Lighting fast internet?

[Nikolas]

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/cisco-says-new-router-to-%22forever-change-the-internet%22-the-question-is-%27when%27-438818.html?tickers=CSCO,T,VZ,S,QQQQ,GOOG,^IXIC

What's your take on this?

It enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second; every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

So.. stream "every movie" (so let's say we are talking about TBs...) in 4 minutes or less?  :

[InCreator]

Take is this:

Telecom companies/ISP-s will hold brakes on this as long as possible.
Even today, our internet speeds are kept WAY lower than technically (and financially too) possible, because customers can be milked better this way, also, services with byte count/limit wouldn't work.

Especially in Europe.
If you can download TBs in minutes, 300MB/month etc limits and prices sound more ridiculous than they do now..

Scientists are cool dudes, but they're useless against money.

[Khris]

Exactly. In a thread some time ago, someone said (or linked to someone saying) that the average internet node handles only about 10% of its actual capacity.

It does sound a bit like a conspiracy theory though. In Munich, the Telekom currently tears open streets everywhere to lay down new cables so everyone can get 25.000 (VDSL). Lightning fast routers are useless as long as the cables are too few and too old.
So while the providers do try to milk us as long as they can, it's not like they could switch on lightspeed internet tomorrow.

[Calin Leafshade]

the downstream on my internet is about 22mbps on a good day but mostly i get around 19 and I find that its perfectly adequet for practically everything.. I can stream 1080p video quite happily almosts all the time.

You can get 50meg in certain places in britain (the fibre optic areas) but i cant really see it improving your internet experience too much.

[Danman]

If u ask me anything more then 30MBps is just silly. 1 GB in an hour or so. Any faster you will need to buy terabyte drives. least that is what I think. But what can I say I have the slowest connection. a 10kbps if very extremely lucky. usually 2kbps or 0. Cant even open a web page

[monkey0506]

Increased speeds does not mean you would be forced to download more content. Increased speeds means that whatever content you may be requesting would get to you faster. That's all it means.

So saying more than 30MBps would require everyone to suddenly have TB HDDs is just complete bullocks.

I also agree with the general consensus that even if the technology were feasible it wouldn't be made publicly available. It's the same reason that technology surrounding vehicles that get superior gas mileage has been suppressed. It's all about control.

If a typical user could download 5 TB from any server in the world in a matter of minutes without placing the slightest strain on their ISP then the ISP would have no control. Placing limits on your bandwidth when you, as the consumer, know that there is no practical reason for this seems completely ludicrous. It's already happening but there isn't nearly as much public awareness as it would take to effect a change.

The days of things like bandwidth being expensive are long past, but if they just open up the floodgates and let everyone in, they lose a very significant portion of their total revenues. In short, they will allow the changes to come (just as things like DSL have replaced dial-up connections for a majority of users), but it will be slowly and more gradual. They will easy the public into the new technology so as to maintain their death-grip on everyone's wallets and the rate of advancement will be significantly delayed.

Personally I think that if corporations weren't limiting technological advancement in areas like this that things like 2001: A Space Odyssey would not have been nearly as absurd as modern technology makes it seem. But I am diverging from the topic at hand.

The entire Library of Congress in a second? Sweet.

[Danman]

all I was saying is. It is Unnecessary. It is just like people with cars. This car can up to 60kmph in 6 seconds but most take 12 seconds. Wow you saving what 5 minutes of your life in a month. But paying 4 times the price.

Don't really need it.  But fair enough if you have the money. But just to me it is not worth it.

[InCreator]

Um I don't think that the question is "do I need quicker internet connection" but rather "if internet connections generally get faster, wouldn't I look dumb to pay same money for my slow connection". And then you pose this question to your provider or change one...

When someone brings lightspeed connection to the market with reasonable price, all providers are pressed to update their ones also. Which costs! And which they don't want, because provider doesn't actually give two shits if you can stream HD or not. The cheaper for him to provide and more for you to pay, the better.

But luckily, capitalism works both ways, and to compete with cheapest major slowass connection provider, smaller ones look toward faster speeds, eventually forcing him to upgrade also, putting small ones again at disadvantage, etc...

[Danman]

I believe that the internet in most countries work because the more people who have it the cheaper it is and the more it is upgraded. Here it costs 1300 US$ to pay for a 20 MB connection installation. And that is paying as you go. About 100US$ a GB.

My uncle Pays 120US$ for a 512Kb connection really 56 kilobytes a second. Cause only what maybe 500 People pay for it. In UK about 50.000 people pay for it or more. So you should get evil connections. Also there you got competition. Here there is maybe 3-5 internet providers.  

Edit: But anyway I am really talking about something I don't know much about.

[Chicky]

Indeed.

[Nikolas]

Thing is that the market is moving slowly and is not easy to adapt. Can you imagine 3-d movies streamed on your computer, with the touch of a button? If this seemed like sci-fi until recently, now it simply appears... feasible! Can you really grasp the patent holder of such technology and what they can do with the such? I mean, think about it. Avatar in full 3-d, in your tv screen within seconds. Heard it on an ad? Now watch it instantly!

Not to mention anything about live concerts, etc... I give a concert in Greece somewhere and I get a few thousand more people watching streaming in PERFECT quality (or 3-d or whatever).

Interactive media, now feasible...

And, btw, my computer has more than 4 TB of hard disk space currently! In audio, and even more in CGI TB are now counting!

Of course in my studio I have a "mere" 2 Mbit connection, which I fought hard to get, but otherwise I'm a happy bunny most of the time!

[Gregjazz]

Sooner or later the internet speed will get to a point that it will make sense for software to be accessed remotely. Of course, this is already happening to some degree.

