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In the beginning, DSL was a path out of slow dial-up speeds, then the cable companies developed HFC systems using DOCSIS for Internet. Now, Verizon claims FiOS is the fastest Internet you’ll ever need. You gotta admit, these guys are great with the acronyms, but what do they mean? And how much speed do you really need?
Though modern cable systems send their signals on fiber as far as each neighborhood, they use the older coax for the “last-mile” to each home. This is called a “hybrid-fiber-coax” or “HFC” system. On these systems, cable companies use “DOCSIS” standards to convert one (or more) of their 100+ TV channels to a 30-40Mb/s shared Internet connection, which is then shared by as many as 250 homes.
With FiOS, Verizon took a simpler but more expensive approach. Rather than stopping at the neighborhood loop, Verizon ran a fiber strand to every grouping of 2-3 homes. This provides them with much higher bandwidth and, at first glance, removes the need for shared Internet.
However, FiOS shares one limitation with its older cousin DSL. DSL was the phone company’s first attempt to provide high-speed Internet. It provided a (relatively) high-speed dedicated connection to the phone company’s central office, and at the time, phone companies ran memorable ads about cable users complaining to their neighbors about tying up the net. However, what they didn’t tell you is that the phone companies did some Internet connection-sharing of their own. Their central office contained a switch which connected all the DSL users to a single “back-haul” connection to the Internet. The capacity of the back-haul was significantly less than the sum of the capacity of all the user connections. In fact, the technical name of the switch was a “statistical multiplexer” because it dolled out limited back-haul capacity to satisfy user requests as best it could, just as the cable solution tries to provide balanced access to the limited local loop.
FiOS employs the same “statistical multiplexer” technology, doling out limited back-haul bandwidth to hundreds of users. Thus, it’s hard to say whether FiOS seems better because it has more bandwidth, or because Verizon’s penetration in a typical town is less than 30-percent, leaving much of their capacity underutilized for now.
How does this translate to surfing speed? Well, simple web-surfing rarely requires more than 2Mb/s of bandwidth (the speed of a good DSL connection or a first generation cable modem or wireless network). Games don’t often require much more (though games also require low-latency, which is another story).
Any speed above the first few Mb/s may be unnoticeable to you unless you are downloading or streaming. Both cable and FiOS provide ample speed for downloading software or streaming audio and MP3 files. In fact, it’s likely that your download speeds for these sort of files are limited by the source rather than your connection. For example, if iTunes or Adobe won’t permit an individual download to use more than 1Mb/s of their capacity, the rest of your 5Mb/s (or 15Mb/s) connection will go unused.
When does really high speed matter? In a word: Video. We all want larger, higher-resolution pictures when we stream, and really fast downloads of our favorite TV shows and movies. Unfortunately, making these wishes a reality requires more than the fastest FiOS you can buy. It requires massive servers that can simultaneously provide thousands of streams of high-speed content, and an Internet infrastructure that can provide sufficient bandwidth for all those simultaneous streams. Video support will be lacking until the entire Internet infrastructure can easily support hundreds of thousands of users downloading at speeds in excess of 1Gb/s. 1Gb/s would allow you to download an hour of regular video in a minute, or an hour of HD video in 5-10 minutes (remember when it took that long to download a song?).
This article needed more research…
The problem with cable line “sharing” is not the “sharing” itself but the nature of the sharing. The cable companies give each Internet cable modem a MAC address and all of the modems on your local branch are operating as a LAN. This means you receive your local group of users packets and vice versa. The modem then filters out the packets that have the corresponding MAC address. This means you can intercept other people’s packets via the cable line in order to reverse engineer their packets. This could be used by other people on the local branch to discover people’s online habits and/or record their correspondences with other entities online. This is completely different than the FIOS multiplexing discussed, which ALL companies and the backbones themselves use at multiple levels when framing information for transmission, making the article’s comparison pointless…
Of course, Verizon spying on its customers for the government, is a bigger issue than anything else discussed in the article, but the cable companies were likely doing that also…
While I find your technical expertise on this matter is beyond mine, as a current subscriber to FIOS internet service, I can say you are WAY off on your conclusion!
I pay $69.95/mo for a SYMMETRICAL 20Mbps connection (20Mbps download/20Mbps upload) and having had a “Comcastic” experience in the past, I can say that Verizon’s FIOS is far ahead of the competition! For now, let’s even be generous and forget for the moment that Comcast throttles P2P and is considering network bandwidth caps for everyone. Lets instead focus on LEGITIMATE non-P2P applications and real-world examples.
First, Comcast CAN’T EVEN OFFER symmetrical data rates! You are limited to 2Mpbs upload, even on their highest tier of service. If you are a gamer, or like to upload YouTube videos, this is a significant difference! My connection is TEN TIMES FASTER than Comcast on uploads!
