One Way Internet

Sirius · 10-09-2008, 20:01

Every now and then i find info and blogs on the Internet that just makes me sit up and think. This is one of those blogs.

http://onewayinternet.blogspot.com/

AbyssUnderground · 10-09-2008, 20:28

There is only one thing i can say about that article...

"

"

He's nailed it. 26:1 is a pathetic upload ratio and Virgin Media have to sort it out, seriously. Like someone said on this forum a few times, VM have the worst download to upload ratio in the UK...

Kursk · 10-09-2008, 20:45

I'd still rather be in an area with cable than without. Do you think sometimes that the speed issue is just a little too flogged? Whilst everyone is watching how fast they are getting what they want, they may be missing the very thing that they subscribed to in the first place - a connection to the World's knowledge and community.

Sirius · 10-09-2008, 22:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kursk

I'd still rather be in an area with cable than without. Do you think sometimes that the speed issue is just a little too flogged? Whilst everyone is watching how fast they are getting what they want, they may be missing the very thing that they subscribed to in the first place - a connection to the World's knowledge and community.

I have started to upload a lot of large photo's at the moment and i have to admit that the slow upload is making that a very hard and slow task

.

joglynne · 10-09-2008, 22:43

I have been doing the same as you Sirius. For the last 6 months I have spent tens of hours uploading my family's photo archive to a site that we can all access and, in the future when I have it fully set up, everyone will be able to add to it.

Well that was the theory, in practice the process has been tortuously slow.

That blog says it all.

popper · 10-09-2008, 23:41

that would be me

dont you just hate blogs posting about "One Way Internet" that wont let you comment in return without signing up first... anyway heres what i would have postered there.

if you think that current worst uk bb virgin media 26:1 ratio is bad, rest assured the vm executives in the US taking your money for their bonuses and pulling more and more out of the reinvestment pot % for your new cable plant use are looking to beat even their own official worst broadband ratio in the whole uk.

when they roll out the current trials of 50Mbit to the consumer this year they have confirmed and argued that they intend selling you a brand new 34.33/1 ratio sevice in their 50Mbit/1.5Mbit upload package.

do the math after overheads of tcp:ip ack on your return path of generic ethernet ,not even adding in the extra cable packets and its clear YOU WILL NEVER ATTAIN A FULL 50Mbit compressed binary download with that upload rate EVER.

they are/will in effect falsely charging for a sevice speed they knowingly will never allow you to attain, all due to that worst uk ratio EVER that cant supply the contracted download speed due entirely to that upload speed being set far to low.

something like 1.87Mbit AT THE VERY LEAST is required to attain that 50Mbit download speed at least sometimes outside STM hours.
time to send in the lawyers and get your county courts involved if the govt bodys will not act ,will you ?

Sirius · 11-09-2008, 06:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by popper

that would be me

don't you just hate blogs posting about "One Way Internet" that wont let you comment in return without signing up first... anyway here's what i would have posted there.

if you think that current worst uk bb virgin media 26:1 ratio is bad, rest assured the vm executives in the US taking your money for their bonuses and pulling more and more out of the reinvestment pot % for your new cable plant use are looking to beat even their own official worst broadband ratio in the whole uk.

when they roll out the current trials of 50Mbit to the consumer this year they have confirmed and argued that they intend selling you a brand new 34.33/1 ratio service in their 50Mbit/1.5Mb upload package.

do the math after overheads of tcp:ip ack on your return path of generic ethernet ,not even adding in the extra cable packets and its clear YOU WILL NEVER ATTAIN A FULL 50Mb compressed binary download with that upload rate EVER.

they are/will in effect falsely charging for a service speed they knowingly will never allow you to attain, all due to that worst uk ratio EVER that cant supply the contracted download speed due entirely to that upload speed being set far to low.

something like 1.87Mb AT THE VERY LEAST is required to attain that 50Mb download speed at least sometimes outside STM hours.
time to send in the lawyers and get your county courts involved if the govt bodies will not act ,will you ?

Has 1.5 mb been confirmed anywhere by VM, In other words can anyone please point me in the direction of a statement that says "when we release 50 meg it will be 50 meg down 1.5 meg up". ?????

Don't get me wrong i am not defending VM here however i seem to feel there has been NO such admission yet. So we are just going by the normal rumour mill postings.

Fatec · 11-09-2008, 06:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirius

Has 1.5 mb been confirmed anywhere by VM, In other words can anyone please point me in the direction of a statement that says "when we release 50 meg it will be 50 meg down 1.5 meg up". ?????

