Just downloaded a 1.45 GB file in five minutes...

"Mr. Man-wai Chang" wrote:

John Doe wrote:

I know there is faster, feel free to boast, but this is outrageous in
my experience. Downloading a 1.45 GB file in five minutes. I don't
get the full 117 Mbps, but it occasionally goes over 70. I use a
radar sensitive channel (not sure what that's about, but it's fast)
on the 5 GHz band.

Might get better speed with a wired connection?

It started out unreliable. I'd be thrilled with a very reliable 30-50
Mbps through the wireless router. I can't take it all since it's shared
among family members.

One of the connections is wired through the router and gets the full
117 Mbps. That's a bit confusing... Why does 100+ Mbps require a gigabit
router just for a pass-through wired connection? And my guess would
be... It has to split the signal, so maybe it has to buffer the input.
And the buffer has to be that fast.

On Mon, 23 May 2016 10:07:27 -0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

The house gets 117 Mb per second (300+ Mbps is available). My LAN port
is connected to an extender that is connected via Wi-Fi (5 GHz band) to
our router. I'm using the extender like a huge USB adapter/antenna. Got
the matching router and extender dirt cheap from eBay.

I know there is faster, feel free to boast, but this is outrageous in my
experience. Downloading a 1.45 GB file in five minutes. I don't get the
full 117 Mbps, but it occasionally goes over 70. I use a radar sensitive
channel (not sure what that's about, but it's fast) on the 5 GHz band.

And burn through my monthly cap in 40 hours.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
On Mon, 23 May 2016 10:07:27 -0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

The house gets 117 Mb per second (300+ Mbps is available). My LAN port
is connected to an extender that is connected via Wi-Fi (5 GHz band) to
our router. I'm using the extender like a huge USB adapter/antenna. Got
the matching router and extender dirt cheap from eBay.

I know there is faster, feel free to boast, but this is outrageous in my
experience. Downloading a 1.45 GB file in five minutes. I don't get the
full 117 Mbps, but it occasionally goes over 70. I use a radar sensitive
channel (not sure what that's about, but it's fast) on the 5 GHz band.

And burn through my monthly cap in 40 hours.

You'd be wanting my ISP.

My cap is only 140GB. Which sounds crappy.
However, their policy is:

unlimited downloads from 2 to 8 AM

The byte counter is switched off, between
2AM and 8AM. If you can schedule your
downloads then, it doesn't count on the cap.
That doesn't help if you want to watch
Netflix at 8PM.

One person on a forum, commented they'd
managed to pull 1TB of data off the Internet
in a month, between the hours of 2 and 8 AM :-)
This is more than any convention "unlimited"
plan would have allowed you to get away with.
And no "letter" was sent to him, telling
him to stop either.

You see, there are people who will use as much
rope as you can give them... I'm sure he
would have pulled more than 1TB, if the
link was faster.

And the funny part is, it's not really advantageous
for them to manage downloads that way. The ISP I
use is a "reseller", and not the primary supplier.
I think they pay a fixed fee, like $0.03 per GB
to the real ISP, so leaving the door open from
2AM to 8AM is a "marketing stunt". The reseller
doesn't really have a strong incentive to move
all downloads to the wee hours. But the real ISP
probably does. I doubt the real ISP makes the
transit fiber free on those hours, and is likely
to charge a constant fee 24 hours a day.

Still, I thought the whole thing was rather amusing.
The best way to run a business like that, is not
to tell people that rule actually exists :-) The rule
was posted on a forum, not on the ISP marketing page.
The reseller ISP is fond of using "underground marketing".

I'm also fond of them, for not gouging on pricing.
The phone company, their Internet went up $5 a month,
every year, like clockwork. The ISP I use now, only
adjusts pricing if government regulations foul up
the economics of their business plan. Which is
pretty damn decent of them.

Paul

Paul wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
John Doe wrote:

The house gets 117 Mb per second (300+ Mbps is available). My LAN
port is connected to an extender that is connected via Wi-Fi (5 GHz
band) to our router. I'm using the extender like a huge USB
adapter/antenna. Got the matching router and extender dirt cheap
from eBay.

I know there is faster, feel free to boast, but this is outrageous
in my experience. Downloading a 1.45 GB file in five minutes. I
don't get the full 117 Mbps, but it occasionally goes over 70. I use
a radar sensitive channel (not sure what that's about, but it's
fast) on the 5 GHz band.

And burn through my monthly cap in 40 hours.

You'd be wanting my ISP.

My cap is only 140GB. Which sounds crappy. However, their policy is:

unlimited downloads from 2 to 8 AM

The byte counter is switched off, between 2AM and 8AM. If you can
schedule your downloads then, it doesn't count on the cap. That
doesn't help if you want to watch Netflix at 8PM.

It helps keep hogs off the Internet while normal viewers watch Netflix
at 8 PM. I have been watching movies on TWCTV that use relatively little
bandwidth, probably a very small fraction of the speed used for the
mentioned 1.45 GB file download.

