Re: Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

["John Levine" <johnl () iecc com>]

In article <11287607.8005.1425056798993.JavaMail.mhammett@ThunderFuck> you write:
> More symmetry will happen when the home user does more things that care about symmetry. It's a
> simple allocation of spectrum (whether wireless, DSL or cable). MHz for upload are taken out of MHz
> for download. 

It's more complicated than that.  On cable systems, all of the
upstream traffic has to contend for the available space, sort of like
classic Ethernet.  The faster you try to go, the more you lose to
contention.  With ADSL, there's only so much bandwidth per pair, and I
doubt many users would want less download speed.

There's also little reason to expect that many home users want
symmetrical access.  We weenies are atypical.  Your normal broadband
user watches video (which would better be sent as actual video over
the cable, but that's a separate argument) and futzes with Facebook or
Snapchat or the groovy app du jour.  It's all mostly downstream
traffic.

R's,
John