UK Slow broadband? You won't be able to switch providers to speed up your Wi-Fi anytime soon

[Deathdefyer]

UK BROADBAND SLOWS AND SUSPENDS NEW INSTALLATIONS

 

Today the UK "Daily Express" reports on how the UK's ISP Infrastructure, Openreach take drastic action to suspend ALL, NEW INSTALLS for home broadband (with few exceptions) from today amidst the outbreak of COVID-19. Many current Customer's have their stream quality downgraded to 480p without warning including Amazon Prime Video 

Netflix , Disney+ , YouTube and download speed restrictions across console gaming from Playstation Network and XBOX Live In order to ease some of the pressure on the broadband infrastructure across the UK during the public health crisis. March 31, 2020. Click the link for full story.

[Taf the Ghost]

UK being UK again.

[leadeater]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

UK being UK again.

Well not much you can do when your internet infrastructure is at the point of failing lol.

 

On the other side of the globe NZ is having the highest network demand ever and is coping fine with Chorus saying their is plenty of extra capacity. It's nice when such a large investment comes right home to roost 

 

Also please, for the love of everything, stop calling it "Wi-Fi". ARGH! Perpetuating stupid is stupid, journalists suck.

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Well not much you can do when your internet infrastructure is at the point of failing lol.

 

On the other side of the globe NZ is having the highest network demand ever and is coping fine with Chorus saying their is plenty of extra capacity. It's nice when such a large investment comes right home to roost 

 

Also please, for the love of everything, stop calling it "Wi-Fi". ARGH! Perpetuating stupid is stupid, journalists suck.

hey even here in the US with all our data caps being lifted (we totally needed them to keep the network alive right) we still doing just fine. I'm not quite getting my full 120/120 in the day but I only pay for 100/100 so geting 85/85 is okay

 

don't get me started on rants of people not calling stuff the right name. I've wanted to yell at people who can't remember to call a SSD an SSD not any storage drive a HDD.

[Taf the Ghost]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well not much you can do when your internet infrastructure is at the point of failing lol.

 

On the other side of the globe NZ is having the highest network demand ever and is coping fine with Chorus saying their is plenty of extra capacity. It's nice when such a large investment comes right home to roost 

 

Also please, for the love of everything, stop calling it "Wi-Fi". ARGH! Perpetuating stupid is stupid, journalists suck.

Being from the States and having been on the receiving end of "haha, your Internet sucks!" comments for a rather long time, I've gotten quite the enjoyment out of most of the EU networks throttling horribly. There's obviously still people in the States with issues (when you've got, functionally, 1000s of networks, some are bound to have issues), but I will enjoy laughing about backbones in the future.

 

And, yeah, I really hate the "wifi" as Access Point terminology. Been really confused when I see travelers talk about getting "wifi" all over the country they're traveling in with a device.

[GDRRiley]

3 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Being from the States and having been on the receiving end of "haha, your Internet sucks!" comments for a rather long time, I've gotten quite the enjoyment out of most of the EU networks throttling horribly.

it maybe slow but at least when everyone uses it, it doesn't get that much slower. (Said in stupid defensive tone)

[captain_to_fire]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Also please, for the love of everything, stop calling it "Wi-Fi". ARGH! Perpetuating stupid is stupid, journalists suck.

This reminds me of naive journalists and tech bloggers when they say "ATM Machine" or "HBM2 memory". 

[mr moose]

So far the only issues I am seeing are over loaded servers not congestion on the network  themselves. 

 

Trying to find graphs of other regions so I can tell if this is just a regional thing or not.

 

EDIT: seems the NBN is fine, slow downs are RSP/end point related.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

it maybe slow but at least when everyone uses it, it doesn't get that much slower. (Said in stupid defensive tone)

You have to break out the USA by States to get the actual picture. Reality is for total effective bandwidth, you're normally in the top 5 countries globally in most of the country. There's a few places, due to size + population density, where things are rough, but that's just part of living in Montana anyway. Business Class bandwidth, especially, is world class anywhere along the NYC to Chicago pipes, with Delware normally having the outright best network.

 

Though this entire event has explained the ways American Network Infrastructure has progressed. i.e. there are Data Centers everywhere to limit the pipes needed and the network switching infrastructure. Most of the EU seems to have ended up as a Hub & Spoke system with less CDNs but fairly large ones. As a result, there's a lot more flex capacity in the extremely spread out American network.

[GDRRiley]

5 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

This reminds me of naive journalists and tech bloggers when they say "ATM Machine" or "HBM2 memory". 

why can I remember the name when you add on a word that exists in an abbreviation. It is some silly English word I can't think of.

it not just journalists everyone does it.

[Taf the Ghost]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

So far the only issues I am seeing are over loaded servers not congestion on the network  themselves. 

 

Trying to find graphs of other regions so I can tell if this is just a regional thing or not.

 

 

Reddit has broken a few times. But it's also Reddit. I'm kind of floored we haven't had an AWS outage in all of this. That's what'll set off the rioting. 

[LogicalDrm]

@Deathdefyer

This topic doesn't follow correct formatting. Please add quote from article to quote box and add your own thoughts.

 

Edit: Thread has been moved to Networking pending edits. It will be moved back to Tech News if edits are done.

