The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Isuwen · 2006-06-07 Reply Admin

dhromed:

What's more plot-thickening is that USB will not fit into regular Ethernet adapters in PCs.

Laptops have sliiiightly bigger sockets, for some reason.

Sure you didn't try and stick it into a modem socket? Telepone jacks are smaller then RJ-45s.

2006-06-07 Reply Admin

JoeBloggs:
Why would I want to reduce my already-slow upload speed? Compared to ADSL, a T1 is a slow connection.

I think the fastest ADSL upload I've seen is about 1000 Kbps; 768 is more common. A T1 is twice that, at 1500 Kbps symmetric. The download side is often faster than a T1, true. Then again, it often isn't. (768 down / 128 up is probably the most common speed in the U.S. right now, due to Verizon's $15 deal. At the high end, they have 3000 / 768 -- twice the download but half the upload of a T1.)

2006-06-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
For the record (and I know I'm going to get hounded by this), I'm a Software Engineering student, and I didn't know that. Could I have suspected it, I actually did, done a bit of research to figure it out, probably. However, not all Engineers are willing to go to that trouble nor are all Engineers in all fields going to be able to extrapolate to come to that assumption - partly because their base knowledge might not be so good.
And if you think that was bad, my first year Physics course, I was grouped together with two girls in the lab, we were all Engineers, and I was the only one comfortable with computers. They're both still in Engineering - one's even in Computer Engineering.

But you DO understand all the WTFs? Impressive!

notromda · 2006-06-07 Reply Admin

tster:

Your an asshole. I hope they catch onto your shit and fire you.

Jeez. Take a look in the mirror.

Bus Raker · 2006-06-07 Reply Admin

Alex Papadimoulis:

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to envision the coding required for Carl resolved the problem.

Simply explain to the customer that we had a 5X download accelerator installed recently as a free service to our best customers. We could remove it if they liked.

2006-06-07 Reply Admin

The best 'solution' would be to include verification of both up- and download: When uploading, have the client upload the data, then download it again, and verify the result. When downloading, have the client download the data, then upload it again, asking the server to verify the data.

The only difference here would be that the server and client may do the comparison at different speeds. If needed, that can be solved by making it glacially slow on both machines, and by having the client tell the server how glacially slow it should be.

triso · 2006-06-07 Reply Admin

Jefffurry:
Having done time in tech support, I've discovered that there are a lot of very intelligent people who are very ignorant in certain areas. The solution is simply to educate them, not to belittle or berate them. Take the time to explain, to the user's satisfaction, what they need to know, and they'll appreciate you (and, by extension, your company). Even better, they'll get some confidence in figuring out these kinds of problems, and will probably need less tech support in the future.

Having done time, I think it would be more fun to belittle the customer, adopt an arrogant tone, slam the phone down, lose that big account your boss mentioned, change jobs...Oops! Perhaps not.

2006-06-07 Reply Admin

Not if they do not know what "asymmetric" means in this case.

For example, ATA and USB is "asymmetric", too (with master-slave relations), but up and download speeds over those links are (possibly neglecting some minute differences in protocol overhead) equal.

marvin_rabbit · 2006-06-07 Reply Admin

tster:
Anonymous:
Well my real WTF happens on a daily basis. I am currently the web application designer, network tech, and systems tech at a Alternative Medicine Mom & Pop shop who thinks the internet will generate them millions overnight. . . Took forever to explain to them we could not host in house because we had DSL, but they still do not understand the difference between upload/download. . . . Controlling the router is in my favor though, so when they come across with stupid tech questions. I just go in and slow their speed down to about 56K for the rest of the day. Then when asked, I just say oh the internet traffic is high today and congested like traffic on a road.

Your an asshole. I hope they catch onto your shit and fire you.

