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hi~ there~
I visited three news groups introduced in the link and I found that the price of unlimited bandwith is different.
I just wanna know the reason why the price is different.
Giga news is highest. right? Is that about diffenrce of feeding rate ?
I still don't understand why they think they can charge so much.. The one thing they have going for them is their retention rate, but thats not going to hang on as other providers are going to be slowly upgrading their retention rates.
Depending on the packages you're looking at, you might be paying for the SSL connection and also the amount of connections that you will be using to connect to the newsgroup.
Hope this helps..
-Mutantx
I guess you mean 'news SERVERS', not 'news groups'.Quote:
Originally Posted by bobtong
Right now, mainly because of the near 'free fall' of storage (read: hard drive) costs, things are in extreme flux as far as pricing is concerned. Stay tuned closely for a fair amount of changes in this in the very near future, I think.
The transfer rate has a lot more to due with a host of factors other than the number (and raw speed) of what the provider can supply.
Do a trace route (tracert) from your machine to the server in question. Some news-servers have a 'reverse trace route' tool that will give you the same info, but from that servers 'perspective' from them back to you. Minimum number of hops, with minimal delays are, of course, better than the reverse (lots of hops with large delays).
You might find that a certain provider is 'closer' to you than another, and the routing to yet another goes through 'wacky' turns and such. You can't change that, it's whoever programmed the routers with the companies handling the traffic.
A good example is Giganews; it's server plant used to be in Phoenix, but in recent years got moved to the 'tech' corridor in Virginia outside of Wash DC, so if you're on the west coast, the bits have to crawl the 3500 miles cross country.
Then again, AstraWeb is headquarted in San Jose, so for those on the west coast, it's almost 'local'.
Things have, of course, gotten much better over the years. The speed and redundancy of the internetworks has gotten MUCH better (I, for one, guess I didn't waste my 30+ years engineering those systems for naught!).
The SSL question is really appropriate only for those on systems that the provider is using 'illegal' (according to the recent FCC rulings) 'traffic shaping' (better known as 'traffic management' to those using it)m slowing down certain protocols to provide more bandwidth to other money making segments of their business model (PPV, 'on-demand', etc).
Cablecos and a handful of very small telcos have, got appropriately 'wacked' (fined) by 'uncle charlie (the FCC), and have started to figure out other ways to ding (charge $$$) their 'customers'.
So, unless you need it to get around such restrictions (due to your local ISP), it may not be an issue.
So, a lot of factors enter into it, not just the adverts 'blurb' of that particular provider. What mix of speed/responsiveness/features is really very unique to each persons situation.
Very interesting information Beck. Thanks!
I wouldn't see why you wouldn't go for SSL if the option is there. Regardless of whether your ISP is giving you issues at the moment or not.
Just my 2 cents..
-Mutantx
That's true, one never knows when some executive at (put your broadband provider name here) decides that they have this *great* way to improve their revenue. :w00t:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutantx
They have basically limited options: make the customers pay up front for more (would work REALLY good right about now!), or dance around the edges harassing certain users who appear to be using copious amounts of that bandwidth. The poor torrent folks have so far been the main target of such 'thinking'.
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A Bit of Additional Thinking from Someone (Me) who has built/designed a pretty good chunk of the internet over the past 30+ years):
I think folks really don't 'know' exactly what kind of bandwidth exists out there 'in the world'. The last 10 years, before I retired, I never touched a SINGLE PIECE of fiber that didn't have at least 400Mb/s on it (OC12), and most were OC48 (2.4Gb/s)if not several times that (OC192/10Gb/s and above).
The amount of intercity bandwidth now between major US cities, and between CONTINENTS, is jaw-dropping. In my presentations to non-telecom people (Mayors, Governors, etc) I always used the example if EVERYONE in the US took their phone OFF-HOOK all at once, and called each other, the percent of the internet that would be used (circuit-switched vrs packet switched, of course) would be somewhere below 5%. BTW, the standard bit rate of voice phone circuits is 64kb/s, so one can 'do the math' so to speak. (In short, if everyone had a T1/1.544Mb/s (!), it would just about be filled up). Neat!
The problem, as pointed out by some folks, is that the bandwidth doesn't 'reach' into the rural areas too well. But the reason for that has been state LAWS that were put into effect through the efforts of the telcos and cablecos, to 'limit competition'.
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Now, back to the original thought..
Not to say port 119 (NNTP) traffic might be next). But a lot of providers already dance around that, even without using SSL, so it's already pretty moot. It's MAD (mutually assured deception). Unless you want to invest in some pretty heavy duty programming (and hardware) to scan all the packets traveling though your system, it's simply too easy to go around or spoof.
Even the cablecos were really losing to the Torrents even before the FCC ruling (remember, though, they ARE cablecos, which in most folks reasoning, are just the other side of rocks as it comes to smarts).