Re: Inactivity Thread

[Brendanan]

Lets see... A LOT has been done... a lot

We are currently digging out the farm caves, which are gigantic, and require a lot of digging

[heracles44]

Hey Bren could I be whitelisted pleasE?
Username is alka.

[sret]

Wow, it sure is a long time since you were around =p

[heracles44]

Yeah,,And hey am I whitelisted? I think you might have whitelisted heracles4 instead of alka. I have a new account because heracles4 account was ruined by Mojang.

[Supacreator]

Yeah,,And hey am I whitelisted? I think you might have whitelisted heracles4 instead of alka. I have a new account because heracles4 account was ruined by Mojang.

how so?

[Brendanan]

Yeah,,And hey am I whitelisted? I think you might have whitelisted heracles4 instead of alka. I have a new account because heracles4 account was ruined by Mojang.

how so?

What he said...

I'll whitelist you under alka now

[heracles44]

They ruined it with the migration stuff.

[Dr. Steel]

'Scuse me for being 99,9% inactive, but just too busy with RL things(and with playing tekkit :U)

[sret]

What migration stuff? And what is Tekkit?

[Dr. Steel]

What migration stuff? And what is Tekkit?

Modpack for Minecraft.
As the name may imply, all sorts of game-enhancing technical blocks and entities, also new decorative things and such

[sret]

I can't even handle redstone, but have fun

[31trainman]

I have the technic pack too doc steel. Perhaps we could play on the same tekkit server.

[Brendanan]

Just saying guys, I will no longer be anywhere near as active as I have been this last week. Unfortunately it's back to real life for the next few weeks...

oh, and I finally got a copy of skyrim

[sret]

Why would you get a copy of skyrim 0,o

Perhaps you can focus more on planning the forge and stuff then =p

[Brendanan]

Yes... I can use the 45 minute each direction train trips 4 days a week to focus on these forums, as well as breaks during the day at uni. If I'm lucky I'll get on the server at uni (with reliable internet ), but not too much as my download limit is rather small

[sret]

Good stuff. You either have to suffer internet wired with kangaroo-feet and scorpion tails, or real internet which is about as limited as wooden tools. Life is tough for the aussies

[Brendanan]

I don't know, the guy on the street across from me gets 500 gigabytes a month, with a download speed of over 20 megabytes a second... Seems I may have lucked out on cheap internet

[sret]

I wonder if it's common to have limits like that, I've never heard of it before.

[spectrumwars]

I wonder if it's common to have limits like that, I've never heard of it before.

I wish I had a limit as high as 500 gigabytes a month. I think we get 150 gigs. When we signed up for this plan, it was for unlimited data...but as streaming video, bittorrent, and home wifi networks making it easier to hook up half a dozen computers to the same internet connection became widespread, too many people were running their multi-megabyte-per-second modems at full speed for too many hours of the day, so they got rid of the unlimited data plans, or jacked up the price of the unlimited plans so they could keep advertising a low monthly rate for basic high-speed plans. They probably also wanted to discourage people with wifi networks from signing up for an unlimited plan and then selling their wifi password to the neighbors for 10 bucks a month, rather than the neighbors buying their own 50 buck a month plan.

[sret]

Why is using it "too much" a problem?

[spectrumwars]

Why is using it "too much" a problem?

Being generous to the internet providers, maybe they were getting too close to the physical bandwidth limits of the cables carrying the data, due to planning around most customers occasionally using their full speed to download a big file, but most of the time not be using their full speed capacity. There's a huge difference between, on the one hand, sitting there reading a text-and-images webpage for a few minutes, then loading a new text-and-images page; and on the other hand, sitting there watching a streaming HD movie on Netflix or Hulu or whatever. One is short spikes of downloading data at high speed, separated by long periods of sending no data at all, the other is long periods of continuously downloading lots and lots of data. Toss in some streaming audio sites for internet radio, people doing file-sharing who may leave the computer on 24/7 continuously downloading and uploading data, and one might see how ISP's could be facing more of their network capacity used than they expected. Toss in some ISP's being resellers of bandwidth rights they purchased in bulk from the actual telecoms companies and governments who own the physical fiber-optic cable infrastructure, and THEY might be running out of pre-purchased bandwidth.

Being less generous, many internet providers, including ours, sell the service as a "bundle" with some other services, in our case, land-line and cellular phone service. Others do so with cable or satellite TV services, or even electricity. Once they got you locked into a bundle contract, they figure it's a hassle to switch all those services to someone else at once, especially if most of their competitors don't have the same menu of bundled services available. So they jack up the prices, taking advantage of regulations letting them alter the terms of the contract at any time, unilaterally, so long as they inform the customer a month or two in advance in writing. Usually in the form of what looks like junk mail. The regulations exist so phone companies and the like, who sell services people might have for decades on end, don't get stuck charging 1970's rates to someone after 3 or 4 decades of inflation, some if it double-digit, have raised every other price across the board.

