

Proof that Telstra Bigpond is Throttling Youtube Bandwidth in Australia (video) - SpacemanSpiff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iDRynyBl0c#t=4m49s

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noonespecial
We've found that telstra throttles all kinds of things on the way into and out
of Australia. So much so that a simple openvpn tunnel between our rack there
and our rack in NJ (USA) makes just about everything better.

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danudey
Ouch, I feel for Australians. Even the best numbers there are pretty low, and
the lowest ones (Telstra's, it seems) are atrocious.

For comparison, here's mine:
<http://ss.corecursion.com/myspeed-20100509-142516.png>

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ianium
Who do you have for your ISP, if you don't mind me asking? Here's Telus (25Mb
fiber):
[http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/349/chartchxtx2cychds3auw...](http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/349/chartchxtx2cychds3auwz1.png)

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noibl
Remember, these are averaged numbers.

The Australian broadband market is highly segmented according to speed. Until
quite recently Telstra Bigpond was offering a 256Kbit connection labelled
'ADSL broadband' with 512Kbit and 1.5Mbit connections priced significantly
higher. The idea of an 8Mbit or 20Mbit connection would be almost science
fiction to their traditional customer base.

Now that FTTH is coming into play in some areas and Bigpond's market share is
dropping, higher speeds are becoming more affordable but there are still a lot
of people on those lower speed plans. I suspect this is what is skewing the
graph labelled 'ISP', more than any selective throttling by the ISP (though I
certainly wouldn't put that past them either).

The comparison to other ISPs is not entirely fair either because their
customers tend to be clustered in areas where the ISPs have their own hardware
in Telstra's exchanges and can therefore offer higher speeds and attractive
pricing. Elsewhere in the country, Bigpond and lower speeds are both much more
prevalent.

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ansonparker
This is shocking. Let's hope this gets some media attention.

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10ren
4.29 Mbps average, in melbourne, significantly higher than all the other rates
(including my ISP, iinet). It bursts up to 8 Mbps. It's probably because I'm
very close to the exchange (I checked before I moved).

FWIW, it has made no impact on my life satisfaction whatsoever. People rave
about highspeed internet, esp in Japan; it sounds cool, but the applications
aren't there yet (not for me, anyway). I'd appreciate lower latency, though,
for games.

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ippisl
If you look at future applications , there isn't a big benefit from higher
bandwidth.

For video , 720p takes 2mbit(youtube's 720p) , and the difference between 720p
to 1080p isn't very big.if we go to 3D , it might be doubled , but with smart
compression , might be less.

For video conferencing , the compression is much more effective because of the
small frame to frame changes, so i think you can get 1080p at 2mbit up + 2mbit
down.if i recall right , in the right setting , 1080p is needed to give you
the illusion of being in the same room.

For bit-torrent,to make streaming possible(i think streaming is the most
natural way of video consumption), probably what is needed is higher uploads
,and configuration such that uploading doesn't slow the download side , not a
higher download bandwidth.

For video game streaming(onlive.com) , what's important is the latency . i
believe the speed is good enough.

The other future application of fast bandwidth is using cloud storage as your
HDD. not a very attractive application if you ask me. dropbox is good enough.

So i don't see anything in the horizon requiring very high bandwidth internet
for the home. 10-15 down / 4 up would be more than enough for any average
family.

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10ren
"640K is enough for anyone" (misquote). When there's an excess of computing
power of some kind, it may make possible that was previously inconceivable.
And if you're the one to conceive and act on it...

An easy one is 3D video (1080p x 2); but I like the idea of omni-video, on a
spherical screen with you at the center (or like omniMax, like iMax, but
hemispherical so it also covers your peripheral vision - I've experienced it,
and the effect is amazing).

Thought expt: what data is inconceivably massive to transmit?

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artsrc
Humans have physically limited sensory bandwidth. Your ears, eyes, nose, etc.
can't process more than a limited amount.

So higher bandwidth can help move some processing about and make different
architectures possible, but they can't make the experience much richer.

~~~
10ren
Interesting point, but the thing about eyes is that they can look in
unpredicted directions, so you need much more data available than just what
the eye can process.

This wouldn't be true if we didn't have lag (then we could just stream the
right images for where the eye was looking). But our eyes are extremely
sensitive to lag - even done 100% locally, it's difficult to be fast enough
(or used to be).

To compensate, we can download a whole environment, and track the eyes
locally.

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heresy
Telstra's subsidiary in New Zealand was also at the bottom of all rankings,
but this week they installed the Google cache boxes to mask the issue.

YouTube now hits 3-5Mbps for me. At start of playback it appears to burst a
chunk of video, and as it gets close to needing to buffer, it bursts another
chunk.

Maybe the Australian parent should look into it, it helps a lot.

I can actually watch 720p and higher without having to pause and come back in
10 minutes.

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andrewtj
Gut instinct is that's unlikely to be caused by anything that a cache box can
fix as international connectivity isn't as big of an issue on this side of the
pond¹.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Australia...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Australia#International)

[http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/3435625/Top-business-
figures...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/3435625/Top-business-figures-in-
bold-broadband-bid)

¹ I'm not saying international connectivity is great in Australia, just that
it's a lot better than what the Kiwis have.

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heresy
Good to know as I'm planning on crossing the ditch soon :)

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robotkad
While I don't agree with the tactic, it is actually a very clever way of
reducing bandwidth usage by Telstra. Most youtube videos stream fine at 1Mb/s.
I'd guess that a lot of youtube clips are closed before they are over and any
buffered data is "wasted".

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PanMan
But Google does a lot of trafic shaping as well: If you Wget a video, you see
the first bytes stream in really quickly, after which the speed goes down. No
need for your ISP to do this as well. I assume Google tweaks it so your buffer
doesn't get empty, but also not too full: if you decide the close the video,
the buffer is wasted (which, on Youtube's scale, is a LOT of data).

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sheldonwt
Have you ever met anybody with a more agitating tone in his voice?

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altzone
That's your only comment? My voice and accent is what it is. If you want the
technical details, it's called a High Rising Terminal. Show us YOUR video blog
and we'll all pass judgment on you. Dave.

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daeken
Just wanted to say, thanks for the work you've put into EEVblog. I stumbled
upon it while looking for info about the Rigol scope and have been following
your stuff ever since. Keep up the good work.

