What are you talking about? Overprovisioning literally means selling more transmission rate than what the upstream lines can accommodate. It is not accounted for.
I’m talking about overprovisioning, where your ISP actually provisions you for more bandwidth than you’re paying for. It is accounted for.
You’re talking over subscription.
How can it not be accurate enough when it is just a conversion from transmission rate via a formula that converts to bytes and accounts for expected protocol overheads?
Are you asking me how a flat base number derived direct from the source is more accurate than a different number that takes that first number and then adds a bunch of guesswork on top based on a bunch of unknown variables? Well that’s because in your head “expected protocol overheads” must be a simpler and more quantifiable number than it is in real life. For starters, which protocol? Downloads happen over TCP and UDP, both have completely different overhead profiles. What about the protocols above that? How are we proposing the file is being downloaded? Tor? SMB? NFS? HTTP? MLS stream? Which OS is the client? Different operating systems have different TCP window scaling logic. Different devices have different MTU sizes. The Internet service you’re buying can be used for all of them. Are we picking picking one set based on the most common use case? Averaging them all together? Weighting them based on common usage? Uhhh or we could just advertise the product based on the product the ISP is actually selling you, the transmission rate.
Your entire argument here is like being upset at McDonald’s for giving you the nutrient values of their food, like calorie counts and detailed macronutrient breakdowns, because you think instead they should just tell you how full each item will make you.
I really can’t break this down any simpler for you than I already have.
Dude, what is your fixation on the protocol parameters? I said average. Yes, for the purpose of getting the exact speed Chrome downloads shit, it will be off by a few percent. Who cares? The weight of the food you buy is allowed to be off by a few percent. The calories in food are already an approximation based on energy released while burning, not digestion. Every measurement in the world has error bars.
But a number most people can understand is a lot more useful than a slightly more accurate representation of the same number most people don’t understand. I am sure you can still find the details in a spec sheet if you feel too smart to use the simple representation and too lazy to convert it back.
I’m talking about overprovisioning, where your ISP actually provisions you for more bandwidth than you’re paying for. It is accounted for.
Ok, let’s say I used the wrong term for the sake of the argument. Point, is (most) ISPs don’t guarantee your full ratelimit will be available to you. Which you clearly understood yet did not address.
I mean, wasn’t this discussion started by whether bits per second or bytes per second is deceptive or misleading in order to make people think “woah, bigger number means better internet” ?
Also, how is a division or multiplication by a factor of 8 the difference between what most people do or don’t understand? It’s a primary school mathematical operation. If people cannot understand that, how are they going to understand that different downloads or uploads inside different applications provide them with different (byte-based) values depending on protocol and server performance of whatever service they are using?
It really is the truest and simplest unit to use that the ISP can reasonably guarantee to you, because on the lowest level, whether using fibre or copper, we send bits and not bytes across the wire.
No one who was not specifically taught this will notice the difference between Mbps and MBps since it’s the same fucking letters. Let alone know the difference is division by 8. Not everyone has formal IT education and bits never come out in daily life of most people except for internet speeds. You are expert in this field. You massively overestimate how much average people know if you think they recognize the difference and know how to convert it.
If people cannot understand that, how are they going to understand that different downloads or uploads inside different applications provide them with different (byte-based) values depending on protocol and server performance of whatever service they are using?
Why do you keep insisting they need to? An average person will not care much about the difference between a download taking 6 minutes or 7 minutes. They will care about the difference between 6 minutes and an hour, which is about the difference if they misinterpret bits as bytes.
Stupid and not an expert in a specific field are two very different things. Also, it is not lying. It is the exact same facts (same number) presented differently.
Mm and mm are very different. Mg and mg are very different. Mbps and MB/s are very different. People lacking basic education to be able to read units properly have to deal with that themselves.
They are not the exact same. Somebody else already talked a whole thread about the reason as to why.
What I would argue for is every company at least all advertising the same unit, so that when comparing it becomes easier to do so.
A whole thread and still no explanation how taking an accurate number and multiplying it by a constant to get a different representation can magically make it less accurate.
It’s like saying a distance has to be in miles because converting it to km makes it less accurate.
