Technology

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[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 14 hours ago* (7 children)

It's not some reason, the reason is that file transfer uses bytes.

Hiding it is anti-consumer.

What good is it that i can reach the local node in 1000Mbit/s if their first hop to an internet server slows the connection to 90%?

If i upgrade to the 2500Mbit/s connection, am i only getting 90% of that too?

They should advertise what internet service they're really providing.

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[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (6 children)

The job of computer networks and network devices is not file transfer. Its to pass information, only a subset of which is for file transfer. Networking devices pass pass bits between each other, so it only makes sense to measure how many of those bits they can pass per second.

Hiding it is not anti-consumer. Nothing is being hidden. The capabilities of the devices are simply being accurately described based on the job they perform and the way they perform it.

What good is it that i can reach the local node in 1000Mbit/s if their first hop to an internet server slows the connection by 90%?

The first hop to an internet server doesn’t slow the connection by 90%. The connection remains at 100% the entire time.

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[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 14 hours ago (5 children)

If it is 100% why is it 90%?

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[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (4 children)

You’re referring to two different things. You are using 100% of the bandwidth they’ve sold to you, which is 1000Mb/s or 125MB/s. Thats the “speed” at which you’re transferring data across the network.

90% of that bandwidth — that you are using 100% of —consists of the file data you’re downloading.

This is why those two numbers are not interchangeable, and why simply converting to bytes won’t result in the numbers you expect as a consumer. Because of the very nature of how computer networking works.

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[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

If the file is downloading at 112 megabytes per second, how is the link maxing out at 125 megabytes per second?

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[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

That is a very good question.

The answer can be simplified down to what is really two answers.

The first is: Overhead. When you download a file over the Internet, it’s broken down into many many little messages called packets, which you can think of like postal envelopes. Each envelope holds pieces of your file, but that’s not all they hold. They have to hold the senders address, the receivers address, your zip code, your town, your state, your country, etc. all the info it needs so the postal service (Networking equipment) knows how to deliver it. Let’s say the file you’re downloading is an image. The person sending it to you takes a piece of that image and puts it in an envelope and mails it. They intend to do the same with a million other pieces of the photo until you on the other end can take all the pieces together and look at the photo. This postal service of sorts will also put that envelope inside other bigger envelopes to help it move through the system, among other things. These encasing envelopes get put on and stripped off at various points during the journey, but each of those envelopes are tangible objects. Just because the envelopes themselves are not part of the image you’re sending/receiving, doesn’t mean they don’t take up space in the back of the mail truck. Also before they even started sending the pieces of the image, you and the person on the other end had to exchange a few letters agreeing to the image delivery. You also frequently send letters to each other to keep track of what was sent and what was received, etc to make sure everyone’s on the same page every step of the way, and not all of them contain pieces of the image.

To make things more complicated, “Downloading a file” can mean a great many things to a computer. In the case of the photo, what happens if some of the envelopes get lost? Luckily the postal service has a mechanism that helps the recipient notice that one of the pieces of the image you were expecting never arrived, so you can send a letter back informing the sender so that they can send that piece again. After all you don’t want holes in your picture. Let’s say that works — you now received that piece. Well that piece took up space in the postal truck the first time it was sent to you, and it took up space again the second time they sent it to you. There are other ways of downloading a file though where you and the sender agree not to resend any lost envelopes, you’ll just deal with the holes in the photo. This obviously takes up less space overall because there are no duplicate envelopes being sent, and this decision is made without consulting the postal service. It’s strictly a decision made between you and the sender.

The second answer, which we will keep the letter metaphor for, is that not every piece of mail you send out or receive relates to that image you’re sending. You get a bill from your doctor in the mail, Your birthday is tomorrow so you receive a letter from your grandma. All kinds of stuff. The postal service is delivering all of it to you and it all takes up space in the truck a long side the pieces of that image.

Now you paid for a finite amount of space in the mail truck, and during this time you’re filling that space you paid for down to every last inch. You filled it with the pieces of the image in the envelopes, the envelopes themselves, the envelopes that don’t have pieces of the image in them but are related to the image, letters and the envelopes that contain them that were mailed to you by your doctor and your grandma, etc.

You filled 100% of the space you paid for in the mail truck, but only 90% of that space is taken up by the pieces of the image. The other 10% is filled with duplicates to earlier lost pieces of mail, the envelopes themselves, and the unrelated letters you’re receiving from other people.

This is why the postal service advertises to you and bills you based on space in the truck, a known and quantifiable amount of space they can commit to you, and not by how fast that particular image or anything else will be delivered. The postal service doesn’t exist for you to send images, it exists to send ... stuff. All the stuff, it doesn’t care what. They give you the space, you decide what to fill it with. How much of that space is taken up by just your image pieces is dependent on the image your sending, the way that you and the sender agreed to send it, how full the image piece envelopes are with other sets of instructions meant for you and the sender that doesn’t involve the postal service at all that you stuff in next to the image piece, etc. That’s your prerogative. What the post office is concerned about, and should be concerned about, is that the space you paid for is available to you on the truck, and that the truck will successfully deliver your mail from your local post office to the next post office on the route.