Second, using consoles, like the XBox 360 and the PlayStation 3, I download videos from their Marketplace. On XBox, I can download a HIGH DEFINITION video and begin watching in under 30 seconds…this is almost fast enough to be considered true video streaming of high definition! Likewise, a feature length movie on PSN totalling 7GB (!) was playable after only 10 seconds and continued to play smoothly, with no additional buffering, and downloading completed 40-50 minutes into the movie.
On Comcast the experience was quite different, often re-buffering video several times during playback, and total download time for a feature movie was over 3 hours!
If you try a speed test, Comcast will use “powerboost” technology to “accellerate” your connection, showing 12-16Mbps download. In reality, you only get this speed for the first few seconds of your downloads, then Comcast will throttle you back…generally to around 3-4Mbps.
Finally, Comcast is unreliable. I had Comcast for over 2 years, and service was interrupted no less than 5 times during that period. Outages were usually short, never lasting more than a day. But they were there and Comcast tech support is a NIGHTMARE! Verizon’s FIOS I have had now since April and IT HASN’T GONE DOWN ONCE!
Bottom line is FIOS is a VERY capable offering, and THE BEST you can get right now. If it is available in your area, SIGN UP! You won’t regret it!
Statistical multiplexing? What the AUTHOR didn’t tell you is it is ANY Internet connection to YOUR house is shared.
Unless you have a direct link to the backbone of Level3 or another Tier 1 provider that costs tens of thousands per month, your connection is shared, at some point. It’s called “networking” and having a “Business Plan”. Multiplexing isn’t good/bad, it’s Economics.
“When does really high speed matter? In a word: Video.” This is completely untrue. When really high speed is required is when you have multiple users competing for the same bandwidth. Think of it like a household of 1 vs. 6 vs. a college dormitory. The more people you have, the more connections you have going to different parts of the globe, this is when you need more bandwidth. (This is actually inaccurate, the real need is when you have a high number of connections going to a high number of different sites all requiring high bandwidth. but typical usage has a single person only going to a small number of sites with low to moderate bandwidth needs at a given time, so it’s simpler to look at this as the number of users using the connection simultaneously).
“Unfortunately, making these wishes a reality requires more than the fastest FiOS you can buy. It requires massive servers that can simultaneously provide thousands of streams of high-speed content, and an Internet infrastructure that can provide sufficient bandwidth for all those simultaneous streams.”
Not correct at all. It can be achieved by using a single server and a few Mbps per channel. Then a network infrastructure that supports multicast.
100 channels to 100 users or 1 Million users will only use up to 400Mbps on the network. And the single users only uses around 3-4mbps per channel watched.
If 3 televisions in the same house are watching 3 different channels, then that would be about 12Mbps. (This example uses 720P h.264 encoded programming.) verizon’s FiOs network did not launch with multicast, but they are working on getting it there as the technology matures in the real world.
Your comparison of streaming radio stations and your description of downloading a HD program are in conflict. Downloading a HD video file in 5-10 min is NOT streaming, it’s downloading, and downloading is NOT IPTV. It’s no different than watching a DVD (which is also NOT IPTV).
With the growing desire for individuals to time-shift programming with devices like TiVo and DVRs, an individual or industry can easily use existing broadband connections of any speed to achieve the goal of viewing HD content. The only contingency is that the slower the speed, the further you are required to time shift.
“For the same price, FiOS may be a safer bet, as the larger raw bandwidth can mitigate many network issues, and put you in a better position to take advantage of future network upgrades”
The same argument could be made for Cable with DOCSIS 3.0 beginning to emerge.
“And if your COMCAST connection is flaky, have you tried complaining?”
I have found that the most effective tactic is to leave. More than their desire for happy customers, a company responds to losing a customer. If you’re unhappy, give a competitor a try. You may like it, or you may not. If not, you can always go back with a tucked tail.
RE: Mr. Arthur’s comments
Clearly you are upset with your cable provider. I think we can ALL relate to that. However; don’t confuse the GPON fiber to your house with Dark Fiber. The fiber you have CAN NOT provide you (and each of your neighbors) with 400Gbps to your house. It isn’t the holy grail, it is, in fact, shared as well (at the physical fiber layer), but it’s pretty darn good for now. Here’s an article that can help explain PON. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_network
As a side note: Verizon FiOS is NOT the fastest available. Some of us fortunate individuals have Metro-Ethernet Fiber to our homes. 100Mbps dedicated link to the ISP (Openband Multimedia), which of course is then shared out to THEIR ISP (Level 3). Sorry Verizon/Comcast… I’m not interested.
Good summary. I tend to agree with the following caveat: HD Programming. There are rumblings that some cable carriers are adding more HD channels to the computer network channels. Say, 3 compressed channels instead of 2 less compressed channels, to make up for the lack of bandwidth compared to FIOS. This results in a slightly degraded HDTV experience. This isn’t enough to make me jump from my cable to FIOS (compared for features, FIOS is more expensive and the extra internet speed means nothing to me). But if your raison d’etre is HDTV, then FIOS may win out.
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