5 ms·

Not only did they not deliver, but they intentionally sabotaged US efforts to stay up to par with other countries. US infrastructure is woefully behind compared

by noxxten 12y ago

Not only did they not deliver, but they intentionally sabotaged US efforts to stay up to par with other countries. US infrastructure is woefully behind compared to other nations (we're only recently starting to see fiber optics as a serious competitor to DSL). Even still, as old and outdated as US infrastructure is, the idea of a bandwidth limit or speed restrictions are imposed by the ISP, not actually a physical constraint. Sure, there are limits to the loads a node can handle in an area; But with each node typically serving 200 customers, at a conservative $30/mo... That's a $72,000 annual budget upgrade and/or expand THAT SINGLE NODE. A typical ISP will handle hundreds, if not thousands, of nodes depending upon a location. We don't need fast lanes or bandwidth caps on the internet. We need an ISP that isn't ran by greedy tyrants.

rayiner 12y ago
> US infrastructure is woefully behind compared to other nations Reconcile your claim with Akamai's State of the Internet, which shows the U.S. ranked #10 globally, at 10 mbps average connection speed: http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q413.pdf?WT.mc_id=soti_Q413 http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q413.pdf?WT.mc_i... (page 23). That number would put at about at #6 in Europe (see page 29), ahead of the U.K., Germany, and France, and not far behind Sweden and Ireland.
- jotm 12y ago
  One thing to consider is that US households are quite often getting less than the advertised speeds (probably because ISP's don't want to bother installing more repeaters or it's difficult to do so). I.e. you can barely get 10 Mbps on a 20/1 Mbps package. That skews the average speed stats. From my experience, that is not the case in the EU - you pay for 20/1 Mbps, you get those speeds +/- a few Kb. Which is also why many don't want to switch from DSL to fiber where it is available - "why would I need that, my Internet is fast enough".
  - rayiner 12y ago
    No, Akamai's data is based on achieved speeds, not advertised speeds. It's the results showing European broadband to be faster and American to be behind that are based on advertised speeds.
- saraid216 12y ago
  I was curious, so I pulled their appendix (p39) to actually look: Top Twenty Percent above 10 Mbps: irb(main):057:0> bar.sort { |a, b| a[:perc_above_10].to_f <=> b[:perc_above_10].to_f }.reverse.collect { |item| item[:country] }[0..20] => ["South Korea", "Japan", "Netherlands", "Switzerland", "Czech Republic", "Hong Kong", "Belgium", "United States", "Denmark", "Sweden", "United Kingdom", "Finland", "Canada", "Ireland", "Norway", "Austria", "Taiwan", "Israel", "Russia", "Singapore", "Poland"] Top Twenty Percent above 4 Mbps: irb(main):058:0> bar.sort { |a, b| a[:perc_above_4].to_f <=> b[:perc_above_4].to_f }.reverse.collect { |item| item[:country] }[0..20] => ["South Korea", "Switzerland", "Netherlands", "Czech Republic", "Japan", "Israel", "Denmark", "Canada", "Austria", "Hong Kong", "United Kingdom", "Belgium", "Romania", "Luxembourg", "United States", "Germany", "Russia", "Sweden", "Poland", "Finland", "Spain"] Top Twenty Average Speed: irb(main):059:0> bar.sort { |a, b| a[:avg_speed].to_f <=> b[:avg_speed].to_f }.reverse.collect { |item| item[:country] }[0..20] => ["South Korea", "Japan", "Netherlands", "Hong Kong", "Switzerland", "Czech Republic", "Sweden", "Ireland", "United States", "Belgium", "Denmark", "United Kingdom", "Finland", "Austria", "Canada", "Norway", "Taiwan", "Israel", "Singapore", "Germany", "Poland"] If you intersect all three for "higher than United States", you get: irb(main):080:0> (ary_one[0...ary_one.index('United States')] & ary_two[0...ary_two.index('United States')]) & ary_three[0...ary_three.index('United States')] => ["South Korea", "Japan", "Netherlands", "Switzerland", "Czech Republic", "Hong Kong"] What bothers me about the data is the implicit distribution skews in the Peak and Avg numbers, but that's a problem with every line, so not material to the subject here. It may signal a methodology weirdness, but it's lunchtime and I don't feel like paging back to see if I can find something showing that Akamai is counting things it shouldn't be.
  - adventured 12y ago
    I always find it fascinating when people take the data and proclaim that America should be stacked up against nations with single digit millions of people living there, much less postage stamp size areas like Hong Kong or Luxembourg. Most of the comparisons are hilariously ridiculous. The proper comparisons are: China, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia, UK, Russia, India, Germany, France, Turkey, Italy, Mexico - large scale industrialized nations. Comparing Norway or Luxembourg or Hong Kong with the US, as though they can possibly be compared in any sane respect what-so-ever is absurdity to the ultimate degree. The fact that we compete at all against tiny nations with 5 or 8 million people is a stunning accomplishment.

