Slashdot Mirror
World's Fastest Internet Cafe
Thyrus writes "An internet cafe offering connections 50 times faster than typical broadband services has opened in Cornwall. Computers at Goonhilly satellite station, on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, are connected to BT's global internet protocol network. That means users can download data at speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps). It is thought to be the first time such high speeds have been seen at a UK internet cafe. The service will be free to visitors."
First, I am glad they said in the UK, because 100mbit cyber cafes aren't special everywhere.
Also, I notice they have had to tip toe around what it can be used for:
Adrian Hosford of BT said: "It would be possible to use the cafe's computers to download in less than 15 minutes a file the equivalent size of the DVD version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with its 19,000 illustrations, 629 audio and video clips and 100,000 articles.
It seems like they are trying almost too hard to explain how quick it is, afterall, I never rate my downloads in terms of how many "dvd copies of a paper encyclopedia with illustrations and video clips" I just say its shit-hot.
We need it in terms we can understand like how many TPG/s can we view?
will google earth run smoothly without appearing to break up or pixelate no matter where I zoom or rotate to?
can I wipe out my friends in CS:S by having a l33t connection?
Another article I was reading earlier about this mentions why the special people were chosen to open it:
The new internet café will be officially declared open by Helston Community College pupils Chloe Smith and James Evans, both aged 17, who have demonstrated outstanding acumen in the field of information technology.
from here.
(Yes, sisco appear to be hyping this more than the BBC, but then again they supplied some of the high tech equipment.
liqbase
But how much does a cup of coffee cost??
of course it's a publicity stunt, but that's usually what advertising is. judging from the amount of attention it is getting it's probably worth it. i mean, it's free to the users so why should anyone complain. and besides, all things being equal, if you had a choice of two cafes - one with a much faster free connection, and one with normal dsl - most people would tend towards the faster one (assuming the coffee is the same price and quality and that it's not 100x more crowded).
I've been there not so long ago. All the PCs are iMacs (there are about 15 in total). The base units are locked away in a 'pod' display type thing so there is no access to USB ports or floppy discs or anything like that. Whatever you download you can't take with you. Also it's fairly heavily censored using a websense based proxy so don't think for a second you'll be downloading hundreds of megs of mp3s or anthing like that.
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for an hour. Set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
A company I worked for (now closed) delivered 4 gigabits of ethernet connectivity to the buildings it lit in 2001. We designed and built our own gigabit ethernet DWDM injectors to link in-building Cisco 3508 switches with Cisco 6509 switches in the CO. One of our customers was Web2Zone (an Internet Cafe) at 62 Coopers' Square. We never saw the kind of bandwidth spike that indicated they used even 1/1000th of the bandwidth, except when they caught code-red or some such Internet worm. We believed that the limitation was the destination server bandwidth. To compensate for slow servers on other providers, we made extensive use of static page caching to speed performance and reduce our bandwidth costs.
Seconded. I also wonder about this with regards to the 100BT connections quoted in reference to the UK cafe. If the backhaul is only 1Gb, then I hope they don't have more than 10 clients connected when they're quoting 100Mb.
If I saw a cafe advertising "Gigabit Internet Connections," my immediate suspicion would be that they have either: (in order of decreasing crapitude)
A) Gigabit links to each machine, and then some shitty 128kb backhaul
B) A Gigabit backhaul, and then 10/100 links to each client
c) A Gigabit backhaul, and then Gigabit links to each client
The third case might, I suppose, be borderline honest, since theoretically if you were the only person in the cafe, you could enjoy gigabit speeds to the Internet, but that's barely practical. Although I suppose given the advertising of most consumer internet connections (advertising "burst" rather than continuous throughput, etc.), it's not as bad as it could be.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."