Thank You Google Fiber

[snowhiker]

"The announcement comes on the heels of Cox's decision to begin offering gigabit Internet speeds in Phoenix starting in the fall."

"Cox Communications Arizona announced that customers with the company's two most popular Internet plans will see their download speeds double for free by July 31, according to a press release."

"Premier level" connections will go from 50 to 100 megabits per second."

"The increase in speed and new gigabit Internet were both announced after Google announced the possibility of Google Fiber Internet coming the Phoenix area as part of its planned expansion nationwide."

Thank You Google Fiber
Thank You Google Fiber
Thank You Google Fiber
Thank You Google Fiber

Even if Google's announced plans are BS it must have spooked Cox enough to boost speeds.

But a free increase in speeds. Really? That must be BS. Well actually my "Premier" level internet doubled last year from 25 to 50 mb/s for free. Now it's going to double again to 100 mb/s. It's $70/month so it's not cheap, but 100 mb/s for $70 isn't as bad as $70 for 22 mb/s. I hope upload doubles from 10 to 20 mb/s.

Competition is good.

Full article here.

 

[snowhiker]

Looks like my upload speed didn't change. (

I'll have to download some huge file(s) on a FAST server to verify that I'm really getting 100 mb/s and not just some "powerboost" temporary speed increase bullshit.

Yes I'm happy.

 

[CougTek]

I pay ~70$ per month for 12Mbps symmetrical (business connection). No sign of Google fiber coming around here anytime soon. I could get 250Mbps (I think it's symmetrical) for ~250$ or ~300$ per month, but I don't need it.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm still at 75/15 for $150/mo

 

[Chewy509]

And I'm still at 9/1 ADSL2+ (w/100GB) for $50 p/m. (only get 9MBps due to distance from the exchange)... And our glorious NBN is now "no-body knows WTF is going on" mode since change of government...

**NBN = National Broadbad Network, that originally was meant to bring fibre direct to most homes, but the our current govenrment thinks it's too expensive to do fibre to home and is moving to VDSL instead of fibre. (except our aging copper phone lines are in poor condition and will rarely actually perform better than ADSL2+ even with VDSL equipment, and in some cases will need to be replaced completely in order to do VDSL).

 

[snowhiker]

Cox Communications is a private company and it seems to me to be one of the least shitty cable companies out there. And unlike ATT, Comcast and Verizon they didn't "degrade" Netflix or allowed it to go to crap through shitty peering agreements. Cox is small compared to the big boys thought. Hope they stay private and non-shitty.

I pay ~70$ per month for 12Mbps symmetrical (business connection). No sign of Google fiber coming around here anytime soon. I could get 250Mbps (I think it's symmetrical) for ~250$ or ~300$ per month, but I don't need it.

I don't need 100mb/s or even 20mb/s really. But it is nice to be downloading 12 files at the same time with each at over 200-400+ KB/sec and be able to surf without slowdowns.

I'm still at 75/15 for $150/mo

Yeah that price sucks, but at least it's available to you. Looks like Chewy is in way worse shape.

And I'm still at 9/1 ADSL2+ (w/100GB) for $50 p/m. (only get 9MBps due to distance from the exchange)... And our glorious NBN is now "no-body knows WTF is going on" mode since change of government...

**NBN = National Broadbad Network, that originally was meant to bring fibre direct to most homes, but the our current govenrment thinks it's too expensive to do fibre to home and is moving to VDSL instead of fibre. (except our aging copper phone lines are in poor condition and will rarely actually perform better than ADSL2+ even with VDSL equipment, and in some cases will need to be replaced completely in order to do VDSL).

Yeah same ole story. All the big telecoms were given HUGE gov't welfare/subsidies to "build out" networks but simply did enough token upgrades and pocketed the other 99%. We need real competition.

I'll jump down from soapbox now.

 

[CougTek]

**NBN = National Broadbad Network, that originally was meant to bring fibre direct to most homes, but the our current govenrment thinks it's too expensive to do fibre to home and is moving to VDSL instead of fibre. (except our aging copper phone lines are in poor condition and will rarely actually perform better than ADSL2+ even with VDSL equipment, and in some cases will need to be replaced completely in order to do VDSL).

