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South Korea Plans National 100 Mbps Network
prostoalex writes "Korean Ministry of Information and Communication is planning to wire the entire country with high-speed 50-100 Mbps network. A total of $80.4 billion will be spent on the project that's expected to be completed in 2010."
hmmm what's a better way to spend the money???
E V E R Y T H I N G I W R I T E I S F A L S E
You mean when "high speed" isn't high anymore?
Don't quote me on this.
If there is a wired rollout, there would probably already be tons of dark fiber between all central exchanges. Why not just wire them onwards to consumers' homes?
This give better speeds to your neighbour (which is always the nearest "mirror"), and have CableTV, Voice and Data services all integrated onto the same little strand of glass | plastic that comes to my house.
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
You won't see Koreans doing silly stuff such as flying planes into buildings.
...sigh.
Sweet Jesus they must have some keen Counterstrike and Starcraft players.
I just got ADSL after a wait of years
Compare the size of the US to Korea. Now you're talking trillions.
Thank you and have a nice day.
They will have some blazing internet, but this isn't really innovating. I don't know if they will see as much economic benefit from it as they hope. Perhaps it helps that Korea is getting a larger part of the tech market daily
think about those two factors for a while...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Yeah, you do get to spend $87 billion on Iraq. Want to save the money? Next time, don't overthrow the government.
Personally, I'm all for that fiber optic network that was in a previous article. Then again, if I could just even get DSL or any other broadband in my neighborhood . . .
As if those Zerg weren't fast enough already...
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
If you think about it, that's about $2000 per Korean, perhaps $6000 per household for high speed internet access, which won't be complete for 7 years. Are they really getting a good deal?
This is an interesting approach to infrastructure. Now, the next question: how will this approach affect Korea's economic development? What types of businesses will get located in Korea specifically to because of the ubiquitous availability of this type of infrastructure? How will the universal availability of broadband affect Korea's land use of development patterns? Will folks still commute via cars? Will factories start to become remote controlled?
I know it sounds like a lot now, with 1.5 to 3 Mbps being the closer to the norm for broadband here, but if you're going to build an infrastructure for an entire country by 2010, why not build with the latest technologies? 1Gbps isn't exactly ground-breaking any more.
;-)
Although, I suppose they've thought of this, and will lay fiber capable of much faster speeds, and just get cheap equipment rated for 50 to 100 Mbps. And I suppose 1+ Gbps EQ will be mcuh cheaper in 10 years..
As I think it out, perhaps they're smarter than I thought
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
Throughout their country, they have true 10mbit connectivity for most of its citizens at roughly 13$ US per month. That is insanely awesome when you figure in the fact that here in the US, we pay around 45$ to get at best 2mbit connectivity that peaks out at right around 140k most of the time. And thats just downstream.
While technology is increasing rapidly enough to make local network connectivity at extremely high speeds economically feasible for the first time, WAN technologies are still another story and lag behind by a few years. You still want dedicated 1.5mbit connectivity, you are STILL looking at around 800$+ dollars a month. (Key word being dedicated).
Good for the S. Korea!
hrrm.
If you look at the numbers their complete budget for 2000 was only $95.7 billion. Assuming it starts now & ends on time, without any cost overruns, we're looking at something like 12% of the government's spending going towards this project.
That's some commitment to closing the 'digital divide'. Well, as long as they make reasonably affordable computers available to their citizens when this thing goes live.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
I'd gladly give up 66% of my 1.5MB cable line for 66% improved latency.
More importantly, how useless is this? Even in 2010, who will need as much data as you can download with a 100MBit line? Maybe if that much bandwidth is available there won't be as much need for storing files localy.
Pretty Pictures!
Okay, for those of you already piping in that this isn't as fast as it can get, I'd like to see your present hi-speed home access push far over 1 Mbit/sec. Nevertheless, this begs the question:
In 2010 will 100 Mbits be considered fast or slow? Is there a "Moore's Law" for Internet access speeds? Back in about 1982 I was connecting to the local BBS with a 300 baud modem. A megabit download speed (today in 2003) is roughly 3000x that speed, and we're there after 20 years. That equates to almost exactly a 50% increase in speed per year. So if we go another 7 years at that rate, by 2010 we would consider 16 Mbit/sec to be fast.
