Internet in a Box was being sold for $100 and most had no idea what it was for.
Try again. | |
| | | | | 
packetscan
Premium
join:2004-10-19
Bridgeport, CT
clubs:
2 edits | Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... We are about to be swindled.
Plain an simple.
How can we (all of us) not see the truth even though it is right before our own eyes.
btw - moonpuppy - Thanks.
--
Reach out and Tap someone! | |
| | 
TechieZero
Tools Are Using Me
Premium
join:2002-01-25
Wesley Chapel, FL
2 edits | This is called a make money agenda, Comrade. It's what people do here in the USA as no one likes to work for free or be told how much money they can make from government.
Any other solution is called socialism which is goverment controlled and in the end becomes the suck.
If these ppl don't like this ISP they can also switch to something else. This is called competition, otherwise they can rejoice in the fact that they have an ISP that offers a cheaper tier for them to participate in. | |
| | | 
KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
·AT&T Yahoo
·AT&T DSL Service
 ·Cox HSI
·AT&T Southwest
| Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... said by TechieZero :This is called a make money agenda, Comrade. It's what people do here in the USA as no one likes to work for free or be told how much money they can make from government.
No... It's called rape people for more money, give them nothing in return but force them to pay you more because you can because their ISN'T enough competition for them to switch to. This isn't the free market system at work and it isn't Laissez-faire economics. It's commonly called a a "Rip-Off". Most consumers have 2 real broadband options, many, only one. As I already said, even if they don't like it, it's not like they can just switch ISP's to show their displeasure by "Voting with their wallets." especially if both providers start pulling this garbage.
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"Regulatory capitalism is when companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians, instead of plant, people, and customer service." - former FCC Chairman William Kennard (A real FCC Chairman, unlike the current Corporate Spokesperson in the job!) | |
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TechieZero
Tools Are Using Me
Premium
join:2002-01-25
Wesley Chapel, FL
| Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... What rape? Someone is FORCING you to buy internet?
If there are 2 providers making it too expensive then a 3rd will show up, maybe you. Even a monopoly has to respond to market dynamics as with any subscription based service, it's a numbers game. You want as many subscribers to make a profit from as you can --- it defeats the purpose to make so that only the very few will subscribe. | |
| | |
Cheese
Premium
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL
clubs:
| said by TechieZero :This is called a make money agenda, Comrade. It's what people do here in the USA as no one likes to work for free or be told how much money they can make from government. Any other solution is called socialism which is goverment controlled and in the end becomes the suck. If these ppl don't like this ISP they can also switch to something else. This is called competition, otherwise they can rejoice in the fact that they have an ISP that offers a cheaper tier for them to participate in. I have TWO choices, Embarf/Sprint which I will NEVER use their DSL again, or Comcast. Yep, competition galore! | |
| | | |
TechieZero
Tools Are Using Me
Premium
join:2002-01-25
Wesley Chapel, FL
1 edit | Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... Well neighbor, go door to door and get a few hundred people to sign up for Cheese ISP non-profit Co, talk to Sprint about connecting to their network with a fat pipe, get some fiber or coax, a ditch witch, some switches and a shack to put them in, and get to work.
I bet some people here can give you some great advice and you will have a new career in the process. | |
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Cheese
Premium
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL
clubs:
| Re: This is what I've wondered about previously... said by TechieZero :Well neighbor, go door to door and get a few hundred people to sign up for Cheese ISP non-profit Co, talk to Sprint about connecting to their network with a fat pipe, get some fiber or coax, a ditch witch, some switches and a shack to put them in, and get to work. I bet some people here can give you some great advice and you will have a new career in the process. Ya know, me and a buddy were actually talking about that recently. Not exactly like you stated but similar  But so far, now that Comcast has full control over everything after taking it from TW, I had some issues in the beginning but now it's working pretty good and the Power Boost works pretty well. | |
| nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD
·Comcast
| hey, it's broadband in the U.S. what do you expect? with no meaningful competition, the incumbents will try to monetize everything they can.
once the incumbents suck up the 700Mhz spectrum, putting to rest any hopes of new competition, I'm guessing that rates will rise and all sorts of "new" charges will start appearing for broadband service. | |
| | axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: hey, it's broadband in the U.S. Not necessarily, it depends on how many there are and how many are competing in one place. And of course how aggressive the incumbents are. Places that can only get cable internet pay more than where DSL is available. Places where FIOS is available get a lot better speeds from their cable companies.
