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Cox Cable Testing a Form of 'Fast Lane' Internet For Gamers (variety.com) 219

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Cox Cable is testing a new "Elite Gamer Service" a form of fast lane service for gamers that would prioritize internet use for those willing to pay an extra $15 a month. From a report: The service is currently being tested in Arizona and only works with Windows PCs. Cox Elite Gamer "automatically finds a faster path for your PC game data, reducing the lag, ping spikes, and jitter that stand in the way of winning," according to the official site for the service. 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. The $15 a month service includes access for two computer users and requires Cox Internet Preferred 100 Internet service or above. 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.
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Cox Cable Testing a Form of 'Fast Lane' Internet For Gamers More

Cox Cable Testing a Form of 'Fast Lane' Internet For Gamers

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  • this is the future. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pezpunk ( 205653 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:08PM (#58490666) Homepage

    welcome to the techno-libertarian hellworld of an internet without net neutrality.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A hell world where you can save $15 if you're willing to put up with lag, ping spikes, and jitter? That's funny!

      • Re:this is the future. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pezpunk ( 205653 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:12PM (#58490716) Homepage

        you mean you can pay $15 for the ISP to not artificially crap up your internet connection. for select titles, who are also paying the ISP for this "privilege". (yes, of course the ISP's will work both sides)

        hilarious how willing libertarians are to get fucked in the ass and scream that they love it all the while.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Ichijo ( 607641 )

          you mean you can pay $15 for the ISP to not artificially crap up your internet connection.

          My ISP has been doing that for years by offering multiple speed plans.

          • Not exactly.

            Bandwidth setting is not the same as class of service.
            QoS /CoS (Quality of Service or Class of service) means gaming packets move through routers faster than Netflix show streams.

            ISPs have always allowed QoS for services that require low latency like gaming and video chat.

            Netflix can buffer ahead and doesn't need to be real time.

            This should be completely apart from Net Neutrality concerns.

            • Cox Cable isn't using QoS for this. The reason it's only available to Windows PCs with because they're using the WTFast VPN client, which is a service offering that connects to one of several WTFast points of presence around North America and tries to use the one closest to your gaming server of choice.

          • What GP doesn't understand is that the game connection is SLOWER, as he understands speed. That is, it's LOWER Mbps.

            You aren't paying for it to "not be crappy", you're paying for it to be more like an analog phone line.

            For example, a path with large buffers tends to have high latency, high jitter, and high bandwidth. Perfect for Netflix and YouTube. A path with small buffers has small latency, small jitter, and small bandwidth. Much like an analog phone line, which has little latency, almost no jitter, and

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by XXeR ( 447912 )

          hilarious how willing libertarians are to get fucked in the ass and scream that they love it all the while.

          How many libertarians were involved in the decisions that yielded this situation again?

        • hilarious how willing libertarians are to get fucked in the ass and scream that they love it all the while.

          It's been a while...I wouldn't call it my preferred position. But sometimes you have to take what you can get.

        • Huh? Legit libertarians absolutely *don't* want this -- only corporatist douchebags who want to retain their gov't-sanctioned, taxpayer-funded monopolies until the end of time. This is what happens when both sides of the gov't consciously (for decades BTW) prevent the formation of a healthy market, leading to a complete absence of real competition -- which leads to zero incentive to innovate or drop prices, and finally the ass-fucking of consumers you're complaining about. Why aren't you blaming the folks

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cito ( 1725214 )

          You are right about ISP artificially fucking shit up. I'm an old fart, I worked for various isp's since mid 90s. But in early to mid 2000s I worked a little while at roadrunner, a cable internet provider before being bought out, but before their purchase they would want service configured so that the larger the download the slower the speeds got. So, as a crude example, if ya had like a 5 - 10 megabit service (again been a while), small file downloadwwouldn't be noticeable, but on a larger files, it would s

      • You're not saving $15, you're paying the old subscription price. The lag, ping spikes and jitter are probably new though; they added those to make gamers pay the extra $15

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You're not saving $15, you're paying the old subscription price. The lag, ping spikes and jitter are probably new though; they added those to make gamers pay the extra $15

          It's like themeparks with fast-passes. If you don't buy the fast pass you're not saving money- you just have to wait in line longer because people with them are skipping the queue. If you can't afford the extra cost you're getting a worse service for the same money as you had before.