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[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 child)

Thank you for the detailed explanation. It makes sense why the ISP can most easily measure the network bit speed, rather than the speed or bandwidth of services carried on the network.

It still isn't a very useful measurement for a layperson customer. In other industries, regulations exist that make it easier for the customer to place the data shown to their real world use of the service. Which in your metaphor might be "how much stuff can I send through the postal service", rather than "how big is the postal truck?." I get that this is a harder question to estimate for, but it is the more useful question to answer for the customer, and questions like these are answered in other industries.

For example, cars are sold with EPA-mandated miles per gallon estimates. Appliances are sold with energy star ratings. They are not perfect estimates, and everything from wind resistance to road quality to driving style is going to affect miles per gallon. The car company might prefer to share the thermal efficiency of the engine, or the rolling resistance of the stock tires, which they have more control over rather than the messy real world miles per gallon. But this isn't very useful to know for the customer, who will be driving in the real world.

If I fire up btop and I run two speedtests at once, I can measure what Mbps I am getting when my connection is maxxed out, and compare that to the speed the ISP quotes. If we convert that to megabytes (or mebibytes if you prefer) per second, and apply a scaling factor to represent the packet overhead, you could arrive at an estimated maximum megabyte/s file transfer speed, which would be more in the ballpark of what a customer would see when they fire up Steam and try to download GTA VI, which is 250 GB.

Packet overhead varies depending on the protocol (I read this for reference: https://linuxvox.com/blog/what-is-the-optimal-size-of-a-udp-packet-for-maximum-throughput/#overhead-when-extra-bytes-eat-into-throughput) but since miles per gallon also varies based on multiple factors, I think giving an estimated max download speed is fair.

I don't see what the downside would be to have the network speed listed in Mbps like always, and also give an estimated file download speed for reference.

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[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

You’re still not quite getting it.

It makes sense why the ISP can most easily measure the network bit speed, rather than the speed or bandwidth of services carried on the network.

There are two big flaws in your logic here. The first is that you’re trying to logically separate the overhead from the desired function itself such as a file download. As if the ISP should account for overhead, and give you a number that represents the ultimate file transfer speed. But both the file transfer speed and the overhead belong to you. You’re trying to get away with not counting the envelopes in the back of the truck because they’re incidental to what you actually want which is the data inside, but the envelopes are still yours, not the ISPs. “The speed or bandwidth of the services carried in the network” includes the overhead.

The second flaw is that you latched into the overhead but forgot the other half of the answer which is that you just have other traffic going on. Just because you’re downloading something from Steam, doesn’t mean you iPhone isn’t also trying to download updates, etc.

It still isn't a very useful measurement for a layperson customer. In other industries, regulations exist that make it easier for the customer to place the data shown to their real world use of the service.

It’s a very useful measurement for a layperson customer. It tells you exactly what you’re getting, and gives you a number you can use to determine how it affects your personal requirements. Sure you’d have to google it and learn what it means which will take you a few minutes, but if you really care you’ll take the time to do that. Megabits per second are your real world use of the service. There’s nothing abstract in unreal about it. Using your car analogy, does every customer know exactly what a horsepower is? Or what lb-feet of torque is? Are car manufacturers being dishonor at by not renaming these things to something every tom dick and Harry off the street would intuitively understand without so much as a google search? Of course not. And what about air conditioners? Do customers just inherently know what a BTU is, or are they expected to look into what that is and how many they need for their home before they buy one? Nearly everything you buy is like this in some level.

cars are sold with EPA-mandated miles per gallon estimates.

Yes and you’re expected to know how much liquid a gallon is and how far a mile is, then take those numbers and apply it to your personal daily commute and car usage. I don’t know why a customer should be expected to know what those two measurements are but not what their Internet bandwidth is.

You could have ISPs include a tidbit of estimated average file transfer speed, but that literally cannot be the way you advertise or bill for service. It would be informational only. And the reason they generally don’t do that is two fold, firstly, file transfer speed is not the product they’re selling you. It’s a function of a hyper specific process that is related to the product they’re selling you. Secondly, it just gives customers an inaccurate number for them to misunderstand and then complain about. When you give somebody a number they expect to see that number. It’s easier to give a customer a number that you can quantify and verify and say “Here you go, you’re getting the number we promised you” than to give them a number based on guesses and averages and then when they complain all you can tell them is “We never promised you this number, this was just a guess”. Customers really don’t want to hear that.