Slow Internet

America's internet is mostly sucky thanks to good old monopoly capitalism:

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/why_is_americas_internet_so_slow_20130214/?ln

Online VF could be much better under different conditions.

 

Thanks for sharing. I really enjoyed this.

 

Fuck you, America's awesome.

 

This isn't news nor should it be surprising.

 

I used to play 2D fighters on Kaillera, via MAME or WinKawaks, around a decade ago now. I hoped then, in the future, things would change. To an extant it has, but it seems many countries still have a long way to go to reach Scandinavian or Pacific Rim levels of service.

What is disturbing within the fighting game scene, is how many people play on wireless or shared connections. I appreciate some people have to, but on a standard type of broadband line, that really is gonna degrade the experience for both parties.

Some ISPs offer a prioritised gaming package, so that combined with a directly connected cable surely has to be the best option. Console and company loyalties aside, XBL has been generally found over the years to offer a smoother and less laggy environment than PSN. So as a regular online fighting game player, there are a few positive steps you can take, before moving to a more modern, web-tech friendly country

 

Still think a government owned information lines rented out to providers is the way to go I believe Japan operates that way

 

I think people are forgetting that America is friggin huge. There's a lot of territory to cover so laying down a new shiny, fast fiber optics line across the country is time consuming, expensive, and made even more difficult by the fact that the 48 continental states have to come to an agreement on it. Right now, that's never going to happen.

Hence why our information infrastructure is in the hands of private companies.

Plus with garbage lika SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA floating around Washington, I want the government as far away from my internetz as possible.

 

The telecom companies lobby the government to prevent towns and counties from establishing their own public/municipal networks. Even if they fund the project themselves, the government will move in to stop them. So publicly owned telecommunications infrastructure is not an option thanks to 'state capture' by these huge telecoms.

Almost every aspect of American life is dominated by organized money, i.e. Corporate America. And they are working on privatizing education and social security. They won't be satisfied until they own everything.

And the issue of cyber surveillance is not really directly related. Those telecoms give all information to the government anyway.

It's "Total Information Awareness":

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/...urveillance-program-returns-bigger-than-ever/

 

While the crappy, dated internet infrastructure in the US is definitely a problem both in principle and in practice, online gaming uses a pretty minimal amount of bandwidth. I had heard that telecoms basically pocketed subsidies for infrastructure improvement in the past. Regulatory capture make any sort of FCC intervention a joke, so it's probably only going to get worse thanks to the magic of fiscal austerity and rent extraction.

From Missouri, my pings are great within the Midwest, to Texas, Ontario and Quebec (20-40ms), but most of the South and West are relatively bad (70-100ms). Distance doesn't seem like the main issue for some of these places. So maybe infrastructure improvements would have an effect.

 

Its a combination of both. Corporate interference and size. Does anybody think that local networks, huge open public ones at that, will be fast? I think we can fit most of the pacific rim and Japan into America. Size matters.

 

Here's a good recent segment on how the telecoms strike back against everyone who tries to establish fast, cheap, publicly owned internet infrastructure:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/4/municipal_broadband_networks_bridge_the_digital

Who will rid us of these meddlesome corporate gangsters?