      • A hell world where you can save $15 if you're willing to put up with lag, ping spikes, and jitter? That's funny!

        So.... all they need to do to make money is:
        a) Inject some artificial lag, ping spikes, and jitter into their networks
        b) Profit!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

        Not paying extra != saving.

        If you disagree, allow me to save you money by letting you give me $100 instead of $200.

        • Yes. but those savings would be eaten up by the interest on the $100 they now owe you Mr. Shekelstein.

    • Re:this is the future. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:17PM (#58490784)
      Um, the problem is caused by government awarding cable monopolies. The cable companies don't have natural monopolies; they have government-granted monopolies. There is no problem with fast lanes if there are multiple cable companies competing with each other to provide the best service for the least money. If they're a good idea, then people and companies adopt them naturally, and the price gravitates towards the value they add to the service. If they're a bad idea, the companies offering them start losing money (customers), and quickly get rid of them.

      Fast lanes only become a problem when the cable company has a monopoly. Customers might hate them, but they have no choice but to accept them because their government has told them that they can only get fast Internet service from this one cable company. People keep trying to pin the cable company debacle on the free market, when it's a poster child for the problems misguided/inept government regulation can cause.

      • Re:this is the future. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:22PM (#58490838)

        Um, the problem is caused by government awarding cable monopolies.

        Yes, the mean old government forced these cable companies into monopolies. The telecoms and ISPs wanted as much competition as possible and would gladly even help small municipalities set up their own ISPs, but the evil overbearing government won't let them.

        Oh, wait, no they didn't. They asked for this, and paid good money for it too.

        • He didn't say they forced them he said awarded like "Thanks for the campaign contributions, heres a monopoly on cable services."

      • When you have to lay physical infrastructure right into every single building, it's a natural monopoly (and franchise agreements, your 'government granted monopoly' have been illegal for decades). The kind of capital, regulatory, and other costs are not something that is ever going to lend itself to signfiicant competition, no matter what the government regulations are. The only way around this is having the last mile operated as a local utility, and all providers lease service, or slightly less ideal extre

        • > The kind of capital, regulatory, and other costs are not something that is ever going to lend itself to signfiicant competition, no matter what the government regulations are.

          Ask me how I know you're under 30 years old...

          Literally everything you just said was proven false when the telephone monopoly was busted up in the 1980s and later with the Title II regulations in the 1990s. The result? An explosion of competition. You could literally change your telephone provider with a single phone call. Things

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • That's how I remember it...and I am 50. Don't get me wrong. Breaking up the long distance companies did help. Remember when you didn't own your phone but "rented" it from the telecom? Or when you had to pay extra for touch-tone. But we're much better now. Why now I get 2-3 robocalls a day from numbers I don't know/care about. Much better.
          • Age ceases to be an asset when you've gone senile. You described the exact scenario I said could be used to overcome lack of competition with a natural monopoly. Those providers didn't all lay new last mile lines, the monopoly on physical infrastructure was still there, but the owner was forced to lease them out. Please actually read the posts of people you're about to insult.
      • Exactly, this is a problem when it's against the law for municipalities to compete with the cable companies and telecoms. When it's against the law for more than one cable company to compete in an area. Because it would be unfair. Are you fucking kidding me?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by naris ( 830549 )

        Um, the problem is caused by government awarding cable monopolies. The cable companies don't have natural monopolies; they have government-granted monopolies. There is no problem with fast lanes if there are multiple cable companies competing with each other to provide the best service for the least money. If they're a good idea, then people and companies adopt them naturally, and the price gravitates towards the value they add to the service. If they're a bad idea, the companies offering them start losing money (customers), and quickly get rid of them. Fast lanes only become a problem when the cable company has a monopoly. Customers might hate them, but they have no choice but to accept them because their government has told them that they can only get fast Internet service from this one cable company. People keep trying to pin the cable company debacle on the free market, when it's a poster child for the problems misguided/inept government regulation can cause.

