Bandwidth

Those stats are the current upload and download speed test results whilst watching France 24 on Zattoo. In other words I should have enough bandwidth to use operator11 without too many problems now.

Slashdot today quoted Small fries as saying that the Net Neutrality Debate crosses the Atlantic.

Analysts believe that ISPs will be forced to place stringent caps on consumers’ internet use and raise prices to curb usage. Attempts have been made by players in the industry to form a united front against the BBC by asking the Internet Service Providers’ Association to lead the campaign on the iPlayer issue.

There is a golden age for video sharing online. With services like operator 11, I can’t help but look forward to future versions as bandwidth increases. The idea that an ISP would think of “stringent caps on consumers’ internet use…” appears counterproductive. Apple has recently sold over 3 billion songs on iTunes, now imagine how many films they could sell if only they provided movies to Europe and the rest of the world. Tell those people they need to pay extra for the bandwidth and see how they respond. Add to this the recent article about a grandmother in Sweden getting 40Gbs per second to her home, taking into account that countries such as Japan have 100+ Mb/s and the recent increase of bandwidth in Switzerland and you may conclude that there is no need to increase the cost of bandwidth or throttle packets from programs such as the iplayer because other countries are doing the opposite. With the “BBC … being asked to cough up to pay for bandwidth charges, otherwise, traffic shaping will be used to limit access to the iPlayer” is surprising because of its role as a public service broadcaster and because of the user license fee paid by all television owners in the UK. This content is already available to the British public and they have paid for it. Various ISP thinking of getting more money out of new developments goes against the purpose of the World Wide Web and current social trends which require increased bandwidth. A decade ago the web was static pages of text with the occasional image whereas now it’s video and radio on demand where the user creates their experience according to their feelings. As people spend more time online so their need for interesting activities increases hence photo sharing and increasingly video sharing websites. These websites need bandwidth and a lot of it. As I write this article I’m listening to a stream coming from Last.fm. Last night I was watching three simultaneous streams from Operator 11 and found that I could stream from two laptops at once to this website. I was using a lot of bandwidth and it worked flawlessly. By giving the user the freedom they desire for how they use the internet and a variety of websites so you allow new phenomena to occur. With restrictions on photo-sharing Flickr would never have been and it’s the same with Youtube. Restrictions stifle creativity and markets that should have been stagnant rather than improving. As a result, I am for net neutrality because of how many great things are currently accessible online. I also believe that those analysts should experiment with the medium and see what doors are open as a result of new trends and see whether they can subsidise these startups.

I am currently downloading at about 800 k/bits per second which is some of the fastest downloading I’ve done, especially from home over a wifi connection. It’s a broadband connection but using one of the latest wifi cards. That’s the current speed

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](http://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/amusing.jpg “Usage for today”)Here is a reason for the Halls ISP to complain. today’s usage 862 when the limit is only 500 a day. Look at how much bandwidth I have remaining though. How am I going to get through 26 gigs in thee days I wonder.

wham - Apr 1, 2007

yes fellow twitter that is the great wall of china–

Here is my daily good morning message from the ISP: Yesterday you exceeded the daily usage limit of 500MB as referred to in our Terms and Conditions. This type of activity could have a detrimental affect on our network unfortunately be forced to downgrade your service to a throughput limit of 56Kbs dial-up speed, for a period of 5 days. I download over a gig a day when I’m at home on average, that’s 30 gigs a months or more. Detrimental effect on our network: What about every time you cut me off for no reason, what about the interruption of service when I get beyond the number of hours allocated p0er month. What about the fact I have over 20 gigs of data transfer but can’t use it? Limit to 56K, It’s already limited to that speed. If you exceed these limits on a regular basis, we may be forced to suspend your account. So interruption of service for no reason isn’t an interruption of service? For users of Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BearShare, Warez, Morpheus, BitTorrent, iMesh and KaZaA note the following: Why not stop whining about this and block those services rather than destroy the rest of the services Most P2P applications you install will usually be configured so other users can access your hard drive and share your files all of the time. This constant file transfer can degrade your computer’s performance and generate heavy traffic loads on the network, making it difficult for other users of the network to work well. The network is a shared resource and we all must use it responsibly. Network bandwidth consumption is monitored. If your usage could possibly impact the overall performance of the network, your computer may be blocked until the situation can be discussed. One gig a day is nothing. Two nights ago I downloaded over two gigs of podcasts within an hour without any problems suffered by the University infrastructure therefore why can’t these people cope. If they’re going to block internet access from my machine then that’s a Denial of servic although not an attack. Just sub standard. Should you have any queries regarding this email, please contact Customer Services Context and analysis Diggnation is 120 megabytes per program and Nouvo by the TSR is around 80-120 megs as well. The BBC’s daily news is around 20 megabytes. This week in tech, this week in media and others are around 20 megabytes each. Diggnation =1/5 of my daily allowance, nouvo = 1/5 as well. Twim etc are a little less but quickly saturate the amount allocated per day. What’s more interesting is that they currently have at least 7 fibres for 100 people. If the Cern were using those fibers it would be the equivalent of at least 3.6 gigabits per second, as was tested at the 2003 Telecom world event. 7 fibers = 7 gigabits per second, at least theoretically. For 640 users that would be 10 megabits per second. compare that to the 50KB/s and you see why I’m dissatisfied with the service.