Yeah, well at least he can spell!

lrb · 2006-06-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Well my real WTF happens on a daily basis. I am currently the web application designer, network tech, and systems tech at a Alternative Medicine Mom & Pop shop who thinks the internet will generate them millions overnight. . . Took forever to explain to them we could not host in house because we had DSL, but they still do not understand the difference between upload/download. . . . Controlling the router is in my favor though, so when they come across with stupid tech questions. I just go in and slow their speed down to about 56K for the rest of the day. Then when asked, I just say oh the internet traffic is high today and congested like traffic on a road.

I hope that this is a joke.

Otac0n · 2006-06-07 Reply Admin

Alex Papadimoulis:
  1Meg Upload -  40 sec
  4Meg Upload - 160 sec
1Meg Download -  8 sec
4Meg Download - 30 sec
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to envision the coding required for Carl resolved the problem.

For a while, i thought that those "1Meg" numbers were speeds. aka 8 seconds to down load SOME FILE on a 1 Megabit connection... Then i realized that they were sizes, and I laughed the laugh of a thousand years.

2006-06-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
The best 'solution' would be to include verification of both up- and download: When uploading, have the client upload the data, then download it again, and verify the result. When downloading, have the client download the data, then upload it again, asking the server to verify the data.
The only difference here would be that the server and client may do the comparison at different speeds. If needed, that can be solved by making it glacially slow on both machines, and by having the client tell the server how glacially slow it should be.

I can't tell if this is pure genius or pure evil.

2006-06-07 Reply Admin

lrb:
Anonymous:
Well my real WTF happens on a daily basis. I am currently the web application designer, network tech, and systems tech at a Alternative Medicine Mom & Pop shop who thinks the internet will generate them millions overnight. . . Took forever to explain to them we could not host in house because we had DSL, but they still do not understand the difference between upload/download. . . . Controlling the router is in my favor though, so when they come across with stupid tech questions. I just go in and slow their speed down to about 56K for the rest of the day. Then when asked, I just say oh the internet traffic is high today and congested like traffic on a road.

I hope that this is a joke.

Actually, I think it's a WTF?!

2006-06-07 Reply Admin

I find it stupid that people expect people to understand computers the same as they do and the next breath whinge because they are doing new things. They hired you because you are the expert.

I think the problem is that the issue was sent to a programmer not a networking person in the first place.

Coughptcha · 2006-06-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
This WTF seems a little contrived. A user that is technical enough to realize that this problem occurs only on sites with ADSL, as opposed to plain old DSL, or cable, or sites with a dedicated connection, would instantly realize (or at least while typing wout the word asymmetric) that that is where the problem lies.

Why do you think that? The word "asymmetric" could refer to any of a number of aspects of the technology, and to non-techies it's just a label.

Do you understand why ADSL has faster download speeds than upload speeds? What are the limiting factors? Why can a T1 achieve symmetric speeds? Can you explain the difference between Near-end crosstalk (NEXT) and far-end crosstalk (FEXT) and how that applies to bundles of Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cables at the phone company's central office? The cost advantages of single-pair services over balanced-pair services? When you're dealing with people who don't know the difference between bitrate and baudrate, I don't recommend long discussions on QPSK, QAM, OFDM, and the general physics of communications theory.

To oversimplify the issue for those who may be curious: ADSL is asymmetric because crosstalk in the phone cable bundles is more easily controlled in the direction from the central office to the subscribers, so a richer symbol set (higher bit rate) can be used in that direction while maintaining an acceptable level of service.

2006-06-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

Oh my god, these VB programmers will never learn anything more than an If Then Else construct.

This site should be called 'anti-vb.com' I don't personally write a lot of VB code, but to class every single person who uses VB in the 'Dumb' or Incompetent category is retarded.

