Why does my other friend connect to his provider faster/slower ?
How important is it that I connect at the fastest possible speed?
UNDERSTANDING MODEM CONNECT SPEEDS
(Note: We have long since stopped supporting X2 298-2000 and now only support V90 and
K56Flex however the pricinples within this document still apply if not the specifics)
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| Why does my other friend connect to his provider faster/slower ? |
| How important is it that I connect at the fastest possible speed? |
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The most frequently asked question asked at an Internet Provider is:: I have a 14.4k/28.8/33.6 or 56K modem and I never connect at those speeds? I have a 33.6 and only connect at 26.4 or even worse I then went and purchased a 56K modem and I still connect at only 26.4!!...What gives?
Well this is not only the most frequently asked question a provider receives, it is also the most complicated question, since it involves the telephone network. The telephone network is that 100 year old collection of wires, cables and equipment that we've all been using since we were young and we pretty much take for granted. Customers often forget that the Internet Service Provider (ISP) is also just a customer of the telephone company just like everyone else is and we are dependent completely and wholly upon them for delivering your calls to us INTACT. If there was no telephone company between the ISP and the customer the only way the customer could access the Internet would be by plugging his/her modem directly into ours eliminating any interference between the customer and the ISP. In that scenario it is absolutely guaranteed that you would achieve the maximum speed your modem can support.
That of course is not possible and we therefore all are dependent upon the copper wires running from our houses to the telephone companies and for the switching equipment they use for delivering voice and data to our intended destination. Furthermore, ISP's currently are not on any boards or commissions that are involved in the regulation of telephone companies (such as the Public Utility Commission PUC) so we have no real influence to force telephone companies to make changes within their network, other than the fact that we are a customer ourselves. Larger Companies such as AT&T are continuously lobbying in Washington to get the local tariffs changed; however this is a very slow process.
Customers often confuse low connect speeds with poor modems on the Provider's end. Although this is a possibility, today with digital modems it really is no longer a factor. The speed that a 56K modem will connect to is totally and absolutely dependent upon the sum total of all the line impairments from the back of your modem to the digital telephone network. An ISP can have many problems, but modem connection related problems are 95% of the time not due to anything that the provider has done or has not done, it is a factor of where they are located and how well the telephone network is functioning in their general area. The one overriding argument that really explains the whole thing in a nutshell is this: If the telephone lines between the customer and the Provider are absolutely perfect and support the frequencies necessary to obtain bandwidths up to 56K the customer will absolutely without a doubt connect at the highest speed their modem can obtain regardless of the brand of the modem that the provider chooses or the configuration that is performed or not performed on those same modems.
It is important to understand that the 56K(X2 and K56Flex), 33.6/28.8 (V34 and VFC) and 14.4 (V32) standards are standards that were developed by IEEE. They state that if the electrical characteristics of a telephone line fall within ranges A through B then the connection can support a V34 (28.8/33.6 type) connection, if not the modems agree to step down into the past to V32 protocols and older and slower protocols until the maximum line speed supported by that particular telephone in that particular location calling that particular Provider. These limits are preset by International Engineering Bodies and each modem adheres to the standard following the rules very closely. One brand of modem really can't come up with any 'Tricks' that its competitor can't do since they must stay within the confines of the V34 standard (for example). As each year passes a new 'Trick' to squeeze out even more out of a telephone line is invented and a new standard appears (This year it was X2,K56Flex, last year it was 33.6..etc.), but the customer must understand that these engineers are already pushing way past the edge of the envelope that the voice based telephone network was designed to handle and there is simply just so much that it can handle before it begins to affect modem connections. This is an important point so I'll repeat it; the telephone system is fundamentally the same now (at least the analog side) as it was when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. It was designed to transmit the human voice over long distances and NOT modem signals. Modems are ingenious devices that allow us to do the impossible and send data over analog copper wires at amazing speeds that were considered to be theoretically impossible just a few short years ago. They do this through the application ingenious tricks that Modem Engineers have come up with to bend the laws of physics and break the speed limits over copper wires over and over again.
I’m afraid VVM can’t be of much direct help in explaining why exactly you do
not from your particular
location get faster than 33.6 or 28.8 speeds since I do not have information on how you
are routed through the
telephone network; however, as the disclaimer on the US Robotics line mentions this does
not guarantee
that you will get an V90 or 56Flex connection it simply means that based upon the limited
testing it was
able to perform the line has the ‘capability’ to support the V90 or K56Flex
technology.
