Internet - the problems of perception

[erol]

In another thread elsewhere someone asked if other people are having problems with their internet, to which another user replied "i would think most customers are having problems" and who previously had expressed views like "lets be honest the real answer to this question is why advertise a product what you cannot provide," and that they just 'want to get what they paid for'. It seems clear to me that this person is very cynical about ISPs here in North Cyprus generally. So is his feeling that he and the majority of internet users in the TRNC are not getting what they are paying for a fair one? is he ,as of the last hour or so, getting what he is paying for or not, or is it a case that his perception is actually out of line with reality, which if it is in no way an 'attack' on this customer. Let's have a look shall we.

Below are 2 download tests conducted from the device on this customers roof, one is to the point in lefkoshia just before we send the traffic out on the link to Turkey and the other is all the way to a server in the UK. These tests are not 'snap shot' tests - they are sustained test of over 5 minutes constant downloading. So here is the first from the customer's device on his roof to Lefkoshia.

at the bottom you can see the speed achieved on this test for 'current' - the speed when I stopped it, 10s Average - the average speed for the 10 seconds previous to me stopping it and 'Total Average' - the average speed for the entire 5 minutes plus that I ran the test. What it shows is that the average speed this customer got, from his device on his roof to the point in Lefkoshia just before it goes out on the link to Turkey, over the entire 5 plus minutes the test was running was 17,7 Mbs (Mega bits per second).

So now let's look at the test to a sever in the UK

So here we can see that the average speed between this customers device on his roof and this server in the UK on a sustained test of over 5 minutes is 6.5Mbs. So does this mean that there is not sufficient capacity on our link from Lefkoshia to the coast of Turkey ? No it does not, because at the time the test was done that link was running at around 65% of the capacity that we paid for. What it means is that the cause of the slow down in somewhere between the south coast of Turkey and the sever in the UK.

So is this person 'getting what he is paying for' ? What he is actually paying for is for his ISP to move data between his house and the south coast of Turkey - that is all any ISP can do. We are doing this, at the time the test were done, at an average of 17.7Mbs. What is more they are also able to achieve a sustained average speed from between their house and the specific server in the UK of 6.5Mbs. All this using a package that costs 999TL per annum, which you can compare with say Extend's package of 'up to' 4Mbs (to the south coast of Turkey) that costs 949TL per annum. So that is they are getting (at the time the test was done) a sustained average speed, not just to south coast of Turkey, but all the way to the UK that is 60+% faster than the 4Mbs maximum 'up to' speed (to south coast of Turkey )of the Extend internet product that costs 5% less than the one they are currently using. So yes from MM's perspective this customer, at the time these tests were done, is indeed 'getting what they are paying for'. Does this mean therefore, that given he is getting sustained speeds of 6.5Mbs and that streaming internet TV 'only' needs 1.5-2 Mbs that his TV will work without buffering, regardless of what the 'source' may be. No it does not , far far from it.

What is more is that this customer, because of their specific location and all the variables that entails would be within the lowest 15% of all MM customers. So let's look at another example who from their location would be in the top 15% of MM customers. Namely my own connection here at my house. I am in a 'good' location, a few hundred yards from the base station, with clear line of sight in area not plagued by radio interference. Other than that my connection is no different from any other customers. I use a standard 'package' connect via the same equipment as any normal customer in the same way as any normal customer. So let's look at my figures then.

Firstly from my house to Lefkoshia.

So sustained average speed on a test of over 5 minutes between my house and Lefkoshia shows an average speed of 46.1Mbs. So now to the same server in the UK as the test above

Sustained average speed on a test of over 5 minutes from my House to server in the UK of 19.2 Mbs. So sustained average speed, not just to south coast of Turkey, but all the way to the UK that is just shy of 5 times (500%) faster than the maximum 'up to' speed (to south coast of Turkey) of Extend's 4Mbs product, using a MM product that costs 36% more than Extends. The vast majority of our customers - 95% plus will fall somewhere between these two examples. Which is why I do indeed get somewhat disgruntled when Extend's 'award winning agent' comes on here asserting (repeatedly) that "all the bigger ISPs are much the same".

[erol]

In summary

If the criteria you use for deciding if you are getting what you paid for from your ISP is "can I come home from work and enjoy streaming internet TV without problems", then almost certainly you will end up with the perception that no you and probably most or all internet users are not getting what they have paid for. This would be the case if you were using an entirely legitimate paid for service like Netflix and even more so if you are using a generic android / 'Kodi' box accessing free unknown streams of dubious provenance and legitimacy.
If however the criteria you use is 'is my ISP delivering data between me and the south coast of Turkey as it should' then you will end up, I think, with a very different perception as to if your ISP is delivering what you have paid for or not to you or generally.