One person on a forum, commented they'd managed to pull 1TB of data
off the Internet in a month, between the hours of 2 and 8 AM :-) This
is more than any convention "unlimited" plan would have allowed you to
get away with. And no "letter" was sent to him, telling him to stop
either.

You see, there are people who will use as much rope as you can give
them... I'm sure he would have pulled more than 1TB, if the link was
faster.

And the funny part is, it's not really advantageous for them to manage
downloads that way. The ISP I use is a "reseller", and not the primary
supplier. I think they pay a fixed fee, like $0.03 per GB to the real
ISP, so leaving the door open from 2AM to 8AM is a "marketing stunt".

Not if they are trying to relieve congestion caused by hogs so that
average users can enjoy watching movies during prime time. Maybe you
mentioned that and I missed it.







--





The reseller doesn't really have a strong incentive to move all
downloads to the wee hours. But the real ISP probably does. I doubt
the real ISP makes the transit fiber free on those hours, and is
likely to charge a constant fee 24 hours a day.

Still, I thought the whole thing was rather amusing. The best way to
run a business like that, is not to tell people that rule actually
exists :-) The rule was posted on a forum, not on the ISP marketing
page. The reseller ISP is fond of using "underground marketing".

I'm also fond of them, for not gouging on pricing. The phone company,
their Internet went up $5 a month, every year, like clockwork. The ISP
I use now, only adjusts pricing if government regulations foul up the
economics of their business plan. Which is pretty damn decent of them.

Paul

On Thursday, May 26, 2016 at 5:33:46 PM UTC+8, Paul wrote:

It's hard to support gigabit fiber properly. You want
consistent transfer rates, which means using really
big routers somewhere in the city to handle it.

You just couldn't "wallpaper" an entire major city with it.
It's going to be niche installs for a while yet.


I used to have 19 Mbps ADSL, since I am close to telephone exchange.
Now I have FTTH. It is more or less the same, as the rest of the
internet is constipated.
Only advantage is that I can upload at 5 Mpbs instead of 0.8 Mbps,
which is good for working from home.

wrote:
On Thursday, May 26, 2016 at 5:33:46 PM UTC+8, Paul wrote:
It's hard to support gigabit fiber properly. You want
consistent transfer rates, which means using really
big routers somewhere in the city to handle it.

You just couldn't "wallpaper" an entire major city with it.
It's going to be niche installs for a while yet.


I used to have 19 Mbps ADSL, since I am close to telephone exchange.
Now I have FTTH. It is more or less the same, as the rest of the
internet is constipated.
Only advantage is that I can upload at 5 Mpbs instead of 0.8 Mbps,
which is good for working from home.

My current Internet is 15/1 (asymmetric).

For only a few dollars more a month,
I could have ordered 15/10 VDSL, which is
the lowest tier of VDSL here. And that
would give closer to a symmetric setup.

Being a cheapskate, and not wanting some
rental VDSL modem on the premises (I like
to buy my own), I opted for ADSL2+ instead.

So for someone working at home, that 15/10
looks pretty attractive, as crappy home
offerings go. Certainly would beat the hell
out of the 5/1 I started with.

The very first service offered in town here,
was one megabit. Just to give you some idea
how humble the very first offering was. I
have no idea what the upload rate on that
was. The upload was probably as fast as
dialup :-) Those modems were retired pretty
quickly. While those would still be head
and shoulders above dialup, strangely I
didn't feel attracted to them, and was
not an early adopter. Once "real" modems
showed up (the ADSL 8 megabit standard),
I was more interested. Even if the phone
company played games with them, to limit
them to 3 megabits (because their network
infrastructure at the time wasn't all that
wonderful either). It wouldn't have been
practical to Netflix or Skype video,
back in our 5/1 (= 3/0) days here.

It took three weeks for the idiots to
figure out how to turn on my ADSL service.
It took many phone calls, and finally a visit
to the phone store, before my ADSL would work.
The dude at the phone store knew right away
what was going on and said "I know who to call".
And my service was up the next day.

And back then, even if there was a lightning
strike ten miles away, the connection would
drop. Ever since the architecture changed to
using fiber to the concentrator, lightning
is much less of an issue. I can have a
storm pass here, and the connection stays
up the whole time. Progress...

Paul

On Thu, 26 May 2016 23:43:12 -0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

Not if they are trying to relieve congestion caused by hogs so that
average users can enjoy watching movies during prime time. Maybe you
mentioned that and I missed it.

Exactly. Such hours are about keeping performance up by moving big
transfers to the slow hours, not about saving money.

On Sat, 28 May 2016 12:34:17 -0400, Paul wrote:

| My current Internet is 15/1 (asymmetric).

Mine was that until this past winter, but the ISP (Time Warner Cable) upgraded to
50/5 (actually nearer 60/6) with no price increase. Now that they have been
purchased by Charter Communications, I'm anxious to see what will happen.

Larc