Don't get me wrong i am not defending VM here however i seem to feel there has been NO such admission yet. So we are just going by the normal rumour mill postings.

Those who have seen the configs already up will know its 50/1.5

Those who are now on the pilots (huddersfield, kent) will know its 1.5

Remember the trial has ended and now in pilot/launch phase.

VM wont release the upload speed until official product launch, but you aint gonna be seeing any higher than 1.5.

Ignitionnet · 11-09-2008, 09:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kursk

I'd still rather be in an area with cable than without. Do you think sometimes that the speed issue is just a little too flogged? Whilst everyone is watching how fast they are getting what they want, they may be missing the very thing that they subscribed to in the first place - a connection to the World's knowledge and community.

Think the blog kinda dealt with this. It's not commenting on the download speeds just the upload ones and the big differences between them.

Quote:

The Internet is a global community. One which we can all have some interest in. That upload pipe is our route to expressing ourselves, interacting with the world, sharing our thoughts and experiences. ISPs should be providing us an Internet Service that is more than just a one way street.

altis · 11-09-2008, 09:55

Popper, your maths appear to make many assumptions.

For a start, who says that all your applications are using an acknowledged protocol (TCP)? Some could be using an unacknowledged one (UDP) where no return path is needed.

Also, for TCP the maximum packet size is 1500 bytes whilst the minimum is 40 - a ratio of 37.5 to 1. This is more than the 33.3 to 1 of the mooted service but TCP has an ace up its sleeve. To improve bandwidth, it supports a scheme called 'windowing'. This allows the sender to transmit several packets to the receiver before it has to wait for an acknowledgment. At this point, provided it has received them all correctly, the receiver can then send one ack to cover the lot. So the upload speed does not have to be faster than 1/37.5 of the download speed after all. That is not to say that all implementations will be this efficient!

In a previous existence (before traveling through a brief wormhole) I was an architect for an implementation of the OSI link and transport layers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmi...ntrol_Protocol

Ignitionnet · 11-09-2008, 10:32

I wasn't aware that Windowing and ACK frequency were related on the standard TCP/IP stacks that ship with Windows et al. You can't ACK an entire receive window without extensive static tuning on client and server side, isn't the RWIN just the amount of data that can be on the wire before the server must see ACKs? RWIN is related to congestion/flow control, not ACK reduction, at least not on a standard TCP stack.

By default a Windows XP and Vista machine will ACK every second packet, as per the setting stored in the Windows registry in \\HKLM\system\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Par ameters\Interfaces\

11-09-2008, 10:41

Did you notice the posters name .Ignition I wonder if its the same one

Kymmy · 11-09-2008, 10:49

Currently I'm on a 14:1 ratio and would like that to be better. A tech yesterday said that he himself would stick with that instead of the 20:1 faster speed..

Stuart · 11-09-2008, 11:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by David F

Did you notice the posters name .Ignition I wonder if its the same one

Possibly. Both are London based comms engineers.

Back to the point of the thread.

I have to admit, I do not understand why upload is so low on the 50 meg (assuming both TraxData2 and Ignition are correct, and I have no reason to believe they aren't). I can understand that when the broadband hardware was originally installed, upload wasn't as important as download, so the cable cos considered high download as a higher priority than high upload, and to some extent, this has meant that the uploads are limited (at least on the lower tiers) by old hardware. Upload was not as important (then) as most people hardly (if ever) uploaded anything.

Trouble is, that since then, we have had all manner of services spring up that will happily use a lot of upload. Things like file sharing systems, video sharing sites (such as Youtube) and Photo sharing sites (such as flickr). Combine that with the fact that a lot of people are emailing their own media (such as digital photos) to family and friends, playing/hosting online games or hosting their own websites, all of which take a lot of upload bandwidth.

VM have the excuse that when the hardware for the lower tarrifs (maybe not so much the 20 meg) was installed, people didn't do that stuff. 50 meg, however, is different. They are installing the hardware now, so people would have been doing that stuff when they planned the installation. They should have taken it into account.

The trouble is, I don't think VM actually want people to use their connections. They just want a lot of people to sign up to 50 meg, then just use it to check the odd email.

altis · 11-09-2008, 11:36

I simply sought to demonstrate the fact that, with windowing, you don't actually need an ack packet for each data packet. The protocol allows you to acknowledge more than one at a time. I'll readily admit that the decision about when to send an ack is non-trivial and can be the subject of some tuning - manual or automatic.