Okay. I'm envious.
Murray Todd Williams
Welcome, this is Sesame Street and today we'll learn the difference between North and South...
An idiot who knows the difference between a LAN and a WAN.
I wonder if the US will be in charge of their Network security as well as their national security ;-)
NTT and other companies have already been offering 100Mbs fiberoptic lines to homes in Japan for quite awhile now.
The best part is it's cheap,
They usually cost a little more than $40 a month.
Of course, it's still twice the price of 12Mbs ADSL lines in Japan like Yahoo BB who offers 12Mbs speed for $21/month. Most people don't know what to do with 100Mbs anyways.
...and not to be out done, North Korean President Kim Jong Il has asserted that his country can compete with the decadent capitalist South by establishing the Socialist Communication Organization (SCO) to provide tin cans and string to 1 out of every 100 loyal members to the party.
-Crolis
Crap.
I can't believe they couldn't find a better use for all that money. High speed internet shouldn't be something that is critical in a nation that still needs much development in basic infastructure. For that much money in the US we could do so much it is beyond most people's comprehension.
The only justification I see this having is the 370,000 new jobs, but how temporary are those jobs. Will most of them disapear after the system is put up and there is nothing left to build let alone money to build it with. To learn more about what we in the US could do with $80 billion(around what is being spent in Iraq go here
If we need it for such basic things I would think a less developed county would need it even more.
While everyone is saying 'wow go south korea must be nice to have that kind of connection', consider the infrastructure in the US. We have multi-gigabit backbones crossing the US to many NAPs, and 100+mbit connections to just about every major city. And that's just the dedicated IP infrastructure, our voice-based and other private network capacities is many times that. The difference between us and them? We have to pay for ours directly. We have the freedom of choice, we dont have to wait for our government to decide how fast we should access our networks, and hence we bear the cost directly instead of indirectly. Just thought i would point that out.
There has been no freeing of anything other than them of their oil and taxpayers of money.
Will more Koreans get first post, before even your hastily scribed ditty?
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Ok great. So they will have the infrastructure -- publicly owned. What hoops will potential ISPs (State-run or private?!) have to pass through in order to provide service on this marvel?
Bush has so far wasted 160 billion on Iraq...
For that price we could have covered the entire country TWICE with 10Mbit Ethernet!
It's all about perspective man!
Down with Bush! Up with 100Mbit ethernet!
In fact, that's something that I've often wondered when I hear about super high-speed connections in other countries (like 100MB DSL in Japan for ~$30 a month). Is it only in America where we've let the industry cripple the future potential of broadband in such and insidious manner? (i.e. offering connections that can't really be used w/o having to pay extra)
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
if they would just use some of the money to buy some food for north korean, it would be much more worth than this, isn't it? furthermore, a large chunk of the population in south korea already have access to broadband Internet. so, which is more important? U decide ...
mv /bin/laden /dev/null.
That should take care of Al Cada.
I don't know if Sweden is #1 or something, but I've had 100mbit for about $12 since christmas 2001. The expensive thing was getting all the fiber optics in the ground, I believe that cost about $120 000 for our entire neighborhood (100 houses).
I see alot of people out there thinking this is a lot better way to spend 80 quadrillion-billionty-thousand dollars than rebuilding Iraq. This is probably true. However, realize that all S. Korean citizens must serve in the military by law. I think it's only a two year term...but still.
50-100mps as user-availalble bandwith is more than sufficiant now, but what about three or four years down the line? This network could be complete in 2010, by which point the size of data (even judging conservativly, from past estimates) will far exceed that. Imagine what we might have considered a 'fast' net connection seven to tens years ago...
"Are they really getting a good deal?"