Eventually they will try to pass some law that prevents them from competing, or regulates broadband prices, but until then I expect steady progress... not as good as other countries with more competition but something none the less | |
| 
jtudor
Xm 60's On 6 Freak
Premium,MVM
join:2002-12-07
Morganton, NC
1 edit | Everyone forgets Everyone who rants about ping times needs to remember that ping is not a true representation of speed, it is only one of a number of tools used to test connectivity.
All those who complain about ping times forgets or doesn't know that routers can be configured to give lower priority to the ping protocol. Routers can also be configured to reject the ping protocol as well.
If your traffic is passing through a router that has given ICMP (the ping protocol) a low priority, then your "latency" will increase. This is not anything wrong with the network, nor is it something that a provider needs to fix. It is a choice they have made to give real traffic a higher priority, while putting diagnostic traffic lower.
In other words, high ping times do not necessarily mean slower speed. If you have slow response, it will be reflected in your ping, but a slow ping does not always mean speed will be slow.
--
Best of luck
"Do, or Do not, there is no try!" Yoda
| |
| | dks7
join:2004-05-31
1 edit | Re: Everyone forgets I live in the same state as Jerm does and am fed by the same pipe and from 7pm to midnight the pings are 250ms. And when the pings are high the speeds crawl, so your argument that the pings dont mean anything is invalid, speed and latency both suck in Washington state. | |
| | |
jtudor
Xm 60's On 6 Freak
Premium,MVM
join:2002-12-07
Morganton, NC
| Re: Everyone forgets said by dks7 :And when the pings are high the speeds crawl, so your argument that the pings dont mean anything is invalid, speed and latency both suck in Washington state. No it's not invalid at all. If speeds are crawling, then pings will be high. What I am saying is that the reverse is not always true. High pings does not always mean speed will be slow.
I do know what I am talking about as I am a computer technician and networking specialist by profession.
And I didn't say pings mean nothing, I said that pings is not the holy grail of speed.
By the way, remember that cable is a shared pipe from your local node, so if everyone in your neighborhood is online dl'ing or gaming from 7 to midnight, then you can expect slow speed and high pings.
--
Best of luck
"Do, or Do not, there is no try!" Yoda
| |
| | | | dks7
join:2004-05-31
| Re: Everyone forgets Everything on the internet at some point is shared or nothing would be connected to anything else. When I can experience poor speed and poor latency for 5 hours a night and people on the other side of the state are experiencing the exact same thing there is a bottleneck going on. its not some flakey router, routers dont just start acting up from 7Pm to midnight 6 days a week, saturday is always a smoothe day. its not isolated to my node as the my node IP always pings sub 10ms as do all the others that are complaining. | |
| | | | | 
heathcpe
join:2002-03-19
Brandon, MS
| Re: Everyone forgets said by dks7 : When I can experience poor speed and poor latency for 5 hours a night and people on the other side of the state are experiencing the exact same thing there is a bottleneck going on. its not some flakey router, routers dont just start acting up from 7Pm to midnight 6 days a week, saturday is always a smoothe day. its not isolated to my node as the my node IP always pings sub 10ms as do all the others that are complaining. Sounds like its possibly a circuit capacity issue coming into the cable plant. They may need to buy a bigger circuit to support their network during peak usage. | |
| |
deadi
Premium
join:2001-08-26
Perry, OH
2 edits | You are 100% correct, ping is not a measurement of speed, but a measurement of latency. Latency is the time the packet takes to travel to the destination and back. Unfortunately, it has an influence over the perception of speed and the way the game communicates between the client and server, High ping equals bad gameplay quality. So Charter is offering Gamerail??????? Charter appears to be using a form of Quality of Service which hinders the ability of certain packets to reach there destination in favor of others. To undo this change they make you pay. Purposely hindering traffic is NOT fair and kills our freedom on the internet. The internet was designed to be free. Someone please correct me if wrong.