Tonnes of applications have been written in VB over the years, usually at a fraction of the cost and time that it would take to write in C++ or other lower level languages. True, since it is a very high-level language it tends to attact people that might not have great skill-sets, but don't knock the language, knock the low skilled people that are trying to hack it.

aikii · 2006-06-07 Reply Admin

I could almost say "this happened, I was there". I worked for an ISP in the early 2000's, you can't imagine how often such things happen. Why ? Tons of customers but few employees, and an outsourced helpdesk ( yes, this has to be a WTF in itself ). Then you have two bad enterprise habits : generalized panic and compulsive delegation. So in most cases the problem isn't really knowledge, but people losing self-confidence, they don't even try thinking, they delegate the most basic problems to the most competent or the most helpful ( and thus the most busy ) person they know. Things get worse if you are too kind or too evil : call them idiots, they'll really think they are idiots => more delegation. Help them without question, they'll keep depending on you.

So yes, jefffurry is right, take some time to share your knowledge, give your co-workers some self-confidence. Otherwise things get worse.

For sure, the story was fun and the customer was certainly an idiot, but nobody wants to poison his own work environment, right ? Oh, unless they want to be another WTF-scapegoat ...

xrT · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Rank Amateur:

Let me explain this in way you understand: You see, when you upload, the computer has to push the bits upward, and let me tell you, when you're talking millions of bits, it gets heavy. When you download, the bits just fall by gravity, so it's much faster (we provided you with some remarkable cushioning functions that prevent damage to your data).

Non-ADSL? They use helium. That's why it's more expensive.

--Rank

Soooo that's why... I always thought something MUST be going on in the UPload and DOWNload thingy... ;)

Having said that, why not make the App download the file instead of the Client uploading them to make sure both take roughly the same time? Since both are now downloading documents... :)

rob_squared · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Unfortunately this sounds very fake. Slow news day?

Never worked in the ISP biz, have you?

I don't remember seeing/hearing people actually go out of their way to write "asymmetric" instead of "A" in such a situation. Most people don't know/care what the A or any other letter in ADSL stands for. My gut feeling says this story is fake (or perhaps the A was spelled out when the story was put up on the site to make it more obvious).

I worked with DGM at the old ISP biz, and let me tell you. Those customers somehow defy modern laws of physics. . . I had one computer I fixed where someone could not get their USB working correctly. I went there and come to find out, they were plugging the USB into the LAN jack. . . . surprisingly it fits. . . . who knew.

I found out the hard way, plugging in USB drives without looking at the back of the computer. Whoever put the LAN next to the USB had a very boring sense of humor.

rob_squared · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Quote:

"Yet, somehow, some people are so RETARDED, that they think the appliance will work even though the plug-socket fit is anything but snug. It is for this very reason that I think breeding should be a privledge that only those who are not completely retarded should enjoy. In fact, I would go so far as to make it a law. It's unfortunate though, that the overwhelming majority of people would fall into my category of completely retarded, so they would never go for such a thing.... I can still dream though...."
Unquote

It seems to me that you are assuming that people who do not happen to share your area of expertise are stupid. There are some very bright but technologically challenged people who have other areas of expertise, and you might appear retarded to them if you strayed into their area.

As for who should breed, maybe people who are good at caring for children might be the best....

-- JT

Hahahaa
Oh wait, you were serious.

I don't expect people to know what ADSL is by acronym, or what ASCII is, or how CRTs work. I expect them to know that a rectangle goes into a rectangle, and something with 9 pins goes into something with 9 holes. I have no respect for people who can't do even that. They are the ones who need a law to tell them to wear seatbelts in a 1 ton hunk of metal going faster than any human can run and who probably ate the wall candy as a child.

Just as a doctor might not expect me to understand how nerve impulses are transmitted, they sure as hell expect me to know how to go to the bathroom and that showering is a good idea.