Would you pay 11$ a month if you could get 3-6 megabyte/s download rates? I would. Even if I had to wait a few years before it fully kicked in. It's still a great deal.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Well, considering each American must pay well over $1000 each year for a bloated war machine, I'd say they are getting a damn good deal.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Its not like this is the first residential 100 Mbps service in Korea. They're talking about wiring *the whole country*. That includes residential areas *and* rural areas. Do you see this kind of service in the Japanese countryside?
If you even skimmed the article before posting, you would have found that Korea is already the most wired country in the world - even ahead of Japan.
Advantage of a small country. . . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Cute korean cam girls in superior definition and framerate video is what you should be thinking about.
South Korea? Hello?
In case yu hadn't noticed, it's a different country from North Korea.
It certainly seems as though wire(less)ing up a country as small as S. Korea could hardly cost $80 billion dollars and current wireless technology can already provide 50Mbit speeds. What gives?
I have to wonder if download/upload limits will be enforced on this system. Think of what we get in the US with many cable ISPs and especially college connections: high speed, as long as you barely use it at all. There are 2-3 GB/month limits, in some places. Or, perhaps, they could charge by usage instead of offering a flat rate.
(There's no mention of this in the article, so perhaps they haven't decided yet.)
When you are that small it is easy to do things like that. I wish there was some way to get this here in the US.
I for one do not welcome our new South Korean, 5K a year, outsourcing overlords.
Watch out India....
Zep--
"As you can see, we'll be still arguing about having pioneered the Internet and other technologies in irrelevancy, while other nations surpass ours and make the rules."
I believe the phrase you're looking for is darwinistic evolution. The US has had their chance. Now it's the rest of the worlds chance.
Korea is a despotic hellhole, with millions of people living under a brutal tyrant, and all your concerned about is your mailbox?
I can't believe some of the facetious comments im reading here. Don't you have any sense of humanity?
OK, maybe it is spread over five years, but that's still the kind of pork barrel you get when something's being proposed more for political image than actual economics.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes, but. How much would the actual cost be if "economics of scale" were in play? That's the main reason copper is so much cheaper. Not technology.
Err... Are you trolling or do you really not realize that there are two Koreas? The article is referring to South Korea--the republic with universal suffrage and a GDP per capita rivaling that of many European countries. It's hardly a despotic hell hole.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Your $30/month DS1-or-better speed xDSL line doesn't come close to paying your ISP's cost for that much bandwidth. Instead, you're sharing bandwidth with everyone else, under the assumption that not everyone max out at the same time. If you don't like sharing, I'm sure your ISP will gladly sell you a T1 just as soon as you pony up the cash and sign a 1 to 3 year contract on the loop. Otherwise, make sure the caps are stated up front, shop around for the most lenient provider, and get used to it.
This has nothing to do with letting industry cripple anything. It's simple economics. If it weren't for bandwidth caps, you'd be on a slow line, your ISP (who pays the full price for bandwidth whether it's used or not) would be throwing cash down the toilet, and we'd all be wasting bandwidth.
As long as we American remain blinded to the possibility that government is good for something, we're going to remain forever a society of technological haves and have nots just like they have in the third world nations.
Also, this country pays $400,000,000,000 dollars each and every year for the military. That's over 20% of our annual budget. And after the Iraq war this year, it's probably closer to $600,000,000,000. It's quite astonishing to me that there is absolutely zero national debate about the size of our budget. We could have this entire country wired up in no time if are priorities were straight.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I have been in Soul and Inchon and it didn't seem like a despot ruled hell hole.
Even if it was, the money from spam would go to the despot. Do you want to support a despot with spam?
Fight Spammers!
Why would a country pump billions into another independent country, one where the interference wouldn't be welcomed, instead of ensuring the economic prosperity of its' own people?
Hi,
the article raises, first, the general issue of technological anticipation in the IT field.
The problem is : is it wise to make plans that are supposed to be completed in seven years ? Is the tremendous amount of money provided worth a pure credential position ?
