I received this email from my ISP, Brighthouse Networks:

(click to see full size)

There are some points of this sales pitch that are just outright laughable. For example, "open multiple sites and support multiple users simultaneously" – as if we all haven’t been doing that for years ever since we first started using broadband.

Brighthouse is labeling this "level" of internet speed as "wideband". There is some loose technical accuracy to that word in reference to an ISP data plan.

Wideband as far as what I think it means is anything over 20Mbps connectivity – unless someone out there has a better definition.

But before we get into this whole wideband shtick..

A quick history of broadband

Broadband is supposed to be anything over the best possible speed you can achieve with dialup. Technically speaking, that means anything over 56k is in fact broadband, starting with a base downstream speed of 128k.

For those that remember when DSL was first introduced to market, the basic plan was a 128k downstream with a 56k upstream. To note: I’m guessing the upstream was 56k as it might in fact have been slower, depending on the ISP.

When cablemodem broadband was introduced, there weren’t any speed choices like there were with DSL. Most cable companies started off with 768k down/128k up and that was the only service offering you could get. We were, of course, happy to take it because it was blisteringly fast compared to dialup. Some cable co’s were real cheap about it and had 512k down/128k up, but the majority of them began offering service with a 768k downstream.

A few years later, most of the cable companies upgraded the network to 1Mbps down and 512k-to-768k up.

As more people started signing up for internet, telco’s understood that they could upgrade the poles to include fiber optic connectivity, and that’s exactly what they did. At that point came the 10Mbps ISP offering, then the 20Mbps. An example of a fiber optic internet service is Verizon’s FiOS service. (Verizon was, in fact, the first to bring affordable consumer-grade fiber optic data connectivity direct to residential homes.)

After that, cable companies upgraded their networks to 10Mbps to stay competitive.

And now.. cable is offering has 40Mbps.

Can wideband truly deliver?

I honestly don’t know for sure, but I’m leaning towards "no" and here’s why:

First, this is the cable company we’re talking about. Brighthouse in all honesty is a good company. But this is a speed of data connectivity that’s being carried on copper. And some (okay, a lot) of that copper is pretty ancient and crappy. The sales page does not state how the service is going to be delivered, so it is assumed that it’s going to be the same as it always has been – copper wire on poles.

Second is the issue of existing internet traffic and destination server. This is best described by using a commuter analogy.

You have a small commuter car. This car takes you to work every day along the same highway you’ve always taken.

You decide to trade in your small commuter car for a Corvette – a much faster automobile.

The Corvette is wonderful, however the commute time to work is still the same. Sure, the car you’re using is much faster, but the traffic hasn’t changed. Faster car, same commute time. You’ve gained nothing in speed.

And it also doesn’t change the fact that at work there are only so many parking spots in the parking lot.

The car is your internet service.

The highway is the route data travels on get from your computer through the internet to the web site.

The workplace you traveled to is the web site.

The parking spaces at the workplace is how many connections a web site can handle.

In the end, even if you have faster connectivity on your end, the data routes and web sites/services you’re using won’t serve you any quicker. And when a web server can’t accept any more connections, that’s it – you’re denied until connections are available again.

Third is the issue of slow DNS.

Here’s something none of you would ever pay attention to that happens just about every time you load a web site, located at the bottom left of your web browser:

This happens not just for the domain listed above, but for all web sites.

The fact any domain name takes time to resolve in 2009 is just plain sad.

DNS as it stands right now is a bottleneck on the internet. It absolutely does not matter what speed your internet connectivity is, because at present DNS requests are as fast (meaning slow) as they’re ever going to get. No amount of megabits on the ISP side can cure this.

When the internet as a whole (important) is updated in a fashion where numbers are translated to names more quickly, then you’ll see a difference. But there is little an ISP can do now to combat slow DNS issues.

So where can wideband truly deliver?

40Mbps can deliver in the one place ISP’s don’t want it to – BitTorrent.

The reason BitTorrent is so quick is for three primary reasons.

First is the fact that it does not use DNS at all. Connections are acquired using direct IP addresses – the fastest possible way to connect to anything on the internet.

Second is the distributed-source nature of BitTorrent. It’s a huge speed booster once you get even as little as 5 seeds for a torrent download.

Third is that BitTorrent uses the "rarest first" instead of sequential method of data transfer. This results in high availability of whatever you’re downloading.

But unfortunately ISP’s hate torrent downloaders. A lot. Even if you’re downloading a torrented file for regular and completely legal purposes, such as downloading Ubuntu, as far as the ISP is concerned, that’s just plain BAD! BAD! BAD!

With the way ISP’s are going you won’t even be able to use wideband for what it would best be used for.

Yippee, hooray?

What do you think? Is wideband worth going for? Would you buy the service were it offered in your area?

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