[LimpingFish]

I have a 3mb line. It does what I want it to do.

[Huw Dawson]

There are stills some rural communities in Wales that can only get dial-up internet.

The real UK problem is the fact that the system is monopolised under BT, forcing prices artificially high and giving them no incentive beyond what pressure the government can exert to improve the phone lines.

It should be law that every household in the country should have access to at least 4mb/s internet for a fair price, same as the commitments the water companies make.

Anyhow, this won't affect, for the time being, the download speeds. However, it will increase the speed of the internet as a whole if adopted, allowing websites like Youtube to hand out the parcels faster. More bandwidth on their end means more consistent download speeds for our end.

[Khris]

I don't feel that the general consensus of this thread is that we poor DSL users suffer from a global conspiracy of ISPs.

My roommates and I, we pay a whopping 20 Euros for 8000/1000 including flat rates to german land lines and cell phones of the same provider.
Basically, I pay 4 Euros a month for downloading a Megabyte within 2 seconds on average while calling everyone for free. I really don't feel being taken advantage of.

Besides, imagine back in '97 somebody is posting a story about some new technology called DSL. People read about unimaginable speeds like 1024k, almost 20 times faster than 56k, the common speed back then. I can vividly imagine the conspiracy nuts circle-jerk while going on about how that new technology is going to be held back in order to keep people paying by the minute. Jeez.

[monkey0506]

Denying that it happened to any degree though is the opposite end of the spectrum Khris. Sure, it may not have come about after the same fashion that the "conspiracy nuts" projected, but even today bandwidth is artificially limited as a control mechanism.

You say you don't feel you're being taken advantage of, instead you feel that you are paying a fair price for your services. If you realized the actual cost to the provider and how little of that 4 euros is actually going toward covering that cost, you might feel a bit differently about it. ISPs are a business, that is, they are out to make money. This is understandable. The law of supply and demand also helps dictate how much they can reasonably charge and still be profitable.

That however, does not strictly mean that the ISPs could not increase your bandwidth at no additional cost to you while still maintaining a profitable business. Granted, the profits would likely be lower, but it's a bit obtuse to think that the average ISP operates anywhere short of the high-end of the spectrum when it comes to balancing costs vs. profits. They can and will charge you as much as they can whilst giving you as little as you can. That's business.

[Khris]

I'm perfectly aware of all this, I just don't like the way you've used "control".

Holding back bandwidth implies all ISPs working together secretly. That's simply not what's happening. Available speeds have increased constantly, while the fee/speed ratio remained the same or in fact rather decreased.

And the available speed is limited by the cables in the ground, so providing everybody with very fast internet is a massive, costly undertaking. (E.g. my line syncs at 6700 due to this being an old house that isn't properly maintained by my asshole landlords.)
(ISPs here were pissed when they suddenly were required by law to keep logs of accessed pages for six months due to the high costs involved.)

In Germany, the company responsible for the maintenance of telephone lines has lost its monopoly years ago. Consequently, like you said, the law of supply and demand ensures that available speeds will continue to increase while fees will continue to get lower and lower.
There simply isn't any room for a conspiracy, safe the Deutsche Telekom was pressured into not upgrading the land lines by some dark forces. (Again, that's not what's happening.)

I'm not saying that never was a cost-saving ground-breaking invention held back at any time though. I'm just saying that it's very easy to immediately suspect a global conspiracy behind anything.

[InCreator]

I believe that the internet in most countries work because the more people who have it the cheaper it is and the more it is upgraded. Here it costs 1300 US$ to pay for a 20 MB connection installation. And that is paying as you go. About 100US$ a GB.

My uncle Pays 120US$ for a 512Kb connection really 56 kilobytes a second. Cause only what maybe 500 People pay for it. In UK about 50.000 people pay for it or more. So you should get evil connections. Also there you got competition. Here there is maybe 3-5 internet providers.  

... :o :o :o

I have 6 Mbit/sec (About 1,2 Megabytes per second upload/download) - â,¬25 or $35 per month, no additional limits or fees, ports open. With internal P2P connections (ISP has DC++ hub connection for customers who want to), speeds are about 20-30 times higher (6GB game iso's in 3-4 minutes), though I don't use P2P much... it's piracy-through-ISP and there's not much interesting on neighboring russians' hard drives anyway aside from few rare russian movies, impossible to obtain otherwise.

Actually, I'd say my connection is absolutely sufficent for almost everything I do.

With new technological expansions, I wait for this getting even cheaper and faster, also, shitty 1Mbit connections should be free, everywhere, anytime. Our government actually considered this too, with Estonia trying to act as a leading IT eurocountry with Skype inventors, NATO IT-defense center and shit like this...

But telecom companies most likely choked this idea, or it was an election trick, because now everyone's silent about his.

[Layabout]

You guys still have it pretty lucky. In Australia, the main service provider is Telstra. They keep prices artificially high and the infrastructure is pretty awful. The fastest speed I can get from home is about 600Kb/s and that is from steam (Australian server). Any US or overseas sites I visit I will be limited to about 170Kb/s. Not only is the speed slow, there is no such thing as full speed 'unlimited' broadband. We still have bandwidth caps, and once you are over your limit, you are 'shaped' to dialup speeds.

[Danman]

@InCreator: If anybody just saw my internet they would laugh. You don't even know that your web pages load and download.

But anyway got to remember I am in Africa. Everything here is like 20 years behind in history. Prices cost 200% more then anywhere else. Cause well they can.

I worked this out. In UK if u get 1 to 2 Mbps. I get 1000th or 2000th of that for 25$us a month. using wireless 2g modem.  so if it is a 20mb I am getting 20.000th of that!  :o