Posts by Charles Mason 2 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Dec 2008
I have used GHC for at least a decade. There staff were all extremely knowledgeable and helpful. The prices were reasonable as well. They truly were a brilliant place to buy a computer from and model for every other retailer.
I really hope they manage to keep these qualities under the new ownership. I did wonder how they would cope as the Apple Stores encroach on their area and I guess we have the answer.
Firstly UDP is not just used for VOIP and gaming. UDP is much simpler than TCP. In theory you could implement all of what TCP gives you on top of UDP but there would be little point. Its not that UDP is reserved for important speed sensitive traffic. Its that most developers who want an easy life and can tolerate the odd delay caused by TCP retransmitting the odd packet use it. If you are writing a socket application its the default choice. Developers only use UDP when TCP causes them problems, often latency sensitive applications like gaming and voip.
Secondly the problem is not a lack of bandwidth on the backbone links. These big transit provides simply build more links if the capacity is needed. They certainly don't offer unlimited bandwidth deals to their customers.
The problem lies in two places and both are firmly at the ISP's. The first problem is that the "last mile" link from ISPs to the customers site is shared between lots of other users in that area. Quite simply you can saturate the local last mile connection and affect lots of your neighbours. This is the same for DSL and Cable.
The second problem for the ISPs is the price of bandwidth, the more a user of an unlimited connection uses the more they have to pay their transit providers. To the ISPs in an ideal world all users would buy an expensive unlimited connection then only check there email once a week and leave it ideal the rest of the time.
When I was at uni we had a talk from a senior BT tech guy who was part of the BT team planning next gen Broadband role out. He said fully seriously, "we thought we were building an information service, for people to read the web and check their email not providing a cable tv service." He went on to complain about the cheek of the BBC wanting to provide what became the iPlayer. What really annoyed BT was the idea that they would use P2P to make BT foot the bill for the bandwidth. That was before the iPlayer launched and I am sure he is now happy virtually everyone uses the Flash streaming version rather than the P2P version.
The an attitude like that its no wonder BT is lagging so fair behind the unbundled ISPs technically. The unbundled ISPs have been using ADSL 2+ for several years now. BT says its going to take at least another year before most people can get it via BT.
Quite honestly if its not economical to provide the service you are selling customers put the price up. Fair enough put speed or total transfer limits on your packages and price them accordingly if that's what you want. What's not acceptable is for ISPs to advertise a service then use traffic shaping to arbitraryly restrict certain usage of it or worse still pass a copy on to Phorm. I think legislating for Net Neutrality is a very good idea, at least in the consumer broadband market. The basic principle of what traffic a user sends down their connection should be delivered to the ISPs transit provider is a sound one. Obviosuly their will be the odd droped packet and saturated router buffer but it should not be done based on the content of the packet.
In the UK we have just about enough competition to let the market deicide. If an ISP over contends its infrastructure and the service is poor then users can go elsewhere. Its ofcom's job to make sure that unbundled ISPs are not restiricted by BT.
Personally I use Be There a brilliant ISP owned by O2. There not the cheapest but there level of service is absolutely outstanding and a breath of fresh air compared to the problems I had with Pipex. I certainly feel I am getting the connection I paid for.
What really annoys me about this article and the general tone of this side of the debate, is the idea that you the consumer should be standing up to these people because they dare to use what they have paid for and are therefore effecting the service you receive. The whole idea of blaming another customer rather than the ISP who didn't spend enough on infrastructure is just plane wrong. Its like a restaurant selling an all you can eat lunch, running out of food half way through and pointing to the fat guy in the corner.
Realistically we all know we are buying a contended service, its up to the ISP to make sure that it doesn't become too contented. If the usage goes up they have to reduce the contention by building more infrastructure. The problem is that costs money, its much cheaper just to moan to the press and let El Reg tell the public who's "really" to blame, Pesky Pirates that's who.
Wow this has turned in to quite a long rant! Oh well not to worry.
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