Nah man at this point you are purposefully ignoring the bits that are being sent to your device which are then converted to bytes so that your pixels can communicate the letters that are forming words to you, from which the sentences are apparently too difficult for you to understand.
I’m talking about overprovisioning, where your ISP actually provisions you for more bandwidth than you’re paying for. It is accounted for.
You’re talking over subscription.
Are you asking me how a flat base number derived direct from the source is more accurate than a different number that takes that first number and then adds a bunch of guesswork on top based on a bunch of unknown variables? Well that’s because in your head “expected protocol overheads” must be a simpler and more quantifiable number than it is in real life. For starters, which protocol? Downloads happen over TCP and UDP, both have completely different overhead profiles. What about the protocols above that? How are we proposing the file is being downloaded? Tor? SMB? NFS? HTTP? MLS stream? Which OS is the client? Different operating systems have different TCP window scaling logic. Different devices have different MTU sizes. The Internet service you’re buying can be used for all of them. Are we picking picking one set based on the most common use case? Averaging them all together? Weighting them based on common usage? Uhhh or we could just advertise the product based on the product the ISP is actually selling you, the transmission rate.
Your entire argument here is like being upset at McDonald’s for giving you the nutrient values of their food, like calorie counts and detailed macronutrient breakdowns, because you think instead they should just tell you how full each item will make you.
I really can’t break this down any simpler for you than I already have.
Dude, what is your fixation on the protocol parameters? I said average. Yes, for the purpose of getting the exact speed Chrome downloads shit, it will be off by a few percent. Who cares? The weight of the food you buy is allowed to be off by a few percent. The calories in food are already an approximation based on energy released while burning, not digestion. Every measurement in the world has error bars.
But a number most people can understand is a lot more useful than a slightly more accurate representation of the same number most people don’t understand. I am sure you can still find the details in a spec sheet if you feel too smart to use the simple representation and too lazy to convert it back.
Ok, let’s say I used the wrong term for the sake of the argument. Point, is (most) ISPs don’t guarantee your full ratelimit will be available to you. Which you clearly understood yet did not address.
I mean, wasn’t this discussion started by whether bits per second or bytes per second is deceptive or misleading in order to make people think “woah, bigger number means better internet” ?
Also, how is a division or multiplication by a factor of 8 the difference between what most people do or don’t understand? It’s a primary school mathematical operation. If people cannot understand that, how are they going to understand that different downloads or uploads inside different applications provide them with different (byte-based) values depending on protocol and server performance of whatever service they are using?
It really is the truest and simplest unit to use that the ISP can reasonably guarantee to you, because on the lowest level, whether using fibre or copper, we send bits and not bytes across the wire.
No one who was not specifically taught this will notice the difference between Mbps and MBps since it’s the same fucking letters. Let alone know the difference is division by 8. Not everyone has formal IT education and bits never come out in daily life of most people except for internet speeds. You are expert in this field. You massively overestimate how much average people know if you think they recognize the difference and know how to convert it.
Why do you keep insisting they need to? An average person will not care much about the difference between a download taking 6 minutes or 7 minutes. They will care about the difference between 6 minutes and an hour, which is about the difference if they misinterpret bits as bytes.
We should NOT accommodate for the stupid if that means lying about the facts. My two cents.
Stupid and not an expert in a specific field are two very different things. Also, it is not lying. It is the exact same facts (same number) presented differently.
Mm and mm are very different. Mg and mg are very different. Mbps and MB/s are very different. People lacking basic education to be able to read units properly have to deal with that themselves.
They are not the exact same. Somebody else already talked a whole thread about the reason as to why.
What I would argue for is every company at least all advertising the same unit, so that when comparing it becomes easier to do so.
A whole thread and still no explanation how taking an accurate number and multiplying it by a constant to get a different representation can magically make it less accurate.
It’s like saying a distance has to be in miles because converting it to km makes it less accurate.
Nah man at this point you are purposefully ignoring the bits that are being sent to your device which are then converted to bytes so that your pixels can communicate the letters that are forming words to you, from which the sentences are apparently too difficult for you to understand.