All Things Technology Related Thread

[Dirtbag59]

This starts to worry me. I knew Comcast was awful but ever since they started "testing overage fees" in Atlanta back in November and reinstating data caps for the first time in about a year and a half I've found myself coming across a lot more of these:


Then I saw the article where a Level 3 exec basically called out the major isp's, and was particularly drawn to a part where he was quoted as saying:
Level 3: Your Broadband Company May Be Holding Your Internet Access Hostage - TIME

The company said that most network interconnections operate at around 36 percent capacity, which allows for an easy flow of traffic between the networks. But on the six networks it claims are problematic, it said congestion has been around 90 percent for more than a year. At this level of congestion, the connection is saturated and packets are dropped often for several hours a day.

But that argument is “unreasonable on its face,” writes another Level 3 executive, Michael Mooney, in a blog post in March, and “entirely inconsistent” with the fact those broadband providers already make a lot of money from consumers who pay them to deliver content at certain speeds. The ISPs’ refusal to help maintain the peering connections that they rely on is simply creating a global game of chicken, he writes. Who blinks first is less the point than who is suffering is mean time: everyday internet users, whose YouTube video won’t stop “buffering,” whose NBA playoff games won’t stream, and whose web pages, at a peak hours, sometimes simply won’t load.

Am I reading this right or just wearing extra tin foil on my hat? I mean I realize Level 3 has their own vested self-interest in this tragedy but the major ISP's haven't exactly done much to endear themselves to the general public.