Cox Cable Testing a Form of ‘Fast Lane’ Internet For Gamers - Sensationalist Headlines

https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/cox-cable-testing-a-form-of-fast-lane-internet-for-gamers-1203197817/ ashit pie told me this would never happen

No, no he did not; this also isn't covered under neutrality; it's simply under the aegis of not being a dick, something companies have no understanding of.

The site also notes that compared to standard Cox Internet, users will experience up to 34% less lag, 55% fewer ping spikes, and 45% less jitter. Pretty sure if you have ping spikes or jitter bad enough that it affects your gameplay your ISP is already shit. Also 'lag' is quite a general term, so how do they quantify '34% less lag'?

In the terms of service on the website, Cox notes that membership to the Cox Elite Gamer Service permits users to route their game activity for select games through a dedicated gaming network

I wonder if this is just effectively slowing down non-CheetoNet subscribers because they can legally now, or (I really doubt this) if they actually have a second network that has a more direct architecture and the signal would hit less routers along the way? Probably the former though and fuck them for doing so.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say something controversial... Is this really that different than having to pay more for faster internet? Like I understand yes of course they're fundamentally different things, but the end result is the same no? More money for better service?

yet the fundamental means of communication in our world should be torn into pre-packaged shreds by drooling business grads? paying for faster internet was always about infrastructure, not arbitrary gouging we're losing something special

The best anology is that before, you would pay differently for different sized buffets, but now you pay for getting into the buffet, and find yourself having to pay for every individual item anyways.

Infrastructure definitely has a lot to do ping, lag, and jitter... so not sure that holds up. I'm sorry but this analogy makes no sense, I could just as easily say you pay one price for a shitty buffet and a higher price for a better buffet and it applies to this situation exactly. To be clear I'm not in support of being taken advantage of by ISPs, but I'm really not seeing a compelling difference between this service and paying for higher speeds.

Just when I thought cox wasn't shitty enough. THey charge way too much for their services,t here's constant connection issues,a nd far too many unexpected outages. I pay them $80 a month for internet, and it's only 150 megabit, but hardly ever goes over 90. It's way too much for too little, and there's no choice but cox. The only ohter thing in the area is AT&T, but they're garbage and cap at 50 Megabits in the area. Can't wait to get fucked over more by them because of the lack of competition.

My point is that you paid for better cabling/a new satellite/better router hardware, and all those thing affected internet speed, paying for international/us-only routing. Without any concept of regulation (ie net neutrality), ISP's can and already are divvying up their max bandwidth, and slowly cutting it apart to create new premium services that will cost more. Because there's no punishment or oversight to not do so anymore, and massive financial incentive to do so. If their cabling to a city can hold ~1000gb/s, cutting it to ~800gb's for no "reason" and turning that extra into their "gaming packages", they can raise the price for what they were already doing.

My family has Cox. We pay waaay to much, but get 300 megabit. And at least for us, it's a pretty constant 300. Our other choice is ATT, which I don't trust because they claimed they had Fiber in our area, but when the actually service tech came, said we would be getting 75megabits.

There's a difference between paying for bandwidth and paying for ping/latency. Previously you'd only pay for bandwidth, latency is generally not prioritized in any meaningful fashion. You could probably find exceptions to this, but as a general rule I can't recall latency being a selling point. So someone who had a high-tier internet package would be more or less on even ground with someone with a middle of the road internet package when it comes to online gaming, presuming that the lower tier package can handle the minimum bandwidth requirement of the game (which is quite likely, networking in most games doesn't push a huge amount of data). So in essence, this confers a clear advantage to people willing to pay more. It's quite literally 'pay your ISP to win'. And that's before you get into the potential for further abuse. Now that they're selling this sort of package, what is to stop them from routing as much of their baseline package traffic through high-latency routes in order to create more demand for their gaming package? We could all see our current performance degrade over the next few years if more companies start pushing this sort of thing, a situation where your ping is going to get worse even though you're paying the same amount. There's nothing to really stop them from doing so, as far as the law is concerned it's 'their network infrastructure', and thus I presume they can pass traffic through it in whatever manner they wish, even if doing so is highly anti-consumer. It was only a matter of time before they tried something like this really, and this is why we need net neutrality laws.

From what I'm reading, It sounds like you're coughing up 15$ to use a Desktop app that routes your internet traffic differently. The App for only for 2 Windows Desktops and have to be on ~ Cox Internet Preferred 100 Internet service ~ or higher. Knowing how fucking scummy ISPs are this looks bad for them on a technical level Remember this SOUNDS like you're paying for an app so, IF piss poor reviews or marginal gains => scummy fuckers, bc this isn't magic IF Actually impressive gains => scummy fuckers, bc the ability to have better service was there whole time.

I work for Cox as tech support, can vouch that I've seen my fair share of scummy shit done from our end.

Because when you pay for faster internet, it is faster no matter WHAT you are connecting to. This is basically paying for faster internet FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL SERVICE.

Well, look what image just became relevant again. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/198768/ba6cc56a-3171-4f40-b58f-37811194000c/image.png

So I take it this "Gamer fast lane" is a new lane put down as part of the infrastructure right? It's not just all going through the exact same infrastructure everything else is, and they're just throttling everything else? Why that would never happen~~~

Edit: It was pointed out to me, that this actually isn't as nefarious as it looks on the surface, it is basically a repackaging of Download wtfast and Experience Gaming Without Lag “Elite Gamer Service” is actually a repackaging of WTFast’s own gaming service which is advertised as a technology that essentially finds the fastest route between a gamer and the game they’re playing. A Cox spokesperson said that the service is not a “fast lane” service and that it doesn’t do anything to the Cox network Net neutrality rules voted down by the Federal Communications Commission in 2017 led many to believe that “fast lane” and “slow lane” internet was likely to surface. The idea is that internet providers could decide to charge companies like Netflix, Amazon or YouTube for better access to their customers. This appears to take that idea and turn it on its head, charging customers to have faster access to play games. Correction: Variety initially erroneously reported that Cox Elite Gamer Service was a form of “fast lane” service, when it actually doesn’t prioritize internet access. We have updated the story to reflect that and add more context.

Shouldn't you be reducing the number of hops your connection is routed through for ALL your customers to begin with? I don't think anyone is going to notice any difference with this in terms of gaming. If you want to offer a service to reduce lag, then start running fucking fiber everywhere

Well atleast the US House of Representatives voted 232–190 to overrule Ajit Pai’s FCC and restore net neutrality as of the 19th, try not to hype yourself up alot but atleast this is comforting to see how much net neutrality is supported still.