Furthermore, it seems to me like a race to the fastest network. RoK is well-known for its quick development in that sector, but this is now turning into a craze for speed. Maybe the technological process of networking will have changed at that time ; and if not, probably only a minority will need to download at that pace.
This article is already four years old. But it underlines the fact that connectivity might not be considered the same way in 6-7 years.
Actually this paper sounds like optimistic/futuristic sci-fi, but the Korean did make the same kind of bet by enforcing such a plan.
Regards,
Jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
Indeed, one wonders why they don't go with fibre, or 1000Mpbs networking. In 7 years, 100Mbps may be the equivilent to dial-up.
However, the flipside is that if nobody else is installing even 100Mbps for future considerations, won't they still be ahead of the game in 2010 unless some new technology emerges to use on the existing networks/infrastructure?
How many will be /. ers?
Subduction leads to orogeny
in Pune, we have small ISPs who lay overhead fiber upto our building. a simple media converter pipes it to an el cheapo 100Mbps switch and then a cat5 drop to my ethernet card. we only get 64kbps for non-http ports, but http is transparently proxied so you can get as much as 400kbps off the proxy. not to mention inter-subscriber 100Mbps connectivity :)
and this for the equivalent of $20 a month.
meanwhile, the rest of the country awaits the tapping of the immense oversupply of cross-country fiber laid out by the cellphone companies. Reliance Infocomm threatens to wire us all up with 100Mbps ethernet within a year or so. they've already achieved something tremendous - with a Reliance CDMA phone, you have true wireless internet connectivity at 128kbps in over 600 cities in India. not crappy old WAP - connect up your laptop/PDA and blaze away (yes, they have even made ppp scripts for Linux available)
The ISPs have been already privatized very long ago.
I'm amazed at the number of poor posts that get moderated up whenever there is a telecom related article.
/. Reader has a ADSL line and got lucky with no neighbors using outflow bandwidth and an ISP that doesn't care (yet), so therefor any nonsensesical pronouncement that would lead to the whole world having a service that now costs $5,000/month being provided to them for $21.95 makes perfect sense.
I just scanned through the two dozen that made a +3 or better so far and I'm astonished at the number of poor assumptions about physics, economics, network operations, and life in general.
The physics was the most egregious of the bunch and I think everyone who is smart enough to navigate far enough to see this *should* understand, but I can't resist brushing some of the others.
Moore's law is just an observation - its *NOT* a law. Why is someone applying this to available circuit speeds for WAN access? WAN access lines are very expensive and thusly that ground has been throughly worked by every telco equipment vendor - copper pairs are good for a about 2 mbits at the typical distance between a home/office and a CO, the next step up is DS3 delivered on coax (low loss, damned expensive compared to copper, and fiber refits in existing areas are crazy expensive. If it was possible high value DS3s filled with 672 voice channels would be the first thing going on some new wonder technology - this isn't happening, ergo it doesn't exist.
And why are they making statements like "100 mbit stuff is cheap on ebay, just build a national network out of it". Ethernet is a *LAN* protocol - 300' limit in most cases for copper, Cisco 2950-LRE are only good for a few thousand(hint, long reach ethernet == DSL), and who would want to manage a pile of crap from ebay? The number one expense in any network operation is almost certainly payroll and a crapola network guarantees 127% of revenue will be spent unfornicating it. If you want reliable service you pay for reliable gear. Once in a while you get lucky on the cheap but no business big enough to do a neighborhood size rollout would fool around like that, let alone a big telecom organization.
It seems to me the underpinnings of many of those posts are pure emotion coupled with a sense of entitlement - J Random
Mod me brilliant, mod me troll - the opinions of the readers are foolish and the moderators deserve a timeout for promoting such crap.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Look at the cases of the phone systems in Britain and Argentina when they were in a system of a welfare state (pre-Thatcher)..
So not only will the tech be outdated by the time they finish half of the rollout, but getting a repair to your line that got cut by someone digging for a new building will take 2 years at least...
Generally it's best to let private industry manage the "commanding heights" in an economy (power, transportation, infrastructure). History has proven this time and again.