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We learn through the exchange of information, tell me more...... | |
| | | dsless
join:2001-05-16
Pittsburgh, PA
1 edit | Re: Everyone forgets What you are really saying is that you must understand what information is being display on a ping graph. | |
| | | RuralCentrNY
join:2005-09-12
Remsen, NY
| 1. Agreed, latency is the time packets takes to travel to the destination and for a response packet to travel back.
2. Latency and speed are two different measurements of network performance. Both latency and speed influence network performance and therefore perception of "speed".
3. Ping is often used to measure latency. It was originally designed as a diagnostic tool to diagnose connectivity issues. It uses the ICMP protocol. The ICMP protocol may be assigned a lower priority on routers.
4. Protocols used for real network traffic, not just diagnostic and status traffic like ICMP, are typically UDP and TCP. Gaming, to my knowledge uses one or both of these, not ICMP. These are typically assigned a higher priority on routers.
From this we can reason that on routers that are loaded and prioritizing traffic, your ping ICMP packets may show a high latency, but actual traffic may actually experience a lower latency. While this is not necessarily the case, it very well is possible. The network specialist was correct. But to say that high ping equals bad gameplay is incorrect. It is more correct to say high latency equals bad gameplay. Ping is not 100% reliable to determine latency. I will grant that in most cases there is correlation but it will likely not show you exactly what the latency times are for UDP or TCP packets.
I can verify what he said having experience with Cisco switches and routers connected to carrier grade lines.
Hindering or setting at a lower priority ICMP packets (diagnostic) is NOT purposely hindering the traffic that matters including traffic for gameplay since I doubt games use ICMP. Quite the opposite, it gives your game packets a better chance of lower latency since there is less competition with diag traffic.
Now, yes, if your experience sucks then there is a bigger problem than ping packets having low priority. | |
| | | RJ44
join:2001-10-19
Nashville, TN
| said by deadi : Purposely hindering traffic is NOT fair and kills our freedom on the internet. The internet was designed to be free. Someone please correct me if wrong. Ok, I'll tell you. You're wrong. Who do you think is purposely hindering traffic in this case? | |
| | keybrdmssiah
join:2007-01-29
MI
| said by jtudor :Everyone who rants about ping times needs to remember that ping is not a true representation of speed, it is only one of a number of tools used to test connectivity. The people who complain about pings are because they're probably trying to game but can't because they have an awful isp, ie: charter, cox, timewarner, etc. | |
| sm2016a
join:2004-03-02
Belleville, IL
 ·VoipYourLife
| Charter's Woes The whole point of this topic is that the customer should not have to pay extra for a decent working service. That is the whole point. It's not like there is a SLA or anything that defines what charter has to provide and the min and maxs but they should be able to keep up a decent working network. If the node is oversaturated they should fix it, will they fix it highly doubtfull. Charter is a company that is in a downward spiral, they have been for quite some time. They are a monopoly in many different areas. They can't afford to upgrade their systems or provide a decent network most of the time. I will be glad when the fiber is up and running here so i can give Charter the kick out the door. | |
| 
dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
| Interleave Looks like someone found the interleave setting option of the config file, they jacked it up now you have to pay extra to have em set it back where it was. MONEY FOR NOTHING! the charter way of life.
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Yes i know and i *AM* talking about cable modems, not DSL.
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You can never be too rich, too thin or have too much Bandwidth | |
| |
deadi
Premium
join:2001-08-26
Perry, OH
| Re: Interleave Exactly, they are killing our connection, then making us pay to get it back. Net Neutrality has just been flushed down the toilet. We need to pester Congress into making Net neutrality law.
--
We learn through the exchange of information, tell me more...... | |
| | | Ahrenl
join:2004-10-26
North Andover, MA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Re: Interleave It's not Net Neutrality.
Net Neutrality is making sure ISP's don't charge competing content creators additional fees to reach the customers of the ISP. It has nothing to do with what your ISP charges you. That's between you and your ISP.