Jimbo · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

  1Meg Upload -  40 sec
  4Meg Upload - 160 sec

  1Meg Download -  8 sec
  4Meg Download - 30 sec

Pretty sure that's some Word documents, there are really compressible. Then we have to build a transparent compression/decompression protocol on the top of (http, ftp, any protocol used). It will take 6 month and cost you an half million $ :)

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

You have to look on the bright side. Its realy quite rare that a problem ticket from a customer gives you all the information you need to "resolve" the problem :)

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
How horrible is it to lose a contract because the shit-stupid customer has not the slightest knowledge about the technology he uses.
This ticket should have been sent to the CTO/CIO of the customer with the proposal to fire the idiot who raised it.

What if the CTO/CIO WAS the idiot who raised it? Or he is on the same level of *brillance* and therefore his employees?
Google "hierarchy of incompetence". ;))

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Tonnes of applications have been written in VB over the years, usually at a fraction of the cost and time that it would take to write in C++ or other lower level languages. True, since it is a very high-level language it tends to attact people that might not have great skill-sets, but don't knock the language, knock the low skilled people that are trying to hack it.

BASIC is a lang designed to help people learn to code. Turtle Logo is yet another with the same filosophy.

Its a tool, but a baby tool, and not a bad tool. You can hack stuff easy, but will be very limited. And as all baby tools, where designed to avoid self-damage. You are overprotected inside the BASIC world.

If you already learn BASIC. You sould move to a better lang. Maybe Object Pascal, or a Java/Python/Ruby/C# alike lang. (JPRC#)

Yet theres lots of stuff to learn on programming. Patterns, better algorithms, etc. Most stuff you will learn will be big than BASIC, so its better to learn these stuff on a JPRC# lang. Imho.

--Tei

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Captcha says it all:

"WTF"

Whoever wrote the words "asymmetric" must have gotten the clue that instant, no? No?

Did you see the first few posts in this thread? Looks like when the ticket was first posted on The Daily WFT, the spelled-out 'A' read ASYNCHRONOUS not ASYMMETRIC.

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

I suppose he wrote a few analysis functions: IsAssymetric(), IsALittleBitAssymetric(), IsPartlyAssymetric(), and IsVeryAssymetric() along the way, just to keep the PHB happy?

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Actually, this anymous guys must have been the client raising this ticket... pfff....

Recently on one of my projects I had the CIO banning postbacks on ASP.NET... So I asked him what he thought we should use instead... and he said AJAX.

We have now rewritten ASP.NET and a custom browser so that no postback occur. Problem is though it has cost over £16M so far and still not close to delivering the end product.

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Actually, this anymous guys must have been the client raising this ticket... pfff....

Recently on one of my projects I had the CIO banning postbacks on ASP.NET... So I asked him what he thought we should use instead... and he said AJAX.

We have now rewritten ASP.NET and a custom browser so that no postback occur. Problem is though it has cost over £16M so far and still not close to delivering the end product.

You miss the memo?
We are upgrading to the next version of Visual Studio.

--Mr Fake Coworker.

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

TomCo:

Tell the customer about "quantum flux" and about "Schrodinger's cat".

Also, the fact that if you are actually timing those pesky uploads, they will always be slower due to "red shift" (the data is moving away from you). Of course, the downloads are faster!!! Because downloads are moving towards you and are shifted towards the "blue end" of the spectrum. 

Taking "Relativity" into consideration, the speed of uploads and downloads are essentially the same. Can't argue with physics! ;-P

If the upload speed depends on whether or not you are actually timing them, that would be Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. (You know, precious CPU cycles wasted on measuring the performance instead of actually working on the upload...) The red shift is there no matter whether or not you are measuring the upload speed.

Of course, this being IT, it would somehow feel nicer if things depended on "left shift" and "right shift" rather than on "red shift" and "blue shift." Good thing that blue cable goes sideways coming out of the computer (but unfortunately I don't know whether it goes to the left or to the right, knowing that might help identifying the cause of the problem...)

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:

Actually, this anymous guys must have been the client raising this ticket... pfff....

Recently on one of my projects I had the CIO banning postbacks on ASP.NET... So I asked him what he thought we should use instead... and he said AJAX.