        Wow, you really are very wrong. The cable companies do indeed have a "natural monopoly" the barrier of entry of stringing up cables (especially if they also have to erect poles) or burying cables is very high. Yes, there are many communities where they have to obtain approval form local government and some of those local governments only license a single company, but that does NOT mean it is a [s]goverment[/s] monopoly! You instance that the high costs are a problem only because of "da gubmit" is proof of

      • The cable companies don't have natural monopolies; they have government-granted monopolies.

        No. For the most part they are natural monopolies. The only thing stopping you from becoming another cable company in direct competition to them is your lack of the billions needed to invest in the infrastructure.

        Now they are natural monopolies formed with government aid, but being a "government-granted" monopoly means that the government is the one ensuring that the service remains exclusive. They may have propped up the companies to begin with, but they are not doing that now.

    • After Reading the Article, all Cox is doing is Reselling WTFast
      https://www.wtfast.com/ [wtfast.com]

      Basically, from what I can tell it's some sort of "VIP Gaming Network Service" that reduces latency. My guess is it's some sort of VPN like Service. In other words, more Snake Oil for Gamers like Killer NIC's and Gaming Routers/Modems.

      So not necessarily a Net Neutrality Violation, Although, I'm curious to see if Cox is doing something in the background to prioritize WTFast Traffic. If they are then there's definitely a vio

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      welcome to the techno-libertarian hellworld

      It's been here for years. Charter (even before "Spectrum") sells "business class" service at residences where they can support it in their network. What that means is US support staff and a business class modem that is configured with dedicated QAM channel bonding to avoid contention with residential class users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by uncqual ( 836337 )

      This is virtually indistinguishable from paying more for a higher bandwidth connection. No 'net neutrality' rules or regulations should prevent users who are willing to pay more for higher performance from doing so.

      • Its good to know you don't understand the situation and hence precludes your ability to comment intelligently on it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      Libertarians aren't against all regulation. Regulation is necessary to prevent monopolistic behavior such as this, and that doesn't have jack to do with libertarianism. There are no libertarians who created the rule against net neutrality, so take your whiny Don Quixote ass down to the FCC office and bitch at those who did. Moron.

  • Select games? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:09PM (#58490678)

    ``... permits users to route their game activity for select games through a dedicated gaming network.''

    And when you don't want to play one of their "select games" any more?

    This sounds like, sooner or later, this is going to tick off gamers.

  • This smells (Score:5, Insightful)

    by H3lldr0p ( 40304 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:09PM (#58490686) Homepage

    The service is currently being tested in Arizona and only works with Windows PCs. Cox Elite Gamer "automatically finds a faster path for your PC game data, reducing the lag, ping spikes, and jitter that stand in the way of winning,"

    That smells like it's delaying all other traffic coming into and out of your PC and not speeding things up for games, just letting the packets flow like they normally should. I would not trust this without being able look through the code with a microscope.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flippy ( 62353 )
      Even in the original post, they're stating "permits users to route their game activity for select games through a dedicated gaming network". If they're routing it to a separate network that's built to have less lag/jitter/etc., they're not slowing anything down on the standard network, just giving the customer access to a faster one.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        That's the marketing. Reality is that you just don't do necessary maintenance on regular network when it comes to routing to known game servers. It's completely incidental of course.