[PoshinDevon]

Thanks for the explanation Erol.

As I thought there are many factors involved when it comes to the speed of your internet service. I still maintain that tv via the internet is an option which can and does work 80% of the time. But as sure as the sun rises each day just when you want it to be 100% it will fail.

[erol]

Thanks for the explanation Erol.

As I thought there are many factors involved when it comes to the speed of your internet service. I still maintain that tv via the internet is an option which can and does work 80% of the time. But as sure as the sun rises each day just when you want it to be 100% it will fail.

Thank you for reading it and feeding back because sometimes it is hard to know if there is any point in making the effort to write such things.

I would just add that in terms of downloaded internet TV content, once it has been downloaded, it will work 100%. What we are talking about here then is streamed internet TV - the sort when you click for it to play it then starts playing near immediately. As for streaming TV my personal estimate of how often it works would be around 90% - but then I pretty much exclusively use 'known' sources (like direct from bbc iplayer or channel 4 on demand or via netflix). So for me the content that I really 'have' to stream would be F1 and my standard 'spiel' I use to put that in to real world context when talking to customer or prospective customers of MM, is that on average going in to a 20 race season, I expect NOT to be able to watch and enjoy 2 races. So my choice is, understand and expect this and live with it or pay for a 'real' sat based TV service, along with the additional cost that involves and understanding that I will also have to 'chase and change' my sat service every few years or so as the rights to F1 move from one sat based service to another.

[PoshinDevon]

We fully expect to have our tv interrupted as we also use various apps on our tablets to stream via google chrome cast to our tv....so yet another link in the chain that could go wrong. So for us 80% of the time seems about right.

Agree about downloading - we will sometimes do this and then watch at our leisure.

At the end of the day our choice was not to pay large sums of money for a service to be able to watch tv all the time, we are not that addicted.

Hopefully your post has given a better understanding of how things work and those that really need their tv fix will appreciate that they will likely have to pay for it.

[turtle]

I think the “hops” explanation in the previous thread makes things a bit clearer, thank you for explaining this. General internet ie social media and emailing and surfing the net for info seems to work fine however it’s the android box that seems to be a bit unstable at busy times when we are in NC.
I find my android box when in the UK works fine other than live sports streaming everything else seems quite stable, now I know that the “illegal” and “stealing” subjects have been discussed but I was under the impression that Streaming was not illegal under EU law but downloading was because you can share a download (illegal) but you can not share a stream but I did hear from a friend that the law had now been changed, maybe someone could clarify this ?
My connection in the UK is not brilliant as I live in a rural area and its about 7-9mb however as I said the android box works fine for movies and other programs it’s just the live stuff that is now a bit iffy.
Now I know and understand the explanation about why the androids can be a bit more temperamental however my (same) box works much better when in the UK…Why would that be ?

[erol]

There are quite a few 'things' there turtle. I'll try my best to deal with each in turn, as succinctly as I can (not one of my strong points) and using as little technical jargon as possible.

Firstly I need to talk about what I mean when I say 'what is the source' of a given stream. What I mean by 'source' is who is the person or entity who is actually in control of the sever (machine) from which the content is actually coming from when you access it. So for example when I go direct to bbc iplayer's website and stream some content, be it live content or catch up, then the 'source' of that content is the BBC - for they are the ones who operate and control the actual server / machine that is sending me the pictures. If I go to filmon and stream BBC 1 , the content is the BBC but the 'source' of that stream as I am defining it, is filmon because they are the entity that controls the machine that actually sends me the stream, even though the content is BBC content.

The thing to understand about Kodi is that it is not the 'source' of any content what so ever. None. It is a program that provides access to any number of sources of content that are already out there and already exist separate from Kodi itself. What Kodi seeks to do is allow a user to bring together all the different sources that the person may wish to use together in to a single 'place' (Kodi) using a single interface (Kodi's). In order for a given source to be able to be brought 'in' to Kodi, someone needs to write a 'Kodi plug in' for that given source. Typically these 'Kodi plug ins' are not written by the people who are the source of the content they provide access to. So there are Kodi plug ins for BBC iPlayer, but the BBC itself has not and does not provide such plug ins. Instead they are written by 'third parties' (to both the source, bbc and Kodi as well). Typically they are 'enthusiasts' who decide they want to bring a given source into Kodi, write the plug in themselves and having written it they decide to make it freely available to others, so they too can use it. So the 'quality' of these plug ins can and is very variable, in terms of how well they work and what features they support (like sub titles or other features). They are also very variable in terms of how well 'supported' they are, meaning when the BBC make changes to iPlayer (like the recent change requiring you to sign in to use iplayer) , how quickly the Kodi BBC plug in you are using is also updated to accommodate this change so that the plug in continues to work, if it is updated at all, is variable and uncertain. As well as known 'sources' of content like the BBC the internet is also full of 'unknown' sources of content, both content that you could otherwise legitimately get without paying and content that you could not otherwise legitimately get without paying for it. These kind of sources can be 'anyone' - they could be for example a teenager in Bury taking the feed from his (legitimate) sat based Sky TV system and making ti available to 'the world' via his home BT internet connection, just for the 'hell of it'. So people also write Kodi plug ins for content sources like these. In general the free sources of content on the internet, especially those that allow you to access content that otherwise you would have to pay for, are transitory both in terms of how well they work and in terms of how long they last.