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
While this sounds like a good idea, and may well be, these types of projects tend to go way over budget, and tend to be mismanaged. Feelgood social projects are always nice in principal, but often the downsides and pitfalls are not fully explored.
I think its unfair to take pot shots at the USA, and villanize us. We have a different system than South Korea, its more of an economic ecosystem rather than an engineered environment. If their system works for them, then great.
I am doubtfull of how sucessfull it will be, but I admit that I do not know exactly what the economic environment is there, and nor am I an economist. I would guess however that neither do you have these credentials.
Economic practicality, I think, should over-ride socialist philosophy, because once you break the bank, there isnt any money left for social programs.
Finally, there are plenty of socialist countries, this simply isnt one of them. If you disagree with the economic system, then fine, but put forth thought out arguements rather than flamebate overstatement. I certainly am not impressed with your generic US bashing. There is good and bad in every system.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
I'm not going to get into whether or not the country should spend that much money on the network when it has many other problems, but...
People saying 100Mbps won't be fast in 7 years? Screw that. If you think we'll have even 1/10th of that in even 1% of the US in 2010 you're out of your mind. Huge areas of the nation don't even have 56k-capable telephone lines, let alone broadband. This won't change until it's profitable for the businesses to do otherwise. Monopolies own all the lines, and there is no government incentive. There won't be, either. (Which is good and bad)
I've got 1.5Mbps right now, with planned 3Mbps in a year or so. I've only had it for a few months. I don't see it going up much more by then, considering how long it took me to get above dialup...and certainly not to or above 100Mbps. Hell I bet 20Mbps will be a lot in 7 years if you live in the states and we're talking average residential internet speeds. Same goes for globally.
So which telecom stock do I put my money into?
Korea is a despotic hellhole, with millions of people living under a brutal tyrant, and all your concerned about is your mailbox?
I can't believe some of the facetious comments im reading here. Don't you have any sense of humanity?
"Won't somebody please think of the children!"
For $25 a month (in Iowa) I had 100Mbps ports in my apartment, 1.5Mbps symmetric to the internet, and almost no interference from other tenants (I suppose they just like to check email).
north korea has purchased a set of walkie talkies.
Clueless American detected!
Scanning Geography knowledge.... scan complete!
Results: Geography knowledge of -10%!
I do not know where you got your numbers from, but I live in Seoul right now and have to pay about 25$ per month for my ADSL connection.
VDSL are readily awailibly though, but all in all the prices are not that impressive compared to the prices in Sweden or Japan.
Yeah, that's a great idea, support a corrupt dictatorship.
Do they breed you guys like this or what?
keep on waiting...
I was in my networking levture the other day and the lecturer mentioned that the actual bandwidth limit of the cable which we have in our cable systems here in the uk is about 500mbps. If this is true (is it?) why not just lay that instead of 100mbps network cable?
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
traffic map of polish educational backbone. 10 gbit/s in most cities.
That's all nice, but what about doing this:
Let 200 apartments share a 10-G connection and let every appartment have 1-G ethernet.
My ISP has 1/25 if the bandwidth that it sells.
(they call it overbooking but you surely know that)
Yet I can always use 100% of my DSL badnwidth
So this setup will have a ratio of 1:20
That's too good.
I suspect that a ratio of 1/1000 would stil be very good with these kind of speeds, 'cause that will give you 1/1000*1G*nr. of seconds in a month=
316 GB monthly transfer.
Noone is gonna use that, and if the average person uses 40 GB, the power users get 1 TB!
So my question, with a fully loaded 6513 could I connect 250 10-G connections on one end (to the appartments) and one 10-G on the other end (to the main backbone)?
And if so could:
-If only one of those 250 connections is active, would it get the full 10-G?
-Let's say 10 appartments want to connect full speed (10 Gbps) to 10 other appartments, (meaning not to the main backbone), could the switch handle handle that?
So we have appartment complex Xn sending a stream of data with a speed of 10 Gbps to appartment complex Yn.
If n = 10, could it be done?