So the real reason may be "because they think they can". And if none of the other 3 or 4 major ISP's offering services to your neighborhood have a better deal...they kinda can.

[sret]

Ah, so everything you do on the internet transfers data which is sent through the cables and said cables have a limit on how much they can send. So basically it's like showering; if you do it too long you run out of hot water. I would ask how the limitations work, like can they only carry so much at once or can they for some reason only carry a certain amount during a timeframe, but I suspect I might not fully understand the answer. I just barely got what you just explained (stupid modern technology, which I can't live without).

How do you know how much of your monthly bandwidth you have used up? Also, as we have no limits in Sweden (as far as I'm aware) is there a chance the internet might suddenly malfunction because of exceeding the bandwidth? I have a feeling it's really hard to "break" it as that would certainly force everyone to have a limit.

Wait a minute... when you have low internet speed (for example I have 5 mb line here, and 100 mb line in my apartment) is that related to the bandwidth capacity stuff? I have noticed that on this slower internet if I download something it slows down browsing and lags Minecraft. Is that due to the bandwidth getting exceeded, which is the actual case of the limitations you mentioned? That would make sense.

I had a second look at your post, and as I understood it, the case is that the internet companies themselves have a limit on their bandwidth (what I don't get is what happens when it runs out, how it gets refilled, how the amounts are regulated and where they come from) and if people use it all up they can no longer provide for anyone until it has been resolved. If I got it all right so far, it must mean the swedish companies have access to ridiculous amounts of bandwidth as they don't limit us, not to mention swedes are great at using it up.

One last note; when they add stronger lines such as fiber optic and whatnot that allows for 100 mb connections and those even higher ones in the making, does that mean they are simply cables that can transfer more data (and possibly faster?)? Which would mean they would need even more bandwidth to sustain the stronger lines.


If nothing of the above makes any sense at all, just disregard the entire post. I know jack shit about this stuff but I'm trying my best.

[spectrumwars]

Ah, so everything you do on the internet transfers data which is sent through the cables and said cables have a limit on how much they can send. So basically it's like showering; if you do it too long you run out of hot water. I would ask how the limitations work, like can they only carry so much at once or can they for some reason only carry a certain amount during a timeframe, but I suspect I might not fully understand the answer. I just barely got what you just explained (stupid modern technology, which I can't live without).

Hoo boy, here we go with one of my infamous long explicatory lectures. A teacher from a family of teachers, I blame genetics.

Remember that sound bite from a few years ago, with US Senator Ted Stevens and his "Series of Tubes" description of the internet? Your shower pipe comment, and his, are not all that wrong.

Just as a pipe is limited in how much water can flow through it, there are physical limits to how much data can go through the cables of the internet. A water pipe is limited by two things: the speed of water flowing through it, and the cross-sectional diameter of the pipe (or, for a round pipe, just think of it as width). Try to send water through too fast, and if there's a bend in the pipe, the G force of trying to suddenly change direction will break the pipe. Try to cram more water through than the width of the pipe can hold, and the pipe will burst from high pressure (water, unlike air, doesn't compress into a smaller volume much as pressure rises, which is why depth charges work).

For internet connections, there are similar limits. Computer data is a series of ones and zeroes: one means curent is flowing, zero means it isn't. Each tick of a computer's clock, whether current is flowing in a wire is measured, and if it is, it counts as a one, if not, as a zero. One limit is how many ticks there are in a second. In the case of my computer, that's 2.4 GHz, or 2.4 billion ticks a second, 2.4 billion chances for current to be flowing or not, 2.4 billion ones or zeroes.

Computer data being sent over the intenet is also ones and zeroes. A single one or zero is a "bit", 8 of them together is a "byte", making up an 8-digit binary number, because that's what early computers could handle at a time. Modern computers handle 64-digit binary numbers, hence "64-bit" means more than just number of colors on your display. Memory is measured in bytes, or in kilobytes (1024 bytes), megabytes (1024 kilobytes), gigabytes (1024 megabytes), terabytes (1024 gigabytes), and petabytes (1024 terabytes). Marketing departments sometimes round down to 1000 at each step so they can claim more megabytes or whatever, but that's because marketers don't understand binary math. If they did, they'd be engineers.

Modern internet cables are fiber-optic. This means that they are bundles of hair-thin glass fibers, down which lasers shine bright light that pulses on or off millions of times a second. One physical limit to internet speeds is how fast the lasers can pulse on and off, and how fast the detector at the other end can measure that pulse going on and off. Earlier technology used the same copper wires for telephones, which were designed to carry sound information, so they didn't bother making the equipment sensitive to pulse frequencies corresponding to ultrasonic sound frequencies higher than the human ear could typically hear. Hence blowing a dog whistle into the telephone won't usually work as a practical joke when calling up a friend and he jokingly puts his dog on the line. This is also why early modems had much lower speeds than today: my first modem had a speed of 56,000 bits per second, now we get 3 million bits per second. Both went over the same copper telephone wires, but the signal-measuring equipment on the phone company's end went from acoustic gear designed for voice signals to digital DSL equipment that could handle far higher frequencies, far higher rates of turning the electric signal on and off.