The equipment that USRobotics has to allow a dial in is the same piece of equipment (US
Robotics Total
Control Rack) that is on the 298-2001 line and the K56Flex lineis also of the same type of
equipment. This is how we get X2 and K56Flex setup: We called US Robotics and Cisco
and order the
equipment, then we called SW Bell and ordered the digital PRI lines and plug the lines
into the
equipment. That’s it..that’s all we do..or any provider does.. There
area’t any ‘better’ lines that we
can buy nor is there any ‘better’ Cisco or US Robotics equipment that US
Robotics sells that will
increase the likelihood of an V90 or near X2/K56Flex connection in a telephone network
that is mostly
analog.
There is one single reason you don’t get K56Flex/X2 speeds from you to us and that
is what is between you
and us. If you dial US Robotics in Virginia and it says ‘you can get X2’
and you dial a US Robotics rack
in Temple and we say ‘no you can’t’...either we are lying and we don’t
have X2 equipment..or we have
cheaper X2 equipment (which isn’t possible because USR only makes 1) or there
is something
wrong/different/weird about the telephone system that your call is travelling through to
reach your
destinations.
The good news is that in January 1998 the PUC (Public Utility Commission) will be
raising the legally
required minimum modem connect speed that must be maintained from 300bps to 2400bps...that
isn’t a
misprint that’s 300bps to 2400bps. 2.4K (2400baud) is the current minimum that
telephone companies have
to provide.. If I could call SW Bell and demand that every single pair of coppers
wires in every single
home in every single county in Texas absolutely positively support 56K speeds believe me I
would..it
would be a lot easier than answering this same question 100 times each day.
I know it must be frustrating, you go out and buy a 56K modem and it doesn't’t
connect any faster, so
you’ve just got to find someone to let have it; but in this case there simply
isn’t anything more as an
ISP we can do short of buying the telephone company and upgrading the entire area to
support data
communications in the 56K speed range.
From the telephone companies point of view, they are in a difficult situation.
They designed the
telephone network umpteen years ago to support the frequencies of the human voice
(300-1600hz). Now in a
period of about 3-4 years, dogs take over the world and can hear and speak in frequency
ranges up and
beyond 3000hz, but the telephone system is still designed for the human ranges not dog
ranges.
Well modems are those dogs..high speed modems speak and hear at frequencies far, far
beyond any human’s
voice. Just 4 years ago a 28.8 connection was unheard of..absolutely impossible..in
fact V34 wasn't’t even
out (the 28.8 standard). 5 years ago 14.4K was considered unbelievably fast and was
considered the
fastest that ordinary old telephone lines could ever handle; well the engineers and
Rockwell and US
Robotics said..no way.. lets do some creative frequency shifting and pump even more data
down those
rickety copper wires.
All the while the telephone companies are feeling the heat and realize that to stay
competitive they must
do something about improving the data communication capabilities of their telephone
network..because..lets
face it..without those telephone lines coming in to your house, we wouldn't’t be
communicating right now
even and the measly snails pace speed of 28.8
So the telephone companies have come a long, long way and their voice network is being
pushed far, far
far beyond the limits that any engineer ever conceived that it would be pushed..and here
we are in the
continuous tug of war between the telephone companies desire to stay profitable and the
consumers desire
to have faster and faster and faster connections on the same 2 copper wires but not pay
anything more to
help build up the infrastructure to make that a business possibility for them.
Hopefully the consumer forces will push the telcos to move faster than they are moving
and one day maybe
56K won’t be a Russian roulette game where you get it if you live here and you
don’t it if you live
there.
As for VVM we have users that connect at X2 speeds up to 53K but the are RARE..very
rare.. less than 2%
of our customer base can extract anything more out of this telephone network by utilizing
advanced and
relatively hot out of the oven immature technologies like 56K.
We hope this helps explain the situation a little better.
Before we go into this question there is a couple of things we need to mention. The little box that comes up after you connect:
1. Is not the most accurate method for determining your connect rate. This is due to the fact that modems are always upshifting and downshifting their speed to account for line condition variations, just like a truck must upshift and downshift as it makes its way up and down hills. Depending on how far along he is on his journey will determine at that particular time what gear he is in and what speed he is currently travelling. The most accurate method to determine your current speed and other line conditions is by going to our connect speed page.
The same principle applies for modems.. however instead of location time is the variable. Lets say you connected at 5:01pm on Tuesday and you receive a 31.2 connection. Then you borrowed you friends Time Machine and when went back to 4:45pm that same day and connected at 4:45pm. You notice you connected at 26.4 instead of 31.2 ?? What's the deal? So you are fortunate enough to have a display on your modem that shows the current connect rate and you notice that at about 5:00pm your connection jumps up to 31.2!!.. so when 5:01 rolls around and your counterpart in the future starts his connection he connects at 31.2? Why? because the conditions on the telephone network at that precise moment met the V34+ requirements to allow the modem to upshift its speed to a higher value.