In a surprise move, the North-Korean government has decided to counter this technological threat by, in turn, establishing a similar high-transfer network.
"We can not let ourselves be overwhelmed by capatalistic technocrat-pigs" said Kim, the leader of the country, in a speech directed at his communistic party. "We will therefor establish an ultra-modern network comprising of 56K modems, which will link all 5 computers in our country!"
Was pleasenlty surprised when I tried out my new connection :)
I just hate all South Koreans, Europeans and Americans! :( When I read this kind of news, I start feeling warm and fuzzy towards North Koreans, Arab immigrants and Al Quaeda...
:-(((((
Currently I too need to make a choice.
- To stay with my cable access provider and pay ~80$/month for 128/32Kbps using about 1Gb of traffic (traffic costs 0.07$/Mb).
- To get ADSL and pay 200$ for installation and 60$ monthly for 64/16Kbps and supposedly unlimited traffic.
- To pay 10$ for monthly night dial-up access (2:00-9:00) and schedule large downloads for the dial-up, while using cable access during the day for surfing, e-mail and stuff.
And where do you think I live? Zimbabve? Cuba? Argentina? Bangladesh? No, the second largest city of Russia, just 200 km from Finland, the most wired and the most wireless country. Fuck!
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Anyone else think Blizzard (the gaming company) is behind this?
this 100mbit connection is not for the network backbone. south korea's network backbone is already in the gigabit range: http://stat.nic.or.kr/network/m/2002/06.html (flash) http://isis.nic.or.kr/english/sub03/sub03_index.ht ml
although it's written in korean, the four things you see in the center are the national switches which also connect korea to the world.
this 50-100mbit connection is planned to be the average connection for the home user; average, in a country where the basic connection is around 2mbit. this does not preclude private companies from offering faster home connections.
Heh... not sure if this is real or a troll, which makes it a great troll if it is one. But one point about the Marshall plan: the money pumped into Europe mostly had to be spent buying stuff from US companies. (Classic "tied aid".) So there were expectations of payback. That's not to say the Marshall plan was a bad thing, but it was more enlightened self-interest than selflessness. As "for ensuring the world is a better place": [insert standard comment about South American countries fucked over by US foreign policy].
Just in time to be obsolete!
well.. for those that want it it's not that bad of a deal(in the long run).
you know, you could be paying the same amount for keeping to using your dialup... won't you feel suckered when you're still using dialup and have paid the same amount already(to the company which didn't want to provide you with anything better, because they were getting your money already)?
.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
infrastucture.
Instead of spending $87 billion on Iraq's infrastructer.
In the 50's, 60's and 70's we were ahead of the game with transportation and housing. We built one of the best transportation systems in the world. Over the last 30 years we have seen our infrascture start to decay and now we find ourselves scrambling to find something new to carry us. The 90's were bad for the economy but semi-decent for technology itself in the US.
Now in 00's, 10's and 20's the asian infastructure is going to be networks and technology. South Korea doing this project and China going to space. They WILL surpass us in very little time.
I imagine that South Korea's system IF put in place will easily last 90% of the population until 2030 or later. The rest will slowly start adopting newer technologies. starting in 2020 you will start to see a decline.
My new title at the office is "Vice-President of Everything Else"
...to be reminded of the costs of re-integration of countries split during the Cold War.
In case you haven't noticed, North Korea is impoverished.
I'll bet the ratio of per capita incomes between North and South Korea in 2003 is more extreme than the ratio between East and West Germany in 1989.
IIRC, West Germany had a couple of years of financial indigestion trying to re-integrate its eastern block counterpart.
Assuming North Korea doesn't use it's disproportionately developed military to attack the South, it will conceivably want to be peacefully re-integrated and re-built.
That task could easily require more than $80.4 billion.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
When the government is using tax payer money to fund projects like this, no price is too high!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
sounds like they want to make a huge cluster..
