Steve Smith allows you to demonstrate the value of Net Neutrality at home, with your own router, and in return speed up your own connection online.
Episode #7-30 released on March 25, 2017
Home Routers have plenty of technology in them these days. Multiple WIFI Networks can be hosted at the same time, over different bands. You can prioritize traffic, you can use such things as Quality of Service, and even check for viruses using Deep Packet Inspection. However, does usually some of these things slow your connection down?
I've done the test myself on my own router, and it is an interesting test to do on your own router. Consider playing with the QOS, Prioritization and deep packet inspection programs like antivirus scanners, if any are available. Just make sure you make a benchmark of what you can expect from your own experience on your computer. In my case, with QOS and deep packet inspection turned off, I can play videos from Netflix in 1080P HD, upload a video to YouTube, files up to my server over SFTP, and continue browsing the Internet without any noticeable issues to my streaming video I am looking at on Netflix. While, my computer does have two Gigabit Ethernet connections, I only connected one.
Now, when I turned on QOS, with and without Deep Packet Inspection services like the Trend Net Antivirus service in my router, the same experience was not possible. Uploading caused the Netflix stream to stutter, and even stop. Even uploading to YouTube and my own server at the same time is relatively too slow compared to the same with everything turned off.
The entire time I left prioritization to my own computer at high in the router settings, so all my own traffic would be served first. This is the home version of Internet Fast Lanes.
Now, servers may be able to do this without any data slowdown, depending on the bandwidth demands, but we can now start understanding why many servers don't scan for viruses and malware during transmission of data, it would be too cost intensive, and would slow down the entire experience of everyone, buffering all other incoming traffic, and could lead to an unintentional denial of service. Quality of Service and Prioritization are, also, not done at the ISP level because of how the Internet works. It works best when every packet is treated equally. The Internet just works, and it works as intend. This simple test you can do at home, demonstrates the reality of the Internet in a model you will understand, and you might just be able to download and stream at the same time now. Have fun, and don't forget to tell me what your experience is. Leave your Router Model, Data connection type, and your experience with these services On and Off in the comments on YouTube, or at TQAWeekly.com.
Note: My experiment was done with the latest firmware for the Asus Rt-AC56U, over a connection that is 30 Megabits down, 10 Megabits up.
Host : Steve Smith | Music : | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Dot Net