The main point is that the telephone network that we connect into is 1. Not Homogenous and 2. Not Static, which means that it is very much like the weather in that it is constantly fluctuating. This fluctuation has not been at all noticeable for decades when we were just talking over the phone lines; however now that we are pushing those lines well past their limits we are now able to hear the creaking and cracking of the network as our truck drives over the wooden footbridge designed for people and not heavily loaded Semi Tractor Trailers
2. Just like there are no 2 people in the world with the same fingerprints there are also no two houses in the world that have identical electrical characteristics and routing characteristics on their telephone lines. The telephone company tries to provide equality to each customer ; however they are limited by the laws of physics and budget. The end result is that person A living at location C may be able to dial provider D and get a higher connection rate than when he dials provider E. Person B; however find that he is able to connect faster when he calls provider F from location G than when he calls provider E. A simplified analogy to this would be as follows:
(A graphical example of how Robbed Bit Signalling affect line quality)
Thought Experiment: You have 5 people in a room, 2 people represent Internet Provider's A and B, and the customers are C, D and F. The 5 people are thrown into the room randomly. Then you drop 1000 feet of wires onto the ground at their feet. The wires are non-uniform and go every which way and they are so badly tangled you can't see where they start and where they end.
Each person has a voltmeter and they touch the wires near their feet with one lead and the other lead of providers A and B respectively. Person C gets higher resistance (impairment) readings from person A than B even though he is actually physically closer to A than he is to B.. If he plugged up a modem and connected to A he would get a lower connect rate than at person B even if they had identical modems. Now person D repeats the experiment and discovers the exact opposite to be true and finds provider B to be faster!. Now lets add another element to this experiment to make it more like the real world. We turn the lights OFF!. Now we lead these five unsuspecting persons into this dark room with voltmeters and modems and ask each of them to determine who is the 'better' provider. Person C knows without a doubt that provider B is better; yet person D feels very confident that provider A is the fastest?.. who's right? Now we turn on the lights and they see this jumble twisted mass of wires on the the floor and they realize that they made their decisions lacking a very important piece of information.
Now that is an extremely simplified example and does not take into account the digital factors that complicate the issue by a factor of 1000; however, it does illustrate the principal that connecting to provider B faster than provider A does not always necessarily mean that provider B is 'better' than A..it simply is closer 'electrically' or it passes through a sequence of equipment that has a combined impairment effect that exceeds that of.
This is not to say that providers cannot have different qualities of their equipment; for example an analog provider would automatically have one more Analog to Digital conversion that would usually drop his connection rate by one step (i.e. from 33.6 to 31.2 from 28.8 to 26.4 from 26.4 to 24.0..etc..etc.). At VVM we are almost completely digital; however we do have a few analog lines left that we are replacing as fast as the telephone company can provide us digital circuits. In Temple we are about 99% digital now and in Killeen about 80%. This means that sometimes 20% of the time you might hit an analog line and get a slightly lower connect rate; however you may also hit the digital line and still get a lower connect rate. Some customers connect faster to the analog lines than the digital simply due to their location with the telephone network. The complexities of the telephone network is not unlike that of the human nervous system and it is very difficult to judge a provider solely on the 5 or 6 little numbers that appear on your screen when you double click on your 'get connected to the internet button'.
Question: How Important is it to me to connect at the fastest possible speed?
Although having a faster connection rate will usually make things go a little quicker on the Net, the difference may not be as much as you think. When choosing a provider, be sure to consider many factors and not just that little 5 digit number that appears on your screen when you connect showing you your speed. We have had customers come from other providers and because they could get a 33.6 with us and only a 31.2 with someone else!. That is a difference of 2.4K bits per second.. that's would make a 100K file take 25.6 seconds versus 23.8 seconds a difference of 1.8 seconds that even though it may add up..it is rarely noticeable for most applications. !! . When taking into consideration all of the other delays that can occur on the internet such as congestion on the whole Internet itself and the video and processing speed limitations of your computer, you will find it almost impossible to determine any real difference between the two speeds.
Even here at the VVM offices where we have very high speed connections near 5MegaBits per second rates you would be surprised to surf on one of our computers here. It is visibly faster of course than a modem connection because we are directly plugged into the Internet but you would think that it would be 100's of thousands of times faster an after all is said and done you only see performance improvement in the range of 5 to 10 times.
So speed is good, but in this author's opinion make sure you weigh other factors as well. Many people choose a grocery store to shop at due to the fact that it takes only 3 minutes to drive to the closest one and 5 minutes to drive to the next closest one. Many people will choose their grocery store based upon quite a few other factors than simply the 2 minutes difference in the drive. The products available, the friendliness of the employees etc. So as it should be with any choice the consumer makes.
These opinions of course are biased because I do work for a provider; however, I assure you that if I did not I would make the same statements because after years of experience in this industry its true you can't judge a book simply by its cover, nor an ISP by the connect rates that appear on your screen.