We have now rewritten ASP.NET and a custom browser so that no postback occur. Problem is though it has cost over £16M so far and still not close to delivering the end product.

You miss the memo?
We are upgrading to the next version of Visual Studio.

--Mr Fake Coworker.

Ah but no, we are also not allowed to use any software younger than 5 years old. Apparently they don't work according to our CIO.

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

dhromed:
Anonymous:
USB into RJ-45 is a surprisingly good fit. The widths are the same, and the contacts on the bottom of the RJ-45 socket act as springs to hold the USB plug firmly against the top of the socket. The whole thing is secure enough that simple shaking won't make it fall out.

What's more plot-thickening is that USB will not fit into regular Ethernet adapters in PCs.

Laptops have sliiiightly bigger sockets, for some reason.

Just tested it and this is 100% true.
A portabe has a slight bigger socket that allows a USB device to be plugged in.
(Some guy at Acer thought it was funny to put my RJ-45 and my USB ports almost next to each other.)

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Obviously you alter the sending computer to only send either the 1's or the 0's, whichever is less prevalent. This will actually garauntee greater than 20MB/s download bandwidth!

Bellinghman · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Obviously you alter the sending computer to only send either the 1's or the 0's, whichever is less prevalent. This will actually garauntee greater than 20MB/s download bandwidth!

You're not thinking far enough outside the box yet.

Think about it. If you were just to send the 1s, then since all 1s are actually the same, you merely need tell the recipient how many 1s there are. Ditto for the 0s.

So to send your 20 MB, all you really need is to send a pair of numbers. This shouldn't take that long, even on a 1200/75 serial modem. But if it does, then just apply the compression method again.

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

let's see. college philososphy? drink 'til they're cute is always a viable option.........

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Anonymous:
. . . I had one computer I fixed where someone could not get their USB working correctly. I went there and come to find out, they were plugging the USB into the LAN jack. . . . surprisingly it fits. . . . who knew.

Dammit, you made me have to go and check. :-)

fits don't it :P . . . . . I was shocked as well.

I worked at a college helpdesk, and you would be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) by the number of students who managed to fit the LAN cable into the phone jack in their dorm room.

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

I had eggs, bacon and hash browns for breakfast this morning. Oh and by the way I will now say something relevant to the WTF.... VB IS THE DEVIL

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

TomCo:

Was typing it in blue meant to make people read it? As it does not work. <o:p></o:p>

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

It is contrived, Alex changed it to make it a little more obvious. In the original submission I gave, it didn't say ADSL. In fact, we originally thought they meant "Why does 4 MB take 4 times longer than 1MB". Once we got past the language barrier, and the problem difference was between upload and download of 1MB, we all new it was an asymmetric line. I transferred the bug to the CTO for effect, then not-a-bugged it. Twice it was brought back from the dead as "highest priority". Then we made them run a test against yahoo or google and the lightbulb went off.

lrb · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Tonnes of applications have been written in VB over the years, usually at a fraction of the cost and time that it would take to write in C++ or other lower level languages. True, since it is a very high-level language it tends to attact people that might not have great skill-sets, but don't knock the language, knock the low skilled people that are trying to hack it.

BASIC is a lang designed to help people learn to code. Turtle Logo is yet another with the same filosophy.

Its a tool, but a baby tool, and not a bad tool. You can hack stuff easy, but will be very limited. And as all baby tools, where designed to avoid self-damage. You are overprotected inside the BASIC world.

If you already learn BASIC. You sould move to a better lang. Maybe Object Pascal, or a Java/Python/Ruby/C# alike lang. (JPRC#)

Yet theres lots of stuff to learn on programming. Patterns, better algorithms, etc. Most stuff you will learn will be big than BASIC, so its better to learn these stuff on a JPRC# lang. Imho.

--Tei

There are very few patterns, algorithms, or other programming concepts that cannot be as easily implemented in VB's lastest version, VB.NET 2.0, as in JPRC#, especially C#. It's more of a language preference more than anything else. However, VB.NET is eaiser for a person with a nontechnical background to learn enough to be extremely dangerous IMHO.