Edited March 31, 2020 by LogicalDrm

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Reddit has broken a few times. But it's also Reddit. I'm kind of floored we haven't had an AWS outage in all of this. That's what'll set off the rioting. 

I wouldn't be surprised if amazon like Microsoft has containers wired and ready that need power and data that can be fast moved to global hotspots.

4 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

You have to break out the USA by States to get the actual picture. Reality is for total effective bandwidth, you're normally in the top 5 countries globally in most of the country. There's a few places, due to size + population density, where things are rough, but that's just part of living in Montana anyway. Business Class bandwidth, especially, is world class anywhere along the NYC to Chicago pipes, with Delware normally having the outright best network.

I'd expect SF/SAC-LA/SD to be better than NYC to chicago given the amount of data centers here.

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

I wouldn't be surprised if amazon like Microsoft has containers wired and ready that need power and data that can be fast moved to global hotspots.

Microsoft has been having a rough time though, they've put strict controls on new subscriptions of Office 365 and people migrating to OneDrive and SharePoint Online. They got all pissy at us and hard throttled our entire subscription making it unusable, tried blaming the tools we were using which was a tool from a certified Microsoft partner (Sharegate). No, how about you stop overselling your infrastructure and not crap all over existing customers just so you can pick up new ones. 

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Microsoft has been having a rough time though, they've put strict controls on new subscriptions of Office 365 and people migrating to OneDrive and SharePoint Online. They got all pissy at us and hard throttled our entire subscription making it unusable, tried blaming the tools we were using which was a tool from a certified Microsoft partner (Sharegate). No, how about you stop overselling your infrastructure and not crap all over existing customers just so you can pick up new ones. 

That means less money, they could never do that. Hopefully this finally teaches everyone the cloud isn’t amazing. Hell zoom seems to be just fine self hosted given their 500%+ spike. 
 

I’d bet companies like backblaze are just sitting not caring about the spike. 

[Belgarathian]

1 hour ago, GDRRiley said:

hey even here in the US with all our data caps being lifted (we totally needed them to keep the network alive right) we still doing just fine. I'm not quite getting my full 120/120 in the day but I only pay for 100/100 so geting 85/85 is okay

 

don't get me started on rants of people not calling stuff the right name. I've wanted to yell at people who can't remember to call a SSD an SSD not any storage drive a HDD.

My girlfriend still calls my computer the screen

[GDRRiley]

6 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

My girlfriend still calls my computer the screen

I’m sorry you didn’t find a nerd.

[Curious Pineapple]

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

UK being UK again.

We have domestic gigabit speeds, relitively low costs and switching provider is so easy, many do it whenever the contract is due. Providers are removing data caps on mobile and broadband, giving customers free calls and doing what they can top help those that are now unemployed or have taken a pay cut and can't pay the bills. So yeh, the UK doing what the UK does, helping it's population instead of leaving people for dead in a time of crisis as they don't have medical insurance.

[Bravo1cc]

Honestly i haven't seen any changes and i can still stream at 4k from most services. Plus i am not on a top ISP and my speeds are not the best either. its been blown way out of control

[Curious Pineapple]

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Being from the States and having been on the receiving end of "haha, your Internet sucks!" comments for a rather long time, I've gotten quite the enjoyment out of most of the EU networks throttling horribly. There's obviously still people in the States with issues (when you've got, functionally, 1000s of networks, some are bound to have issues), but I will enjoy laughing about backbones in the future.

Well most of Europe has had measures in place for weeks rather than just "treating it like the flu" and carrying on as normal. So yeh, with most of Europe at home working, or binging on Netflix there will be an increased demand on the infrastructure. As the UK is the Eurpoean endpoint for the transatlantic, we have the vast majority of traffic between Europe and America going through our network.

[CarlBar]

3 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Being from the States and having been on the receiving end of "haha, your Internet sucks!" comments for a rather long time, I've gotten quite the enjoyment out of most of the EU networks throttling horribly. There's obviously still people in the States with issues (when you've got, functionally, 1000s of networks, some are bound to have issues), but I will enjoy laughing about backbones in the future.

 

And, yeah, I really hate the "wifi" as Access Point terminology. Been really confused when I see travelers talk about getting "wifi" all over the country they're traveling in with a device.

 

The OP is really unclear about whats going on. TLDR There's no large scale issue with the UK internet being reported right now. But if you want to upgrade from DSL to fibre your going to have to wait as the install of that requires an engineer to come into your home and openreach, (which does this here in the UK, Virgin Media's own fibre system aside), has suspended almost all such actions till things get better.

[AlTech]

What happens to people who were already scheduled to switch?

[DarthEoin]

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

What happens to people who were already scheduled to switch?

They just do it normally we all use the same infrastructure

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, DarthEoin said:

They just do it normally we all use the same infrastructure

Even when something has to be done at the street level at the cabinet?

[Tedster]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Well not much you can do when your internet infrastructure is at the point of failing lol.

 

On the other side of the globe NZ is having the highest network demand ever and is coping fine with Chorus saying their is plenty of extra capacity. It's nice when such a large investment comes right home to roost 

 

Also please, for the love of everything, stop calling it "Wi-Fi". ARGH! Perpetuating stupid is stupid, journalists suck.

(Apologies, I can't get spoilers to work...)

 

And how dare you live in a country which has had proper infrastructure planning!?