There have been a lot of discussions between podcasters and the amount of bandwidth that is needed to serve these files. Successful podcasters shift several gigabytes of data with each episode of their podcast and since everything is automated everyone requests and receives the file at this time. This means there’s a massive peak. I’m interested in the reception side though. I’m on a university network and I’ve used it when you would get a throughput of at least 400 kilobytes a second. That’s quite fast and pleasant. It’s changed since then. Digital village, part of Catalyst has throttled our bandwidth, offering 8 gigs a month paid for by the university but limiting to 500 megabytes a day. What this means is simple. Anytime I leave iTunes unattended up to a gigabyte of podcasts may be downloaded at once. No problem, when you’re at home with 2 megabits per second or within uni but a big problem. I’m constantly watching over the files and their size in order to stay below the bandwidth limit. It’s frustrating. Last night I went to have a little fun since I was having a denial of service from Digital Village as they were refreshing the database at the end of the “service month” as I will refer to it. For 8hrs they cut off my service. In the meantime, I’m only 5 minutes’ walk from the uni library and it’s open 24hrs a day. This university has good download speeds. Using the wifi connection I downloaded 2 gigabytes worth of podcasts and videos within about one hour. The connection speed for university fiber is fast. It’s at least 600KB/s sustained. That’s a 40 meg file within 4-6 minutes when you’re downloading three at once. It’s a great feeling. In halls, it’s disappointing and frustrating. I don’t like Catalyst. They’re behind the times. They provide a sub-standard service and I feel that people should know about it. I’ve spent at least 11 years online now. I know what to expect from an ISP. Digital village doesn’t provide it.

pyrhana - Apr 5, 2007

Hey I would love an invite if you have an extra one. I have been hearing a lot about joost and it seems that either people love it or hate it and I would love to see for myself. thanks pltaylor3 at gmail.com

Think it’s according to IP therefore it can only be used once. If I download the joost software both for PC and mac maybe I can login and offer some invites. Problem is I won’t get to a pc for a few more weeks.

Twitter informed me that a friend got his Joost invite whilst I was in the library. I was looking for some books that had been recommended to me by someone I had interviewed for my dissertation so I did not pay much attention to this at the time. When I got home I saw that I too had not escaped the invite. Great, time to download and try it out, I thought, I was wrong.  I installed it and went to run it, twittered that I had launched it for the first time, wrong, wrong processor- All that anticipation indifference I was left indifferent. Why create a product that a lot of users can’t use? Joost came into being too late and too narrow. Why would people want a full-screen application for the live streaming of video content when bandwidth in some of the luckier nations, Sweden and Japan, for example, offer 100 Megabits per second. I love downloading podcasts that I can watch anytime, anywhere, anyplace, and on any device. I love the high mobility aspect of new technology. I love that I can check my e-mail from my mobile phone, chat with a community via text and that I can visit Facebook and see what events are on today without ever touching a computer. That’s what technology is about for me. Same for all those at Jaiku, Nokia, Justin TV, and others to name a few. People are tired of laptops and desktops, they want portable web-enabled devices. I do too.

Dear Victim, Yesterday you exceeded the daily usage limit of 500MB as referred to in our Terms and Conditions.   This type of activity could have a detrimental effect on our network and therefore we cannot allow this to continue.   Should you continue to exceed the daily download limit we will, unfortunately, be forced to downgrade your service to a throughput limit of 56Kbs dial-up speed, for a period of 5 days. If you exceed these limits on a regular basis, we may be forced to suspend your account. For users of Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BearShare, Warez, Morpheus, BitTorrent, iMesh and KaZaA note the following: Most P2P applications you install will usually be configured so other users can access your hard drive and share your files all of the time. This constant file transfer can degrade your computer’s performance and generate heavy traffic loads on the network, making it difficult for other users of the network to work well. The network is a shared resource and we all must use it responsibly. Network bandwidth consumption is monitored. If your users could possibly impact the overall performance of the network, your computer may be blocked until the situation can be discussed. Should you have any queries regarding this email, please contact Customer Services Regards Appallingly crappy ISP —————————- I’m a third-year media student who has spent the past decade online practically every day. I know where to find content. I understand the nature of the medium. I’m not your garden variety fifty-five-second user. I’m the type of user that would wake up every morning and download a gigabyte or more a day when at home. I go to the uni network and I’ve downloaded 600 megs within about ten minutes and my daily allowance is a pathetic 500 megs. Five hundred megs is not even one full copy of Linux. Some video podcasts are over a hundred megs each. Podcasts can be up to 100 megabytes in size. I hate their false advertising and promises. I have no choice though, I’m not the one selecting the ISP. afterthought Where did Yahoo go wrong with their implementation of advertising along the same lines as google? They took two years longer than they should have to implement what belonged to them. I hope they go bankrupt.