Another is how many different frequencies of light can be sent down the same fiber at the same time before the equipment starts to get confused which is which. Think of these as flow rate and pipe width in your water-pipe analogy. The signals all go at the speed of light, so there is no exact flow rate analogy, but pulse rate makes a good replacement. There's also the issue of how many fibers there are in a cable. Fibers are cheap, digging trenches to put the cables in is not, so when they installed the cables, they tended to go for what they thought was ridiculous amounts of overcapacity. Telecoms companies then got forced by governments to lease the unused or "dark" portions of the fiber cables to other telecoms companies at bulk discounts. These other companies, not needing to pay for cable maintenance and repair crews, could then turn around and sell the use of the cable back to you at a price higher than they paid the original telecom, but lower than that same telecom was charging its end customers. This is how we got dozens of companies selling us long distance services despite there being only 2 or 3 actual separate long distance phone networks.

But this description of ridiculous overcapacity pertains to the main trunk cables between cities and countries. In many places, such as here in my house, the "last mile" between the phone company or other ISP and the houses of users is still the same old twisted-pair 24-gauge copper wires used to carry telephone signals in the 1920's. This is why cable modem services tend to be far faster than DSL or other phone-line-based systems. Some countries with small, compact populations and telecom systems still run by national monopolies, like Sweden and South Korea, rewired their countries for high-speed, high-capacity internet a decade or so ago. Other countries with more spread-out populations, a bigger number of competing telecoms corporations with their own private networks to upgrade, and bigger tangles of local and national-level regulations, have been slower to do so. The USA is the prime offender in this area.

How do you know how much of your monthly bandwidth you have used up?

My dad gets an email from the ISP when he gets close to the limit. Well, a week after he gets close to the limit, supposedly for unavoidable technical reasons, but more likely because it makes it hard to suddenly stop downloading new porn every night and re-watch already-downloaded stuff instead. The monthly billing cycle ends in the middle of the month as well, just to make things more confusing as to when the cycle restarts and we can start catching up on TV shows online again. There's a reason people hate the phone company.

Also, as we have no limits in Sweden (as far as I'm aware) is there a chance the internet might suddenly malfunction because of exceeding the bandwidth? I have a feeling it's really hard to "break" it as that would certainly force everyone to have a limit.

In times of natural disasters, when half the phone lines are knocked out and everyone is trying to contact loved ones to let them know you're okay or find out if they're okay, the number of people trying to make telephone calls can be more than the cell towers or landlines can handle. Extra callers get busy signals or no dial tone or "Your Call Cannot Be Completed As Dialed, All Circuits May Be Busy". I imagine if the internet backbone hits its hard physical limits, the same applies.

Wait a minute... when you have low internet speed (for example I have 5 mb line here, and 100 mb line in my apartment) is that related to the bandwidth capacity stuff? I have noticed that on this slower internet if I download something it slows down browsing and lags Minecraft. Is that due to the bandwidth getting exceeded, which is the actual case of the limitations you mentioned? That would make sense.

Perhaps. Some technologies, such as DSL, actually bundle a bunch of customers' data and send it through the same cable and the same equipment. Expecting not everyone would have their internets streaming HD video at once, they sell more subscriptions than the equipment can handle. When everyone tries to use their allocated bandwidth at once, "actual speeds may vary", as the fine print in your contract states.

Hopefully this answers your questions, but I gotta go bring in groceries.

[Brendanan]

Well, that kinda confirmed what I was thinking too... Although in much more detail. Going through the basics of electrics at uni right now, the current and power through an electric cable could also be an example for the limits... But anyway...

I'm pretty sure America is similar to australia from what I've read from you SW... Although most european countries are in a similar boat to you Sret... No limit, and also pay a shitload less than us for that

At home we don't even have optic fibre for everyone (although we've got the national broadband network being installed... Government provided optic cables for almost everyone in the country)... But the guy with a massiv limit just behind me has the cable provided by one of the most expensive companies (who utilise Indian call centres, who all claim to live in Australia), at a cost of about 50-75 a month Internet only

[sret]

Thanks, I feel like I have a good grip on it now and I didn't even get confused

Sweden is actually not that densely populated. We have one of the smaller populations in Europe in relation to the size of the country, yet even in our end of the woods they have installed these high-speed cables. It's hella cheap too, even with the fastest options.

ps, please stop capitalizing my name

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