Irrelevant · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

I suspect this whole problem was caused by Carl not putting the new cover sheets on his TPS reports. Didn't you get that memo?

Bullet · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Just tell the customer that the Upload wire may be crimped, or might be too narrow a guage fpor the amount of data he is trying to push through it.... It needs to be replaced with a thicker guage wire.

TomCo:

Tell the customer about "quantum flux" and about "Schrodinger's cat".

Also, the fact that if you are actually timing those pesky uploads, they will always be slower due to "red shift" (the data is moving away from you). Of course, the downloads are faster!!! Because downloads are moving towards you and are shifted towards the "blue end" of the spectrum. 

Taking "Relativity" into consideration, the speed of uploads and downloads are essentially the same. Can't argue with physics! ;-P



2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Are you still in kindergarten? You can't just yell "you too!" when it doesn't make any goddamn sense. The original poster (is that you? Don't care enough to go back and check) is quite obviously some sort of sociopath, and definitely an asshole, no matter how you choose to define that word. Such a pathetic creep should definitely be fired, and there's nothing wrong with pointing that out.

Who are you talking to? The mirror?

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

tster:
Anonymous:
Well my real WTF happens on a daily basis. I am currently the web application designer, network tech, and systems tech at a Alternative Medicine Mom & Pop shop who thinks the internet will generate them millions overnight. . . Took forever to explain to them we could not host in house because we had DSL, but they still do not understand the difference between upload/download. . . . Controlling the router is in my favor though, so when they come across with stupid tech questions. I just go in and slow their speed down to about 56K for the rest of the day. Then when asked, I just say oh the internet traffic is high today and congested like traffic on a road.

Your an asshole. I hope they catch onto your shit and fire you.

I am with tster on this one.

WTF?!

Spelling? What has that to do with a guy beeing a low-life?

No, I am not the mirror.

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
JoeBloggs:
Why would I want to reduce my already-slow upload speed? Compared to ADSL, a T1 is a slow connection.
I think the fastest ADSL upload I've seen is about 1000 Kbps; 768 is more common. A T1 is twice that, at 1500 Kbps symmetric. The download side is often faster than a T1, true. Then again, it often isn't. (768 down / 128 up is probably the most common speed in the U.S. right now, due to Verizon's $15 deal. At the high end, they have 3000 / 768 -- twice the download but half the upload of a T1.)

My Qwest ADSL connection just went to 7M down/1500 K up. For about $55 a month.

Gene Wirchenko · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Digitalbath:
Gene Wirchenko:
Research? Who knew? I did not know that a dictionary is a research tool.

When you know the definition of the term, the answer is obvious.

A dictionary is a research tool. Maybe you should find out why.

Of course it is, but to call looking up a term in a dictionary research is really devaluing the word "research".

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Gene Wirchenko · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Tonnes of applications have been written in VB over the years, usually at a fraction of the cost and time that it would take to write in C++ or other lower level languages. True, since it is a very high-level language it tends to attact people that might not have great skill-sets, but don't knock the language, knock the low skilled people that are trying to hack it.

BASIC is a lang designed to help people learn to code. Turtle Logo is yet another with the same filosophy.

Change that first "is" to "was". BASIC has changed considerably over the years. This is natural, as people tend to use what they are used to. (Why else student discounts for software?)

Its a tool, but a baby tool, and not a bad tool. You can hack stuff easy, but will be very limited. And as all baby tools, where designed to avoid self-damage. You are overprotected inside the BASIC world.

It is not a baby tool anymore.

Or underprotected outside. For example, in C, an integer overflow results in undefined behaviour. When you are trying to deal with a problem at a high level, not having your back covered at a lower level is silly.