        • Re:This smells (Score:5, Insightful)

          by flippy ( 62353 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:32PM (#58490960) Homepage
          At this point, neither of us (unless you work in Cox's networking division) has any idea how much of this is marketing and how much is reality. Let's not call them out-and-out liars (and yes, saying "they're not speeding up game packets, they're slowing down other packets" is calling them liars when they're stating that they're offering a separate network) until we see evidence that they're lying. It's inappropriate to do so.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            Could you stop lying about what was said? No one here suggested they're lying.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by flippy ( 62353 )
              It seems to me that saying "they're not doing what they say they're doing" is calling them liars. Putting "that smells like" in front of it is just pulling punches. As I stated, no one outside the networking division of the company knows the actual details, so let's not assume (or have the arrogance to say we know) when we don't know.

      • Re:This smells (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:33PM (#58490964)

        Cox is cable. There is only one cable into the house and it carries the traffic of everyone on that segment, typically hundreds of subscribers. The last mile is the part of the network which is expensive to maintain and upgrade, so it is the bottleneck. There is no way to route around that bottleneck. If there is a need for preferential treatment, i.e. there is congestion, then the only way to speed up some traffic is to slow down other traffic. Anyone who tells you differently doesn't know what they're talking about or wants to sell you something, probably both.

        • Most of the latency is not due to the last mile, so you're point is invalid. Just do a traceroute to prove it to yourself.

      • If they're routing it to a separate network that's built to have less lag/jitter/etc., they're not slowing anything down on the standard network, just giving the customer access to a faster one.

        Unless they're re-running cable to your neighborhood / house, you're still sharing the same physical network as before. The "separate network" -- if it exists -- won't come into play until well upstream and, even then, it'll probably be just a VLAN with different traffic settings.

        • Unless they're re-running cable to your neighborhood / house, you're still sharing the same physical network as before. The "separate network" -- if it exists -- won't come into play until well upstream and, even then, it'll probably be just a VLAN with different traffic settings.

          If you're on cable, then it doesn't have to be that way. They could set aside frequency ranges for premium customers, and run those ranges into their own line cards, or even their own routers.

  • A while ago I signed a new contract with my ISP. I now get 150MB/s for $65 per month. 10 years ago that seemed like fantasy, 20 years ago even businesses and libraries didn't have that kind of bandwidth (and yes I've tested it repeatedly). For that matter 20 years ago I still dialed up to the internet on a 28.8 modem and was pretty happy with that.

    But really, how much faster of a connection can a gaming system even utilize? This sounds more like ISPs just trying to milk a little more money out of customers. If the programmers didn't already take steps to optimize games for reasonable connections, then they should be the ones under the gun here not the users.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by pezpunk ( 205653 )

      it's cute that you don't think your latency will plummet to hell the moment this "service" launches, all but forcing you to sign up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      It sounds to me like they have realized that speed is fast enough for pretty much everyone, and instead are now selling quality.

      for gaming a 15mpbs is fine with low latency.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Gaming doesn't need speed. Most games barely need a few kilobytes per second of actual bandwidth.

      What's critical to gaming is stability of this connection. Data must flow without delays and latency must not experience significant changes.

      The reason why high speed connections are good here is that such connections are often routed on higher quality hardware (from edge routers to actual cables). Which also reduces potential problems with consistency of data flow.

      But it's completely possible to have a very hig

    • You generally do not need a fast connection for gaming. You need low ping times and a reliable connection. A 10Mb/s connection will do you fine, if the quality of the connection is good and there aren't many hops to the game server that add to your ping time.

    • A while ago I signed a new contract with my ISP. I now get 150MB/s for $65 per month. 10 years ago that seemed like fantasy, 20 years ago even businesses and libraries didn't have that kind of bandwidth (and yes I've tested it repeatedly). For that matter 20 years ago I still dialed up to the internet on a 28.8 modem and was pretty happy with that.

      I get 600MB/s (symmetrical up/down) for $30/month here in Spain - fiber all the way to my PC.

      Six months ago it was only 400MB/s but they recently upgraded it (for free) due to competition from other vendors.

      • I call BS on this. You're saying you have a 3.2Gb/sec link for $30 a month? How is that even delivered to your PC 10Gb fiber with them shaping or LACP over 4x1Gb links?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      How big is the next gen 50 GB patch for a new game a day after release?
      How large can a game get on the day its released as download only content?

