Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.dcom.telecom > #359 > unrolled thread

Comcast bumps up speed for home-Internet users [telecom]

Back to article view | Back to comp.dcom.telecom

Contents

  Comcast bumps up speed for home-Internet users [telecom] Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com> - 2011-04-14 10:51 -0500
    Re: Comcast bumps up speed for home-Internet users [telecom] Jim Bennett <ajbcommconsulting@frontier.com> - 2011-04-15 00:15 -0400
      Re: Comcast bumps up speed for home-Internet users [telecom] Koos van den Hout <koos+newsposting@kzdoos.xs4all.nl> - 2011-04-15 13:35 +0000
        Re: Comcast bumps up speed for home-Internet users [telecom] Doug McIntyre <merlyn@geeks.org> - 2011-04-15 15:22 +0000
    Re: Comcast bumps up speed for home-Internet users [telecom] kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2011-04-15 12:02 -0400

#359 — Comcast bumps up speed for home-Internet users [telecom]

By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY, April 14, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO - Home Internet users' need for speed is about to get a 
major rush.

Comcast on Thursday is expected to announce a new, blur-fast residential 
service, called Extreme 105, available to consumers in more than 40 
million homes in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Boston, 
Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Miami, among others.

The service delivers data at 105 megabits per second - more than 60 
times faster than a T-1 line, which most businesses rely on, Comcast says.

http://tinyurl.com/6k4tgy6

Neal McLain

[toc] | [next] | [standalone]

#363

> Jon Swartz, writing in USA TODAY [April 14, 2011] wrote:
>
> The service delivers data at 105 megabits per second - more than 60
> times faster than a T-1 line, which most businesses rely on, Comcast says.
>

Comcast has been comparing their basic business package to T1 service in 
their radio ads for a while now.  I have always found it to be an 
"apples to oranges" comparison, because most businesses that I know who 
have a T1 use it for phone service - as it was intended.

Some companies have a dynamic data service T1 or similar connection type 
that is also used for internet access, but that is usually part of a 
hosted VoIP package intended to replace centrex.

And just to be a total semantic PITA [something I do often], bitrate is 
not the same thing as speed: Speed is a measure of how long it takes to 
get from point A to point B, which is quantified as latency.  Latency in 
packet networks is measured in milliseconds, whereas on a T1 or other 
SDH pipe it is measured in microseconds.

That said, it is true that virtually everyone uses the term "fast" to 
mean "high bitrate," so Comcast is only speaking the language of the 
land, and one can't fault them for that.  However, it would make more 
sense to compare their new offering to similar offerings in urban and 
suburban areas from other providers, such as metro ethernet service at 
100 Mbps.  In some urban areas, the big telecom players are rolling out 
metro ethernet offerings at even higher bitrates than that.

Jim
**************************************************
Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

***** Moderator's Note *****

At least in this state, many companies go to a Competive Local
Exchange Carrier (CLEC), and order a "T1" line for both their phone
circuits and for data. It seems there is a "tariff niche" which
specifies a discounted rate for T1 lines whenever they are used for
voice traffic, so those companies get data connections at a fraction
of the rate that would be charged for T1 circuits if they were used
only for data.

Bill Horne
Moderator

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#368

Jim Bennett <ajbcommconsulting@frontier.com> wrote in <20110415041510.GD32349@telecom.csail.mit.edu>:
>> Jon Swartz, writing in USA TODAY [April 14, 2011] wrote:
>>
>> The service delivers data at 105 megabits per second - more than 60
>> times faster than a T-1 line, which most businesses rely on, Comcast says.
>>

> Comcast has been comparing their basic business package to T1 service in 
> their radio ads for a while now.  I have always found it to be an 
> "apples to oranges" comparison, because most businesses that I know who 
> have a T1 use it for phone service - as it was intended.

It (has been) a popular measure of bandwidth: I have seen cases where
marketing types of european internet-related companies kept insisting an
answer whether they had T1 or T3 connectivity (back when T1 was
'affordable' for a company and a T3 'expensive'). Having something else was
incomprehensible.

But there is one thing a (business-rate) T1 Internet connection offers[3]
which comcast isn't even getting close to: you can fill it with IP
traffic 24 hours per day for the entire month and the worst that could
happen is a salesguy calling up if you might be interested in an upgrade.

Back of the envelope calculation[1]: that's over 380 gigabyte/month in one
direction.

Current highest monthly cap for comcast services is 250 gigabyte/month[2].

[1] 150000 bytes/second * 3600 seconds * 24 hour * 30 days = 388800000000
bytes.

[2] source:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/comcast_rolls_out_105mbps_internet_across_nation

[3] based on http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1825

                                                   Koos

-- 
Koos van den Hout,           PGP keyid DSS/1024 0xF0D7C263 via keyservers
koos@kzdoos.xs4all.nl
                                           Weather maps from free sources at
http://idefix.net/                                http://weather.idefix.net/

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#370

Koos van den Hout <koos+newsposting@kzdoos.xs4all.nl> writes:
>Jim Bennett <ajbcommconsulting@frontier.com> wrote in <20110415041510.GD32349@telecom.csail.mit.edu>:
>>> Jon Swartz, writing in USA TODAY [April 14, 2011] wrote:
>>>
>>> The service delivers data at 105 megabits per second - more than 60
>>> times faster than a T-1 line, which most businesses rely on, Comcast says.

>> Comcast has been comparing their basic business package to T1 service in 
>> their radio ads for a while now.  I have always found it to be an 
>> "apples to oranges" comparison, because most businesses that I know who 
>> have a T1 use it for phone service - as it was intended.

>It (has been) a popular measure of bandwidth: I have seen cases where
>marketing types of european internet-related companies kept insisting an
>answer whether they had T1 or T3 connectivity..

Unfortunately, while businesses have the idea of a T1 pretty firmly
ingrained in, they don't know how much bandwidth it actually carries. 

I get alot of comments from business type customers that their 20Mbps
cable connection isn't fast enough, someday they'll be able to afford and
get a massive bandwidth upgrade and go to T1..

***** Moderator's Note *****

Well, they're not right about the speed, but that's not necessarily an
unproductive goal. A "T-1" circuit goes from a business directly to
their ISP, so they get _all_ the bandwidth, _all_ of the time. However
"fast" a cable connection might be, it is still only a pipe to the
cable company, and after that the cableco can mix it in with a million
other users to save costs, or screw with connections to places they
don't like (as Comcast has been doing), or exact tribute from those
who don't want to get sidelined, etc.

In any case, most business transactions aren't high-bandwidth: emails,
for example. That means that latency is the important factor, because
try as they might, business can never train their employees to ignore
the "sending email" message after they finish an email, so getting a
response quickly (as happens with a T-1 that's only two or three hops
away from the backbone) is usually a better choice than getting a
higher bandwidth but waiting longer for it.

Bill Horne
Moderator

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#371

Neal McLain  <nmclain@annsgarden.com> wrote:
>Comcast on Thursday is expected to announce a new, blur-fast residential 
>service, called Extreme 105, available to consumers in more than 40 
>million homes in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Boston, 
>Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Miami, among others.
>
>The service delivers data at 105 megabits per second - more than 60 
>times faster than a T-1 line, which most businesses rely on, Comcast says.

Wow!  That's as fast as most Korean homes had in 2005!
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[toc] | [prev] | [standalone]

Back to top | Article view | comp.dcom.telecom

csiph-web