If you already learn BASIC. You sould move to a better lang. Maybe Object Pascal, or a Java/Python/Ruby/C# alike lang. (JPRC#)

Why move? Why not expand (and engulf the world!)?

I find GW-BASIC to be very useful for some types of quick, one-off code. I do not make the mistake of thinking that that capability necessarily makes it suitable for other problems.

Yet theres lots of stuff to learn on programming. Patterns, better algorithms, etc. Most stuff you will learn will be big than BASIC, so its better to learn these stuff on a JPRC# lang. Imho.

Big, small, whatever. Pick an appropriate tool -- "an", because there can be more than one -- and go for it.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Gene Wirchenko · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Coughptcha:
Anonymous:
This WTF seems a little contrived. A user that is technical enough to realize that this problem occurs only on sites with ADSL, as opposed to plain old DSL, or cable, or sites with a dedicated connection, would instantly realize (or at least while typing wout the word asymmetric) that that is where the problem lies.

Why do you think that? The word "asymmetric" could refer to any of a number of aspects of the technology, and to non-techies it's just a label.

Then, non-techie ought to learn a bit. I do not know the ins and outs of how a carburetor works, but I do know its basic purpose.

Do you understand why ADSL has faster download speeds than upload speeds? What are the limiting factors? Why can a T1 achieve symmetric speeds? Can you explain the difference between Near-end crosstalk (NEXT) and far-end crosstalk (FEXT) and how that applies to bundles of Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cables at the phone company's central office? The cost advantages of single-pair services over balanced-pair services? When you're dealing with people who don't know the difference between bitrate and baudrate, I don't recommend long discussions on QPSK, QAM, OFDM, and the general physics of communications theory.

No, and I do not care. I can not make use of the knowledge without getting into it.

Knowing a bit of the what sure helps though. I would never have made the complaint that got this WTF started.

To oversimplify the issue for those who may be curious: ADSL is asymmetric because crosstalk in the phone cable bundles is more easily controlled in the direction from the central office to the subscribers, so a richer symbol set (higher bit rate) can be used in that direction while maintaining an acceptable level of service.

Ah, so there is a technical reason why it came about. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

kluminotty · 2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
tster:
Anonymous:
Well my real WTF happens on a daily basis. I am currently the web application designer, network tech, and systems tech at a Alternative Medicine Mom & Pop shop who thinks the internet will generate them millions overnight. . . Took forever to explain to them we could not host in house because we had DSL, but they still do not understand the difference between upload/download. . . . Controlling the router is in my favor though, so when they come across with stupid tech questions. I just go in and slow their speed down to about 56K for the rest of the day. Then when asked, I just say oh the internet traffic is high today and congested like traffic on a road.

Your an asshole. I hope they catch onto your shit and fire you.

I am with tster on this one.

WTF?!

Spelling? What has that to do with a guy beeing a low-life?

No, I am not the mirror.

Well let me let you in on something here (judgemental types that you be), I was called into her office because the main boss had a javascript error with another site that we do not own. She asked me to fix it. I will not even explain that because a true techy that posts on here would know the WTF behind that one. . . . So I am just a complete lowlife for making non-technical people suffer? Hmm guess some of us are just too kind hearted and never had a day of revenge when the situation justified it. tster & me. . . . I can probably assume what kind of jobs your have, or at least the ones you don't have.

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

« Mine is bigger than yours ! »

My Free (Free the French provider, not free of charge) ADSL connection is 24 M down / 1200 k up. For about 30 euros a month. It's only because I'm in a city though, in my parent's town it's only 8 M down / 800 k up.

2006-06-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
« Mine is bigger than yours ! »

My Free (Free the French provider, not free of charge) ADSL connection is 24 M down / 1200 k up. For about 30 euros a month. It's only because I'm in a city though, in my parent's town it's only 8 M down / 800 k up.

Hmm... that was supposed to be in answer to

Anonymous:
My Qwest ADSL connection just went to 7M down/1500 K up. For about $55 a month.

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