Unfortunately people like to lump any perceived problem into Net Neutrality, which is why most people don't understand it. | |
| | | |
deadi
Premium
join:2001-08-26
Perry, OH | Re: Interleave ISPs only charge access for the internet currently. Making you pay for content or services is a topic involving Net Neutrality. It has everything to do with it in this case... | |
| | | | | Ahrenl
join:2004-10-26
North Andover, MA
·Verizon FIOS
| Re: Interleave Paying for content or Services? Quick call the police..
Net Neutrality is about making competing content providers pay to deliver content requested/already paid for. It has nothing to do with what your ISP charges you. Nothing. Your ISP offers you a service, with or without specialized content, for a price. You can choose to purchase it or not.
They offer nothing to a 3rd party content provider except for the promise not to block their requested content/services from reaching the ISPs customers. | |
| 
computerman0
join:2006-07-19
Houston, TX | Well as the SH!T hits the fan F'ing A when will people learn net neutrality is a good thing.
Charter = Dumb F'ing SH!t heads | |
| pfsmith
join:2006-11-16
Lafayette, IN
| The fix for all of this is simple...
The fix for all of these problems... Net Neutrality, bad pings, download/upload CAPS, one sided SLA's... is VERY simple.
COMPETITION.
The current economic state of most broadband service is that of OLIGOPOLY or even MONOPOLY.
This condition gives the service provider the benefit of UNREASONABLE PRICING POWER. They charge whatever they want because there is NO FEAR of any NEW competition.
This is the same thing we are seeing in the price of gasoline these days (just to point out an example). There are too few refineries, and no one is getting in line to build new ones because of government (over)regulation. The existing players have figured out that they don't have to behave - because they don't fear any new competition. And so they are literally PRINTING MONEY even as their capacity utilization numbers fall.
The whole idea of a local franchise or other government regulations that restricts cable and phone companies needs to be tossed. Competition will force down prices and improve services because YOU will be free to shop for the best deal and the best service. But, right now, most of us are stuck with the one flavor of garbage they're selling.
It really IS that simple. | |
| | PDXPLT
join:2003-12-04
Banks, OR
| Re: The fix for all of this is simple... said by pfsmith :The whole idea of a local franchise or other government regulations that restricts cable and phone companies needs to be tossed. Competition will force down prices and improve services because YOU will be free to shop for the best deal and the best service. That's BS. Franchise reform will do nothing to make me "free to shop for the best deal and the best service", all it will do it guarantee that millions like me will never get any broadband service, while a small number of cheery-picked "high value" customers get multiple choices. | |
| | | Ahrenl
join:2004-10-26
North Andover, MA
·Verizon FIOS
| Re: The fix for all of this is simple... Agreed. This sector must be regulated because no one wants 1,000 different competing networks criss crossing over ( or under ) their neighborhood. Network owners must be separated from service providers. It's the only way it will really work. But that's never going to happen.. | |
| | | | | | | | | Ahrenl
join:2004-10-26
North Andover, MA
·Verizon FIOS
| Re: The fix for all of this is simple... If there's an incumbent, then it's not separate.. and as you state, it doesn't work, because the incumbent can ALWAYS undercut the 3rd party service provider.
DSL is only competitive for people who live close enough to the CO. If there's not a CO in your town, then it's not competitive. 3G Cellular is not competitive price wise. It's exceedingly expensive, and/or capped. Fixed wireless is less available then, just about everything, and certainly not available for residence. The great disparity in offered HSI underscores the lack of competition throughout the country. | |
| WFThor
join:2006-01-08
Saint Louis, MO
| GameRail/Charter In the interest of disclosure, yes, I work for GameRail.
Charter does not "offer" GameRail, nor are they "partnered." All Charter does is peer with GameRail. Any subscription fee goes to GameRail, not to Charter. I don't think we would be able to secure peering will all the other ISPs like we have if we were favoring, or paying, one over the others.
This is a prime example of what GameRail can offer the consumer. If you don't have an option for ISPs in your area, and the one you have is unwilling to fix a problem, is oversold, or any other of many reasons for bad performance, GameRail may be able to help.