Bringing the cost close to what it would be to wire everything in fiber. Typical public sector logic.

We have to link two offices together with fiber. More than a third of the price is for the engineering. At least 80% of the rest is man-hours. The medium cost itself is negligeable. So copper wiring or fiber, it wouldn't matter much on the overall invoice.

 

[P5-133XL]

Comcast: in theory I'm supposed to get 50/3 but in actuality it is much closer to 25/2 for $65. I rarely need that much BW but the next step down is just plain too low at 1.5/.8 for $30.

Of course, like most everywhere else the alternatives have significant issues that make them either cost-ineffective or unacceptable.

 

[Handruin]

I think we're paying for the 50/25 Mb through FiOS and Speedtest seems to show I get roughly more than that overall...but I've definitely seen lots of buffering using Netflix and Amazon throughout a given week. Other large-file downloads have downloaded fairly quickly but without a real stringent way to test, I can only rely on subjective measurements through the various benchmarks online.

Local to my area:


Across the country in San Francisco, CA:


Across the ocean:

 

[sedrosken]

Must be nice. When we had broadband, the most we could afford was 10 mbps, and I thought that was pretty fast. Heck, we have a 4G hotspot, and I still think THAT'S fast. When I was visiting my uncle a week or so ago, he had (I think) a 30 mbps connection, and I was all like "Woah, now THIS is what I call snappy." I clicked a link, and BAM. I was there. I was literally waiting more on my machine than on the connection, for once.

Our next best option is DishNet, because we live out in the sticks. And after that is 56k. We tried getting Frontier (DSL... I think?) out here, but unless we want to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for them to lay cable for literally three houses, it's not happening.

I hate rural areas... in Mt Pleasant (~30 mins away) I could get 100 mbps internet (for probably an arm and a leg, but still technically possible).

 

[LunarMist]

My internet is way slower than al those. There is FISO available in the area now, but I'm not getting any clear answers as to whether the internet is available after a general power failure. The advertised fine print say only the phone service. I need to have phone and internet for 24 hours without power. Around here the cable and cell towers are dead within short order.

 

[ddrueding]

I haven't had a significant power outage here in years, but Comcast has always held up for me. Some of my locations do have sketchy power, but those have a wireless ISP and has never gone down for power issues.

 

[P5-133XL]

I've had a lot more Comcast internet outages than power outages, where I'm at. I assume they are planned because every single one that has occurred was after 12 AM and resolved before 6 AM.

 

[Clocker]

I'm on the 105/20 plan with CATV & phone service too on Comcast. $128 out the door each month including X1 whole house DVR and 3 satellite boxes. Comcast service has been solid for me. Dealing with billing when they screw something up (like the fact that I purchased my EMTA rather than am renting it) has been a trial though.

The other decent competitor in my area is WOW. Their service is lacking in comparison to Comcast but they keep the pricing in check. Uverse TV is not available in my house although I am close enough to their node to get crappy DSL service.

 

[Striker]

My internet is way slower than al those. There is FISO available in the area now, but I'm not getting any clear answers as to whether the internet is available after a general power failure. The advertised fine print say only the phone service. I need to have phone and internet for 24 hours without power. Around here the cable and cell towers are dead within short order.

If you're talking about FIOS, when I had it, as long as the computer and router had power, I had internet during a power outage. I doubt it's changed since their phone service is VOIP.

 

[snowhiker]

I'm on the 105/20 plan with CATV & phone service too on Comcast. $128 out the door each month including X1 whole house DVR and 3 satellite boxes. Comcast service has been solid for me. Dealing with billing when they screw something up (like the fact that I purchased my EMTA rather than am renting it) has been a trial though.

The other decent competitor in my area is WOW. Their service is lacking in comparison to Comcast but they keep the pricing in check. Uverse TV is not available in my house although I am close enough to their node to get crappy DSL service.

Fast internet, CableTV and Phone for only $128. That is cheap as far as bundles go. Really cheap. I also have CATV and phone and bill is around $200/month. Two HD boxes, DVR and phone with all the "features" so yeah, $128 total is cheap. The CATV part of the bundle is the expensive part as the 4-5 channels I like are on two separate upgrade "packages" so I have to get the "expensive" TV bundle.

And while your alternatives "suck" at least they are their to keep Comcast in check and decent.

