What has changed-not as much talk about internet traffic management?

martin57

Hi folks,


Just wondered aobut this for a while. A few years ago lots of talk about internet traffic management lots of congestion and slow down, now with companies like talktalk its download all you like, as well as all tv on demand and streaming movies from most isp's.


Has any thing changed in the infrastructure that seems to allow this download as much as you like?


Thanks
Martin57

MataNui

I think what is happening is that traffic management is becoming such a standard way or working that they simply dont tell customers about it anymore. In other words there is now less transparency in the way they do traffic management.

Dont forget that more users are using more devices than ever. Also user connection speeds are increasing. This doesnt mean that the providers infrastructure speeds also increase. In fact if anything it means they are under far more pressure than ever before.

Downloading as much as you want really has nothing to do with traffic management. Traffic management involves a whole raft of measures. ISPs can now throttle connections based on time, device connecting, media being viewed etc. I guess my point is that now technology has made traffic management more efficient, users are noticing the effect much less which means ISPs are under less pressure to talk about the exact methods they use. I dont believe for a second that talktalk use no traffic management.

forgotmyname

Plenty of BT threads saying people have gone over their monthly limits.

Speeds have increased. Over the years i have gone from being too far from the exchange to get ADSL to getting 0.5MB then they upgraded and said i could get 2MB on a good day. To getting a reliable 4MB.
Now i am getting 73MB.

Sometimes its still slow though. Depends where your getting your data from.

I was on Vimeo? last night and the video kept pausing after 30 seconds.

kwikbreaks

I think the widespread use of perfectly legal HD streaming forced the ISPs to increase their capacities. They'll still shape NNTP andP2P if they can to protect their bandwith for streaming which is now so widespread that they'd get a load of flack and lose customers if it didn't work well. Loads are even flogging catch up TV services.

I have fibre that peaks at about 70Mbps and it will do http downloads pretty much indefinately at 8MBps+ from sources that can deliver that sort of speed.

phona

martin57 wrote: »

Has any thing changed in the infrastructure that seems to allow this download as much as you like?

The infrastructure is constantly changing.

Networking 101: the internet is made of a bunch of servers (where data like web pages live) and routers. The routers transmit data in the form of packets between servers and your computer/phone/tablet.
You probably have a "router" in your house, most ISPs provide them for wireless access. This performs a subset of tasks a router does. Infrastructure routers vary in size but as a guide are roughly the size of a microwave oven.

My job is developing the software that runs on these routers. We are constantly producing more code that improves them; all with basically one goal: to make packets move quicker.
Couple this with hardware getting better and better (a new laptop now is ~1.5 times faster than one bought 18 months ago, for example) and what you get is the network able to handle more and more.
I work with a lot of very clever people who know a lot more about this stuff than I do (I am but a graduate) and it is them (at least in part) you have to thank for your unlimited high-speed connection. It's an industry worth billions every year.

Is this enough to keep up with demand? Probably not. The use of the world wide web is decreasing, but the internet is in constant growth with apps, voice and video becoming more and more common. As we enter the era of the 'cloud' and 'internet of things' where your fridge, car and boiler are all online, this will only continue.
Certain applications need to run in real-time, so require a lower latency through the network. In brief this means packets need to get from the server to your device quicker. Applications include video, online gaming (PS4 etc, not so much Facebook games!) and telephony. It is possible to mark packets belonging to these applications as higher priority so they skip queues around the network and make it to you quicker - this is a bit like a bus lane in a busy city. Other applications, like browsing a forum for example, can afford to wait a couple of seconds extra so this is low priority traffic.

It keeps a lot of people very busy anyway. From where I'm sitting, my unlimited broadband seems like pretty good value for money.

LazyTyper

phona wrote: »

. Infrastructure routers vary in size but as a guide are roughly the size of a microwave oven.

Try about 10 microwave ovens stacked up.



It's worth knowing as well that the network to network connections have improved greatly also over the years. Where 100 Mbps connections were standard, we are now looking at 1Gbps and 10Gbps and multiples of 10 Gbps which are bonded (a few are now also using 100Gbps connectors). So naturally Internet provider capacities are greater than before which handle the increased use of video on demand.

While some providers do use traffic management, some don't and simply allow their links to fill up and deny there is any congestion.