From the description of the problem, it sounds like Charter is oversold in this market, and getting traffic off of their network and on to ours is fixing the problem. Simple as that. | |
| |
See 18 replies to this post | |
signmeuptoo
Folding and Crunching Not just Breakfast
Premium
join:2001-11-22
LOSTinSpace
clubs:
·Future Nine Corpor..
·AT&T Southeast
| I have said it over and over and you don't listen how many times have I said:
We need a national FTTH/FTTB campaign where each state's Counties or parishes own and pay independent non providers to maintain the cables and CO. At the CO would be sophisticated switching equipment that all paying national providers can log in to with a code and fee they pay for on the fly.
The system would let us choose between literally hundreds of providers because they NO LONGER OWN or MONOPOLIZE the cables, and each county takes a fee, keeping the machine oiled, from the providers. The voters can force the country to raise or lower the fee as needed.
This is the ONLY way for you complainers to get what you want, competition, and not have eyesores all over your town. You can't have your cake and eat it too with the kind of attitude many of you have expressed towards my suggestions.
If anyone has an idea that could make the cables free of being owned by the Telcos and Cablecos, while opening up competition, if anyone knows of a better way, speak up or don't complain.
--
You know your life has gotten "DICEY" when it turns into an episode of LOST, like my ex wife, who I swear is one of "The Others"... !!!Save Lives: Join Team Discovery AND Team Helix, it is easy and painless to do!!! | |
| | 
cdigioia
Premium
join:2005-06-08
korea, repub
·Korea Telecom
| Re: I have said it over and over and you don't listen said by signmeuptoo :how many times have I said: We need a national FTTH/FTTB campaign where each state's Counties or parishes own and pay independent non providers to maintain the cables and CO. At the CO would be sophisticated switching equipment that all paying national providers can log in to with a code and fee they pay for on the fly. The system would let us choose between literally hundreds of providers because they NO LONGER OWN or MONOPOLIZE the cables, and each county takes a fee, keeping the machine oiled, from the providers. The voters can force the country to raise or lower the fee as needed. This is the ONLY way for you complainers to get what you want, competition, and not have eyesores all over your town. You can't have your cake and eat it too with the kind of attitude many of you have expressed towards my suggestions. If anyone has an idea that could make the cables free of being owned by the Telcos and Cablecos, while opening up competition, if anyone knows of a better way, speak up or don't complain. ]
Sounds great offhand. We would also need laws in place to keep companies from merging and becoming too large. Which, they'd want to do to gain market power and thus raise rates. Gov-owned infrastructure isn't wort anything if there's only a few companies providing ISP service on it. | |
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signmeuptoo
Folding and Crunching Not just Breakfast
Premium
join:2001-11-22
LOSTinSpace
clubs:
·Future Nine Corpor..
·AT&T Southeast
| Re: I have said it over and over and you don't listen Good point. The important thing is that States and Federal CANNOT be allowed to own or run any of the grids, it is ALL county, to help keep some of the big brother nature out of it. Strict laws government what the government can do, and civilian oversight committees would protect people's privacy. Since there is no real privacy now, it could be an improvement.
The federal government had to step in and get involved in a big way when the time came to get everyone a telephone, and back in those days there was resistance to the idea of the federal government making laws to force phone service to everyone. Imagine where we would be today if it wasn't for that effort?
Getting the entire nation fiber connected could pump a huge amount of money into our economy, create countless new companies and businesses, and make us a bigger player in the world wide communications technology community, because other countries would come to us for the technology and hardware, and our experts. It could even change our economy, just think, look what all FDR did for the country with the national works projects, those saved the nation and we are still enjoying the fruits of their labors daily here now. All the great parks and facilities. People put down the idea, but it worked. It can work again.
