[ NNSquad ] Re: Subject: Re: [IP] "Entry level pricing"

["George Ou" <george_ou@lanarchitect.net>]

Do you not understand the fundamental difference between wired and wireless?

Let me put this in simple terms.  DSL is 0.75 Mbps to 50 Mbps (dual-pair
FTTN at less than 1000 meters loop length) of dedicated bandwidth.  WiMAX is
40 Mbps of SHARED capacity (potentially thousands of users) when using 10
MHz of exclusively licensed spectrum under ideal conditions.  Move to the
edge of coverage areas, live in coverage hole, use an indoor antenna, and
the throughput can easily be halved or even chopped by 10.  That's the
fundamental tradeoff between coverage and throughput.  If the signal to
noise (SNR) ratio is low, you can only reliably transmit half a bit per Hz
per second.  When the SNR is high, you can transmit 4 bits per Hz per
second.  Even if we call it 20 Mbps of total capacity, split that among the
active users on a single base station and you begin to realize that there is
no comparison to wired broadband.

Is this by design?  Of course it is.  Can they give you a base station with
only 10 people on it?  Technically they can, but it would cost you an arm
and a leg and no one would buy that kind of service.

George Ou

   [ But the issues of sharing and oversubscription are relevant
     across all forms of Internet access, not just wireless.  ISPs
     make essentially arbitrary decisions about how many customers
     will share most elements of the physical plant.  Yes, DSL is a
     dedicated pair back to the CO or terminal, but after that it's
     just as subject to oversubscription performance problems -- from
     the subscribers' standpoint, as anything else.  And of course, as
     lowly subscribers, we usually have no clue how bad that
     oversubscription or other undercapacity problems will be at any
     given time.

     So the fundamental issue, in the absence of regulatory standards
     addressing this area, is that when you pay for a circuit that
     says "up to" some speed, that usually tells you basically nothing
     about the true performance of the circuit.  For most other
     products, if manufacturers routinely provided fewer units than
     suggested in packaging, they'd be in hot water immediately.  Not
     so with Internet access.

        -- Lauren Weinstein
           NNSquad Moderator ]

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Smiley [mailto:im.russell.smiley@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 5:30 AM
To: George Ou
Cc: nnsquad@nnsquad.org
Subject: Re: [ NNSquad ] Re: Subject: Re: [IP] "Entry level pricing"

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 10:58 PM, George Ou <george_ou@lanarchitect.net>
wrote:
> There's no "DSL" in WiMAX, so the confusing stems from the fact that you
> haven't accurately disclosed your situation.  Wireless is a completely
> different animal and you should not be comparing it to wired DSL service.
>

I don't see why not. The radio aspects of the connection are fairly
ideal (clear line of sight to basestation, full signal strength) so
what I'm left with is that I subscribed to 3Mbps download with 512kbps
upload and suffered extremely poor performance - consistently well
below what was advertised. Apparently the radio part of the system is
performing satisfactorily so what I'm left with is that the ISP part
of the system is failing to perform - probably as a result of their
design/investment decisions.

Russell.