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
For all you anti-monopolists out there...IF ATT was not broken up into these wildly competing and anti-cooperative fiefdoms, this could have been implemented. There are benefits to a single communications system that can be scaled up to meet the current state of technology. I sincerely doubt seeing this country being placed in a situation where all will be hooked up. Good going South Korea and glad to hear it!!!
Or they could invade the country of Iraq for the same price!
All of this just for StarCraft? :P
Perhaps it is a very wise move to give access to everyone, and let them decide whether or not to use it. At least they are not being denied access. The government is helping break down barriers to access to what is surely to become a great cultural advance, as everything moves to an online information delivery model.
If you want a driver license, apply online. Check your government benefits? Go online. Pay your taxes... online.
Can't get online? Nonsense.. every house has been wired.
Won't America probably be entirely wireless with speeds easily reaching 100mbps, but probably closer to 200 mbps? I mean I don't know about outside the city, but where I live there are wireless networks everywhere. Both 802.11b and g, so once this is expanded upon, there will be at least 52 mbps wireless commonplace. By 2010, I would hope that we at least double this speed, if not quadruple it or more. This Korean thing isn't really advancing anything, its tying them down to old technology. I've got a mile (not exaggerating) of Cat5e that I've never even touched cause I went with wireless instead. Its dirt cheap, I feel like I should just give it to them or something, perhaps I will.
That's some commitment to closing the 'digital divide'.
You need to see the state of Asia, I hear.
They are not closing it, they are opening it further. And the US is on the low end side of the divide.
Dialup connections are around $7/mo now.
I live in a giant bucket.
...the sheer power of 11.3 million open SMTP relays, connected by 100MBit networks.
kekekeke ^___^;;
it's legal now
It's classic North -vs- South, with (once again) the South proving superior. >
Lids may not fit on jars but pr0n will fit in bandwidth!
Speak truth to power.
"That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?" ... President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, after Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone to him at the White House.
"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom," ... Robert Milken, Nobel Prize winner in physics, 1923
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible," ... Lord Kelvin, President Royal Society, 1895
"Who the hell wants to watch movies with sound?" Who said this? Believe it or not, it was the president of Warner Brothers Studios, Harry Warner, sometime around 1918.
A lot of our government offices are going digital, correct? So lets say we have an entire country (ie korea) that has X Million/Billion PCs on 100mbit internet connections, and they were to launch a DOS attack on our puny US networks. I'm not some big conspiracy fan but it's not that far-fetched.
And then there was E
My DVD player says it only has a throughput of about 6.5 mega bit.
Why are they spending $60.8 billion on internet connections when they can fully fund their own military and allow the US soldiers to return home? This just boggles the mind. Here we have an economy 20 times the size of their northern aggressors, and they decide to spend the extra cash on an internet connection?
If you lived within artillery range of a hostile nation that is openly aggressive, would you rather have your money spent on a faster internet connection or a military force to keep the enemy at bay? Heck, with that kind of money they can overthrow Kim Jong Il and perhaps set up a peaceful government in its place, or even unify!
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
That country is pretty well developed. I mean, look at how good they are at Starcraft! And when we finally meet those hostile aliens, they'll probably be in charge of Earth's future robotic army. Don't worry, they'll 0wnz the aliens too.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Well if they just left it to the stupid taxpayers they would just waste it on food, clothing, education, etc. Its a good thing that the government knows how to spend the peoples money properly.
the mean old USA defends their collective asses,
at no cost to them. Now, if they had to spend
dollar one on their own defense, maybe they
wouldn't be able to afford that k00( network!
Is it your area of the city?
:) I can pay more to get 256Kb down, but traffic would cost the same, so why bother?
:(( The higher chamber of Russian parlament proposed in 1992-1993 a strategy for development of postindustrial economy. However, Eltsin decided to concentrate on oil and gas instead, just like Gorbachev a decade before.... Fuckers.
Nope, I was one of the first people in the city (5 mln) to get cable.
ISP?
Sure, I can't switch a cable provider, but they all offer the same level of services.
Vintage 1970s coax or copper phone lines?
Digital switching board, quality lines and the cable lines laid down relatively recently.
