[Discuss] data caps

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 01/22/2013 11:50 AM, Rich Pieri wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:46:46 +0000
> "Edward Ned Harvey (blu)" <blu at nedharvey.com> wrote:
>
>> If your objection to cable is the business/marketing model, Fios is
>> no better.  They *are* the cable company.  Just like comcast, rcn,
>> etc.  Which we used before fios.
> This is accurate from the business and marketing perspective. But at
> least it's competition where both cable and fibre are available. At
> least on paper. I noted that in the year before my condo complex
> brought in FiOS the quality of service and customer service from
> Comcast diminished considerably. There's a degree of apathy at Comcast.
> They don't seem to care if, for example, their wiring infrastructure is
> exposed to the weather. Verizon is more convincing about pretending to
> care about reliability and customer service.
>
> The technical differences are like night and day. Cable bandwidth is
> shared. That is, every subscriber in a "neighborhood" shares a single
> pipe. Which is fine sometimes and terrible sometimes. FiOS, like DSL,
> is a private link out to the CO. If I do saturate my 25 Mbit link
> downloading a major Guild Wars 2 update then it doesn't affect my
> neighbors' service.
>
Both Comcast and FIOS are on the same outside poles. Comcast is mostly
fibre. It does not really matter today. For one, remember that you are
on a packet network. And while a large number of subscribers in a
neighborhood are all downloading at the same time might affect your
server, it mostly does not. The real issue is is that both FIOS and
cable go to a central system, such as a CO, and it is where the
slowdowns usually happen. So, if you saturate your 25Mbps link, you are
still going to affect your neighbors, but at the CO where you are
competing with a few more customers. Especially with some advantages of
DOCSIS 3, cable generally does not get congested, except in cases where
the cable company oversold and did not split.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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