Jammed

Finally, after hiring an Internet “health” monitoring firm, Dewey’s team discovered a chokepoint: the interconnection point in New York City. Packets traveling from NEPC’s offices to NEPC’s workers via Cogent were being lost at the moment Cogent handed those packets to Comcast and Verizon in New York City for delivery over the eyeball networks to the worker. Just two percent of packet loss can make a perceptible difference in the quality of a phone call; at the height of NEPC’s problems as many as 20% of their packets weren’t making it through, which is why the firm’s remote work ground to a halt.

Fantastic article showing what happens when ISPs are allowed to do whatever they please. It is terrible that our access to the Internet is controlled by such a small group of companies with absolutely no oversight. Internet access needs to be considered and treated as a public utility.