by noxxten 12y ago

rayiner 12y ago

> US infrastructure is woefully behind compared to other nations Reconcile your claim with Akamai's State of the Internet, which shows the U.S. ranked #10 globally, at 10 mbps average connection speed: http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q413.pdf?WT.mc_id=soti_Q413 http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/akamai-soti-q413.pdf?WT.mc_i... (page 23). That number would put at about at #6 in Europe (see page 29), ahead of the U.K., Germany, and France, and not far behind Sweden and Ireland.

jotm 12y ago
One thing to consider is that US households are quite often getting less than the advertised speeds (probably because ISP's don't want to bother installing more repeaters or it's difficult to do so). I.e. you can barely get 10 Mbps on a 20/1 Mbps package. That skews the average speed stats. From my experience, that is not the case in the EU - you pay for 20/1 Mbps, you get those speeds +/- a few Kb. Which is also why many don't want to switch from DSL to fiber where it is available - "why would I need that, my Internet is fast enough".
- rayiner 12y ago
  No, Akamai's data is based on achieved speeds, not advertised speeds. It's the results showing European broadband to be faster and American to be behind that are based on advertised speeds.
saraid216 12y ago
I was curious, so I pulled their appendix (p39) to actually look: Top Twenty Percent above 10 Mbps: irb(main):057:0> bar.sort { |a, b| a[:perc_above_10].to_f <=> b[:perc_above_10].to_f }.reverse.collect { |item| item[:country] }[0..20] => ["South Korea", "Japan", "Netherlands", "Switzerland", "Czech Republic", "Hong Kong", "Belgium", "United States", "Denmark", "Sweden", "United Kingdom", "Finland", "Canada", "Ireland", "Norway", "Austria", "Taiwan", "Israel", "Russia", "Singapore", "Poland"] Top Twenty Percent above 4 Mbps: irb(main):058:0> bar.sort { |a, b| a[:perc_above_4].to_f <=> b[:perc_above_4].to_f }.reverse.collect { |item| item[:country] }[0..20] => ["South Korea", "Switzerland", "Netherlands", "Czech Republic", "Japan", "Israel", "Denmark", "Canada", "Austria", "Hong Kong", "United Kingdom", "Belgium", "Romania", "Luxembourg", "United States", "Germany", "Russia", "Sweden", "Poland", "Finland", "Spain"] Top Twenty Average Speed: irb(main):059:0> bar.sort { |a, b| a[:avg_speed].to_f <=> b[:avg_speed].to_f }.reverse.collect { |item| item[:country] }[0..20] => ["South Korea", "Japan", "Netherlands", "Hong Kong", "Switzerland", "Czech Republic", "Sweden", "Ireland", "United States", "Belgium", "Denmark", "United Kingdom", "Finland", "Austria", "Canada", "Norway", "Taiwan", "Israel", "Singapore", "Germany", "Poland"] If you intersect all three for "higher than United States", you get: irb(main):080:0> (ary_one[0...ary_one.index('United States')] & ary_two[0...ary_two.index('United States')]) & ary_three[0...ary_three.index('United States')] => ["South Korea", "Japan", "Netherlands", "Switzerland", "Czech Republic", "Hong Kong"] What bothers me about the data is the implicit distribution skews in the Peak and Avg numbers, but that's a problem with every line, so not material to the subject here. It may signal a methodology weirdness, but it's lunchtime and I don't feel like paging back to see if I can find something showing that Akamai is counting things it shouldn't be.
- adventured 12y ago
  I always find it fascinating when people take the data and proclaim that America should be stacked up against nations with single digit millions of people living there, much less postage stamp size areas like Hong Kong or Luxembourg. Most of the comparisons are hilariously ridiculous. The proper comparisons are: China, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia, UK, Russia, India, Germany, France, Turkey, Italy, Mexico - large scale industrialized nations. Comparing Norway or Luxembourg or Hong Kong with the US, as though they can possibly be compared in any sane respect what-so-ever is absurdity to the ultimate degree. The fact that we compete at all against tiny nations with 5 or 8 million people is a stunning accomplishment.