So having got that out of the way let's get on to your actual question (continued in following thread).

[erol]

Legality.

What defines if given content you are accessing is legal or not, is not about if you download it or if you stream it. What defines legality is , is it content (downloaded or streamed) that you could otherwise get without having to pay the owner (or rights holder for your region) of that content or not. So streaming or downloading BBC content, if you are within the UK and have a valid TV license is legal be it done on an android box through kodi or by any other means. Streaming or downloading (non free to air) Sky content, if you do not have a valid Sky subscription is illegal. This has always been the case and there has been no changes to the law recently that I am aware of. There has been talk about changes to the laws around this stuff but no actual changes yet (again to the best of my knowledge)

What has changed recently in the UK, is concerted efforts by owners and rights holders of content, to more effectively use the existing laws to try and stop 'illegal' access to their content - people like the Premier League, who own the 'content' of Premiership football matches and sell the right to broadcast these in the UK to Sky or BT Sport (or whoever bids the most when such rights are auctioned off). They have and are currently 'targeting' two main 'areas'. Firstly they are targeting those people who sell boxes that come 'pre set up' with Kodi plug ins that access non legitimate sources to content like Premiership football (like say that of our fictional Bury teenager). They have (only relatively recently) brought successful prosecutions against a retailer of such 'fully loaded' Kodi android boxes as well as brought pressure on 'third party marketplaces' like amazon and eBay and facebook to not allow the sale of such items via their marketplaces. The second major area they are targeting is the 'bigger' makers of the Kodi plug ins themselves. Whilst no prosecutions of such have yet been brought, the threat of such action has led to a number of the bigger more well know Kodi plu in makers to withdraw those plug ins that provide access to illegitimate sources of content. What they have not yet targeted but may do so in the future is actual users of such illegitimate plug ins.

In Summary

The sale or use of android boxes is not illegal, The distribution or use of Kodi is not illegal. The sale or use of Kodi boxes pre configured or just configured (by the user themselves) with plug ins that only given access to content you could otherwise access anyway without charge is not illegal. The sale or use of Kodi (or any other device what so ever) that does give access to content that otherwise you would have to pay for IS illegal in the UK (and most of the world and technically probably so in the TRNC for we actually do have domestic copyright laws here , just few rights holders / owners of such have ever used the local courts to pursue such uses in the TRNC)

[erol]

My Android / Kodi box works better in the UK than it does in the TRNC - why is this ?

The most likely reason why this is the case is that the majority of the different sources you access via this box are likely to be 'closer' in network terms to you when you are in the UK than when you are in the TRNC. That is the number 'hops' needed to get from your house in the UK to the source off the content will be less than from your house in the TRNC and thus the number of different 'places' a problem could be introduced and the number of different entities controlling such links / hops is less, thus less problems. So for example in the UK all the major ISP will 'interconnect' with both each other and entities like the BBC in 'internet exchanges', meaning that typically from a UK ISP to BBC sourced content, there are just two entities - the BBC and your ISP. If you used your android box to access Turkish content , then the chances are the 'sources' of such content will be 'closer' to you when in the TRNC than the UK and thus you may well find the reverse situation, that such content works better when you are in TRNC than the UK.

Of course another possible explanation is that your internet provider in the UK is better than your one in the TRNC but even if your TRNC internet connection is 'better' than your UK one (more consistently provides more Mbs of sustained through put of data) you may well still find the box works better in the UK than the TRNC because of the reason above,.

Anyway hopefully the above has not been too 'wordy' and has been of some use or interest to you or others.

[andrew4232]

erol,
i am the person that your referring to in your opening post, and i see that you were going to send me a private message which you had the good sense to delete before it was delivered as am sure it would have been another one of your flying off the handle responces, if you read any of my posts i have have never once mentioned multimax or there standards of service and supply so why do you assume am aiming it at them feeling guilty perhaps?