And for me when the cable goes out I sometimes lose the "land-line" phone. I guess it all depends where on the network the outage is.

 

[Handruin]

I just looked at Verizon's FiOS page and it looks like I have access to 500/500 Mb access in my area. It's $305/month! It's nice to see it's available but for that price I'd have to resell hosting of something.

 

[Handruin]

This thread got me to revisit my FiOS bill. Turns out Verizon has upped their bandwidth in several of the plans at no extra charge. After a little playing around with packages and such, we ended up with 75/75 Mb package (vs. the 50/25 we had) and 12 months of free HBO for $10 less per month. That worked out good. Thanks snowhiker for starting this thread.

 

[jtr1962]

I came to this thread thinking maybe Google came out with a breakfast cereal. Anyway, Roadrunner here is still at 20 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. Not super speedy by today's standards, but I find many websites load even slower than that.

I had a nightmare a few months ago where I was back on 56K for some reason. Whatever our complaints now about broadband speed, I don't see how we survived 56K.

 

[Mercutio]

I get something like 65/20 when I speedtest to the nearest site but only 40/12 when I test to my Colo in South Bend. The important thing is that I'm getting service that's fast enough that I don't have to worry about how fast my service is.
I have one customer that's stuck on a 192k DSL line. I would've killed to get a connection that fast a dozen years ago but now it's faster for me to turn on the AP on my phone and do everything through that, even when I'm connecting through EVDO instead of LTE.

 

[Howell]

I'm stuck at 95/95 but that might be due to the switches I'm using. Years ago I would have killed for the 5ms ping I'm getting today.

 

[LunarMist]

It's like Wheaties or Bran flakes.

 

[Howell]

On second thought, that test site might have a direct connection to my ISP even though it is a good distance away. 30ms is more realistic.

 

[snowhiker]

I just looked at Verizon's FiOS page and it looks like I have access to 500/500 Mb access in my area. It's $305/month! It's nice to see it's available but for that price I'd have to resell hosting of something.

Wow! That 500 Mb upload would be awesome for off site backups. I wonder how "low" that $305 will be in 5 or 10 years. And would 500 Mb be enough in 10 years?

This thread got me to revisit my FiOS bill. Turns out Verizon has upped their bandwidth in several of the plans at no extra charge. After a little playing around with packages and such, we ended up with 75/75 Mb package (vs. the 50/25 we had) and 12 months of free HBO for $10 less per month. That worked out good. Thanks snowhiker for starting this thread.

No problem. You really have to re-visit your internet/cable bill every 6 months or so to see if anything has changed. I do think your new 75/75 package is way better than my 100/10 package. Do you Netflix? Is it throttled at all?

I came to this thread thinking maybe Google came out with a breakfast cereal. Anyway, Roadrunner here is still at 20 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. Not super speedy by today's standards, but I find many websites load even slower than that.

I had a nightmare a few months ago where I was back on 56K for some reason. Whatever our complaints now about broadband speed, I don't see how we survived 56K.

LOL. Breakfast cereal. Definitely some slow sites out there. We are mostly to the point now that that the server on the other end of your connection is slower than the internet connection(s) between you and said server.

I only used 56k for BBS and connection to the university text based library "card catalog" and email and such back in the 80s to late 90s. I only surfed the real internet for about 6 months before I got Comcast 3/3 Mb in 1998 or so. I was a LPB and loved it.

The important thing is that I'm getting service that's fast enough that I don't have to worry about how fast my service is.

Most definitely this.

I'm stuck at 95/95 but that might be due to the switches I'm using. Years ago I would have killed for the 5ms ping I'm getting today.

When I upgraded my Cable modem and Router a few years ago my 12 Mb download speeds actually doubled. Yeah my ancient router was slowing my connection down. And 95 Mb symmetric internet is awesome.

 

[Handruin]

Wow! That 500 Mb upload would be awesome for off site backups. I wonder how "low" that $305 will be in 5 or 10 years. And would 500 Mb be enough in 10 years?



No problem. You really have to re-visit your internet/cable bill every 6 months or so to see if anything has changed. I do think your new 75/75 package is way better than my 100/10 package. Do you Netflix? Is it throttled at all?