Could it be your 386 with 16M of RAM?
P4 with 512Mb.
Cheapest access package for cable?
Well, second cheapest I would say.
Overloaded network?
At that sort of prices? You must be kidding.
Bottlenecked backbones?
They are not overloaded, they are just prohibitively expensive. For some unknown reason traffic costs a least a few cents per Mb in the city. So regardless of the ISP, it usually costs 5-7 cents to the end user. And this is given the fact that 300 km from here is Finland where 1024/256 with unlimited traffic costs 18 euros.
When I read this kind of post, I start feeling warm and fuzzy towards capitalism and the bounty
it brings.
The sad thing is that we had capitalism for about 13 years now and Internet even longer, but cheap broadband is nowhere in sight. Russian budget is about 70% of South Korean, but hell will freeze before the state will spend similar amount of money on wiring the country. And given that only a third of the populace have phone access...
The wonders of the free market, my ass. I hate the thugs who took over the country.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Exactly, I think the major misconception here is "obsolete" Vs "somewhat outdated" or just "not cutting edge."
1.5MBps isn't really "cutting edge" anymore, but it's not yet outdated. Even 56k isn't obsolete, as a surprising amount of people still use modems, and lesser bauds can even go for fax machines etc.
My main point was, that if S. Korea implements 100MBps around the country, and nobody else does even that... well they might not be cutting edge comparative to some other locations, but they'll still be ahead of the game
Yeah... I guess you can watch multiple streams. Kind of like watching tv news with picture-in-picture.
One other thing I forgot to mention is that the capacity must increase for a LARGE segment of hte population. If only a few people (like geeks) have the capability, no one is going to offer any services. For example, most computer games are still designed with 56k modem in mind (also LAN but that's another thing). Except for the latency you get with a cable modem/DSL, you get no other benefit. Similarly, most websites are still text-oriented and the extra bandwidth is useless (unless you are downloading something)...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Some of our smart folk here on /. has found out that the Republic of South Korea is about the size of Indiana and that it's just not possible to wire the entire US with that budget.
If the area of Indiana is about 1/50th of the 50 contiguous states, the entire cost of wiring the US would be an estimated 50x90 billion US-$. 4'500 billion or 4'500'000'000 dollars. Ridiculous amounts of money you say? It may seem, but compare it to the national debt or even just the annual increase in said national debt and the numbers don't appear so large anymore...
Since there will be industrious engineers out in the field installing all this network gear, perhaps they could take a few moments per site and fix their Metric Korean Assload of open proxy servers. Which are so popular with 'net vermin.
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...build an adequate interstate highway system. Oh, wait a minute...
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
First post!
Powerline Area Networks.I want my 1Gb line!
1) Who says we are in an "age of abundance"? I don't feel anything is more abundant for me than it was for my parents. Besides the internet and various tech gadgets, where is this abundance?
2) Who says capitalism is unsuited to abundance? It works quite well in commodity markets.
I just hope I don't lose a leg to net congestion. :/
Having capitalism and knowing how to apply it are two totally different things, and the result of piss poor governmental decisions. As vast as the resources of Russia is there really is no other excuse aside from somebody being stupid or on the bankroll for not being able to kick up your economy and local/global markets. As for wiring the country like South Korea, sounds like you need to get more backbones in first to drop the cost. More supply than demand leads to cheaper prices. ;) You also seem to immediately discount the overloaded network theory...I really can't imagine you are the priveledged few Russkis that want broadband services maybe you should pop a few tracerts out there to look for a bottleneck.
:) But seriously, it sux to hear the state of internet access there in St. Petersburg...no good for geeks anywhere. :( Fuckers
Course, we haven't sealed our borders yet and I am sure you could find a state you would enjoy living in...perhaps Montana? Think about, even the ignorant sand fleas eventually learn how good life is in America...despite coming here to make a pathetic attempt at terrorism.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Don't you have a knowledge of geography? There are two Koreas, you know.
Reminds me of people who complain about all those people trying to enter the United States from New Mexico.