[erol]

enrol,
i am the person that your referring to in your opening post, and i see that you were going to send me a private message which you had the good sense to delete before it was delivered as am sure it would have been another one of your flying off the handle responces, if you read any of my posts i have have never once mentioned multimax or there standards of service and supply so why do you assume am aiming it at them feeling guilty perhaps?

I did send you a PM and what it was , was to let you know that I had personally checked your connection with us and actually found some aspects that were not as good as they should have been and rectified them and that your connection should be performing better as a result. When after several days you did not collect this PM I did delete it assuming . correctly or not, that you probably never would. I probably should have called you directly when I failed to reach you via PM and I did not and for that I apologise.

I do understand why you are 'upset' with me and my 'use' of you and your posts in an attempt to make and explain wider general issues with the hope that doing so is ultimately to everyone's benefit - your, ours and the users of the forum in general. Such use was and is in no way intended as an 'attack' on you personally, though I do understand why and how it may feel otherwise from your perspective. The views that you have expressed about ISPs in North Cyprus are common held views and thus you were a useful 'example' and 'starting point' for trying examine where such views (generally) come from and where and why they might be based on (commonly held) misconceptions about what it is ISP do and what people pay them to do. You personally were also a more useful (to me) example than others I could have used because I was able to identify who you were (by info you had previously publicly posted) and were a MM customer and thus I could use your connection and how it was performing at a given point in time as a 'random' example when trying to make the wider points I was trying to make. I do recognise and accept that you have not and do not name Multimax specifically when expressing your, commonly held, views about ISP's in North Cyprus generally and I appreciate and thank you for this. Let me stress once more my 'use' of you and your posts as an 'example' of wider issues was and is in no way intended to be or be seen as an attack on you and I apologise unreservedly that it feels otherwise to you. I do not think you, or anyone who holds views similar to you, is stupid or ignorant or unreasonable. There are reasons why you and so many others think the way you do about internet service provision generally. What I am trying to do is explore those reasons generally (using you as an example and starting point) and try and establish and explain which of them, in my view as someone with some degree of specialised knowledge about the subject, are 'well founded' and which are less so and why.

So again I can only apologise for any 'upset' I may have caused you by my actions both as a Multimax employee and just as a 'normal' member of this forum community. Sorry.

[turtle]

Erol
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions,...food for thought and I think I understand how it all works a bit better now...thanks again.

[andrew4232]

thank you erol for your apology, life is too short for people to fall out

[erol]

Well let me add to this, somewhat unexpected but most welcome, outbreak of civility by thanking you turtle for acknowledging the effort taken by me to reply to you and your thanks for doing so and also to you andrew4232 for your gracious acceptance of my apology to you.

[erol]

Article today in the Sun in the UK that is about legality of 'kodi boxes' and increasing efforts by rights holders like the Premier League to clamp down on their use.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/4105418/pr ... n-cut-off/

[turtle]

I'm surprised you read the Sun Erol

Just get a VPN.

[Keithcaley]

Hi turtle,

A VPN may solve the issue of 'appearing to be in the UK', but it doesn't address the issue of viewing programme material which should require a Paid Subscription - that's what the 'Rights Holders' are concerned about... - people watching matches 'for free' when they should be paying for the privilege

p.s. I wouldn't mind betting that Erol doesn't read the Sun, I suspect that he just 'Googled' for a suitable news article.

[turtle]

That's my point Keith, If the VPN hides your IP address then they can't see what you are watching...if I understand it correctly ?

The watching illegal unpaid for content is a different matter, it's clear now that if you get caught you will get your collar felt but people will still do it.
For me the final straw was Sky putting my subscription up to a level that I thought was over the top and my decision was taken to cancel some years ago when Sky announced a billions deal for the premiership and passed the hike on to us...I mean £300k a week for Rooney none of my money lines his or other prima donna's pockets anymore ...

[Keithcaley]

Turtle, you're quite right of course - on all counts.

[kerry 6138]

Article today in the Sun in the UK that is about legality of 'kodi boxes' and increasing efforts by rights holders like the Premier League to clamp down on their use.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/4105418/pr ... n-cut-off/

Am I right in thinking Rupert Murdoch owns the Sun and is part owner of Sky who sponsor the Premier League?

[turtle]

Absolutely correct Kerry

[Jasja]

Erol we have multimax platinum on a yearly subscription. Recently our son holidayed with us and logged on to his Netflix (we have a smart tv). It was fantastic. Two questions really. Today I got an email from multimax in Turkish so no idea what it means and secondly I want to sign up to Netflix is my internet okay to do that? Thanks

[Bernie]

Copy and paste your email from Multimax into google translate , although far from perfect you will get a basic understanding of what the email is saying, I did!