I do use Netflix and yes I've seen throttling/lagging/buffering on numerous occasions during peak hours (dinner time). It has gotten worse during the start of the net neutrality crap and continues. Although recently I've not noticed it as frequently. I've seen the random videos of people on YouTube showing improvements in Netflix bandwidth when watching their videos through a VPN connection. I haven't tried anything like that.

 

[Handruin]

I get something like 65/20 when I speedtest to the nearest site but only 40/12 when I test to my Colo in South Bend. The important thing is that I'm getting service that's fast enough that I don't have to worry about how fast my service is.
I have one customer that's stuck on a 192k DSL line. I would've killed to get a connection that fast a dozen years ago but now it's faster for me to turn on the AP on my phone and do everything through that, even when I'm connecting through EVDO instead of LTE.

I'm impressed with the speeds in LTE through AT&T. I have some SpeedTest results as high as 65/16 Mb over LTE. They're not always that good, but that's still a decent amount for wireless.

 

[Chewy509]

Whatever our complaints now about broadband speed, I don't see how we survived 56K.

Let's see:
Most web-developers were careful about the size of the final page as delivered... (bytes were often counted, including all image sizes, to ensure a page could be downloaded in under 5 secs)
Hardly any use of javascript... and certainly very little inclusions from around the web...
Most used 256 colour web-optimised gif's.
Video was rare.
Flash wasn't around yet...

Now, Lawn, off it, you get....

 

[Handruin]

Let's see:
Most web-developers were careful about the size of the final page as delivered... (bytes were often counted, including all image sizes, to ensure a page could be downloaded in under 5 secs)
Hardly any use of javascript... and certainly very little inclusions from around the web...
Most used 256 colour web-optimised gif's.
Video was rare.
Flash wasn't around yet...

Now, Lawn, off it, you get....

This...this exactly parallels how computers and coding in general were written before Megabytes of RAM became commodity in systems. People paid great attention to optimizations due to resource constraints.

 

[jtr1962]

Let's see:
Most web-developers were careful about the size of the final page as delivered... (bytes were often counted, including all image sizes, to ensure a page could be downloaded in under 5 secs)
Hardly any use of javascript... and certainly very little inclusions from around the web...
Most used 256 colour web-optimised gif's.
Video was rare.
Flash wasn't around yet...

Now, Lawn, off it, you get....

I'm mostly referring to the time when they stopped doing those things but lots of people still had 56K. In particular, for a time I was on 56K and lots of web pages had flash videos. It started taking upwards of a minute to load a page in some cases.

This...this exactly parallels how computers and coding in general were written before Megabytes of RAM became commodity in systems. People paid great attention to optimizations due to resource constraints.

They still do that for microcontroller programming. I sometimes write arithmetic routines in assembly because the end result can be an order of magnitude faster than using a higher level language if you have a shitty compiler.

 

[Chewy509]

I'm mostly referring to the time when they stopped doing those things but lots of people still had 56K. In particular, for a time I was on 56K and lots of web pages had flash videos. It started taking upwards of a minute to load a page in some cases..

I think it really happened around the time (early 2000's), when web-development started to be done by artists/graphics designers, and not programmers largely due to the tools that made it so accessible to non-coders.

 

[Handruin]

I'm mostly referring to the time when they stopped doing those things but lots of people still had 56K. In particular, for a time I was on 56K and lots of web pages had flash videos. It started taking upwards of a minute to load a page in some cases.

True, but one increased demand for the other. People had desires to make web sites more interactive which seeded innovation in some cases. I don't see it much different from the latest and greatest AAA title video game that can barely run on 95% of most PCs.

They still do that for microcontroller programming. I sometimes write arithmetic routines in assembly because the end result can be an order of magnitude faster than using a higher level language if you have a shitty compiler.

Oh of course. I wasn't suggesting otherwise, but even microcontrollers today are better than they ever were. Assembly has great potential for performance and efficiency...but at a huge cost of problematic, complicated and long development times when you get into more advanced requirements. Moving to a higher level language and throwing more resources at it has been a trend since Java came into existence (~1995). I've seen this debate go both ways (write more efficient and performing code at elongated times (both Dev and QA) and lost time-to-market or use higher level frameworks and throw resources at it. I can appreciate both sides of the problem.