--
You know your life has gotten "DICEY" when it turns into an episode of LOST, like my ex wife, who I swear is one of "The Others"... !!!Save Lives: Join Team Discovery AND Team Helix, it is easy and painless to do!!! | |
| | SylphFi
Premium
join:2007-06-07
Moses Lake, WA
·Spectrum Communica..
| That is exactly what Public Utility Department in my county started doing in 2001. Sadly, they tried to manipulate another PUD from a nearby county, to be the front for their own ISP. However, they got busted (kind of hard to hide it when that ISP is charging less the subscriber than the PUD charges to all the other ISP's), and the build-out was put on hold (at about 4000 homes passed). Just this year they started slowly building out some more (650 homes).
Thanks to the heavy hand of the state attorney's office, the PUD now sits under close scrutiny, and keeps wholesale rates down. We have almost a dozen ISP's selling Internet and Phone service (used to have 3 reselling TV service, but that got yanked when the PUD got busted for "borrowing" feeds from someone else, instead of purchasing their own), for $35-40/mo Residential Internet (10mbps symmetrical), and $20-25 per month Phone.
Apparently, when there is lots of competition, the pricing settles out to roughly the same between the providers. | |
| | | | | | | SylphFi
Premium
join:2007-06-07
Moses Lake, WA
·Spectrum Communica..
1 edit | Re: I have said it over and over and you don't listen In this case corruption seemed be rather prolific, but it didn't take very long to spot the retail coup attempt (since all the ISP's were supposed to be charged from the same price schedule). As for the television scandal; I don't really know how they got caught, since the ISP I worked for was sold as a result of the first scandal and the new owners (who bought 2 other ISP's at the same time) laid off two-thirds of us (kept all the slackers, go figure).
I think it will be harder for public pseudo-government entities to hide corruption, since most of the top positions (Commisioners, at least) are filled by public vote regularly (every 4 years I believe), and their records (and meeting minute's) are supposed to be open to the public. Sadly, we find corruption everywhere, even in non-profit organizations, so I expect a fair number of public utilites/commissions will be tainted as well.
Edit: Forgot to mention, three Commisioner's, the head network engineer, and a few other people, were 'resigned' over the first scandal; I didn't keep close tabs on the second one. So, voting can happen whenever necessary, and the will of the people prevails (for the most part), whereas a private corporation (even publicly held, unless most of the shareholders are also customers) could just scoff at the people and keep on messing with them. | |
| luckie2Beme
join:2007-07-25
Marco Island, FL
|  Pay Extra For Normal Latency
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| |
cdigioia
Premium
join:2005-06-08
korea, repub
·Korea Telecom
| Re: Pay Extra For Normal Latency Good information, I didn't know that. However, I disagree that the point was missed. The point is that the lack of competition is what allows the company to offer bad ping times in the first place. Whether Charter offers an in-house or third-party solution does not matter. | |
| | | luckie2Beme
join:2007-07-25
Marco Island, FL
| Re: Pay Extra For Normal Latency Competition will always drive innovation and maybe, just maybe improvements. I used to think that once the telcos got into the cable business and the cablecos got into the telco business we would see improvements. Now I think things are worse in both cases. I've gotten to a point where I believe big companies almost always suck when it comes to giving consumers what they want. Little companies, whether GameRail or some other at least show me they try, because they need my business, while the big guys just don't seem to care. | |
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deadi
Premium
join:2001-08-26
Perry, OH
1 edit | I do not need a service like Gamerail because my provider does a good job providing service. If Charter is oversubscribing or hindering traffic and handing gamers off to someone else for a buck, that is a problem and unfair to the consumer.
On another note, this is a good example of how easy it could be to use the services of a provider outside of your (area monopoly)providers network. Lets say I am on Comcast and want to use Windstream as my provider. Just sign up! You will have the choice of better service to browse or do whatever. Really, technically it is possible and Gamerail proves it. So why cant I do this now? Maybe Comcast isnt the provider I want to use because service is crappy in my area. I think everyone would jump ship quick!
If I remember correctly, the Europeans are doing this. | |
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plk
bo may sleep in loft
Premium
join:2002-04-20
Ogden, IA
| BBR archive ping times. Not sure if BBR already does this....but this data and ping time history will be nice to have if the Bells etc start doing this down the road.
In a world with no Net neutrality, it would show they have no real fast lane...only degrading services to those who don't pay.
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