      Many people who work only have so many free hours in a week to "game".
      They only have so much free time after work/on a weekend to play a game.
      They don't have free hours to wait for a game to download. More hours for the new patch the next day. The new GPU drivers.
      To support that faster ISP networks will be an option that will allow content to download fast
    • The 150 MB/s is only good from your home to the cable headend. Afterwards it goes onto the Internet with all other traffic and is subject to latency like all other traffic.

  • Reading between the lines (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:14PM (#58490742)

    If you don't pay the $15 a month fee, they de-prioritize your traffic, especially gaming traffic, and run it through slower routes. They don't have to disclose this, they can just do it.

    This is only the beginning. Welcome to a world without Net Neutrality.

    • If you don't pay the $15 a month fee, they de-prioritize your traffic, especially gaming traffic, and run it through slower routes. They don't have to disclose this, they can just do it.

      And it will be impossible for you to prove.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      But if you suck at Fortnite lower ping and less jitter won't change the fact that you still suck at Fortnite.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      AC Net Neutrality did not make your internet faster.
      Federal rules and regulations left the same old paper insulated copper wireline in place.
      Now with more freedom from big gov rules ISP can offer faster and better networks for people who need faster networks.
      No need to wait a long time for a 50 GB game patch. Get back to the game quicker with a new ISP game network service.

  • Pretty sure there's no word "guarantee" in there (Score:4, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:24PM (#58490876) Journal

    It's like your cable company promising "up to X" internet speeds. Ostensibly, it should be that, but all bets are off when the mouthbreather next door has to download 70gigs of porn RIGHT NOW.

    I don't care what they say about prioritizing or fast-laning, chaotic nature of a packet switched network is always going to be vulnerable to random crap.

    There are always going to be people willing to pay for this sort of flim-flammery more out of a religious faith in the "power of paying more" than a sober reflection on value for $. cf stereo "enthusiasts"

  • Net Brutality. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RickyShade ( 5419186 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:33PM (#58490980)

    You guys remember the argument against net neutrality laws? You know, the argument that we didn't need those laws because corporations would never dream of doing something exactly like what they always do?

  • He's in for some payday when he leaves the FCC.

  • The requirement that you have a windows PC heavily implies there's some extra software to run on your gaming PC in order to get the promised service.

    That sounds ridiculous.

  • Time Division Multiplexing (Score:5, Informative)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Thursday April 25, 2019 @02:49PM (#58491108) Homepage

    The largest part of latency is now Time Division Multiplexing. On most DOCSIS lines, the individual time slices are done in such a way everyone gets ~10-15ms latency just on their first hop out of their house. These time slices could easily be made smaller. I've personally switched to GPON FttH a few years back, and absolutely love it. My first-hop latency is now ~2ms with a connection directly to a major regional interconnect. GPON is still shared like DOCSIS, but with TDM latency so low, and direct peering to major gaming networks at the other end of the wire, little more can be done to minimize latency.

  • It only works with Windows? Does that mean it require some piece of software on the users computer? What would limit it to Windows only? I'm confused. If the ISP is giving a fast lane to a certain service, port or url what difference would the end user OS make?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      cox is rebranding this service: https://www.wtfast.com/ [wtfast.com]

      "Using the trace data, I can see that the default WOW LA connection goes through Telus/Telia to get to Seattle, then it switches to AT&T, who heads over to Portland, then San Francisco and then finally LA. ... Now if I look at the trace data for WTFast CA4, I can see that Telus drops me off in Seattle, then Comcast takes over and sends the data down to LA, and then hands the data to the WOW server ... using a single proxy, I can completely avoid any

  • I only play Blizzard games and I live within miles of the data center. I already have sub 50ms ping times on Cox.
  • What? It's not a fast lane but it routes through a separate faster network? So it's more like an HOV lane? Yeah that's better and feels less like a net neutrality violation...

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