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UK Researches Future 10Gbps Broadband Technology
MJackson writes "The UK Technology Strategy Board, an executive non-departmental public body established by the UK Government in 2007 and sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has invested £1M into over a dozen research projects for the development of ULTRA Fast up to 10Gbps broadband technologies. The ultimate aim, the development of pan-European Ultra Fast Broadband, could give EU companies a massive competitive advantage on a global scale."
that can handle that as well :)
o and the rest of the bottlenecks sorted on the internet
also no *aa people so I can dload stuff for free..
On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
Again, the meme is presented that ultra-fast broadband leads to competitive advantage.
Is this a genuine proposition? Can it lend competitive advantage to one power bloc over another on a global scale? Probably not. Everyone is as smart as everyone else and the technology platform is relatively "flat". Throughout history, we have noticed that when something is discovered, it is often discovered almost simultaneously in multiple centres. If competitive advantage lasts only a short time, what kind of "advantage" is it?
8Gbps is required for VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry). Multiples of 10Gbps trunks are required for large Internet exchanges, datacentres etc. What is the killer application that mandates 10Gbps on a wide scale? Even 1080p video is only around 3Gbps. Are we suddenly talking about multiple HD streams batting their way around teh interwebs to consumers?
We are starting to move into uncharted territory by discussing these kinds of capacity at the network edge. Small amounts of megabits are relatively easy to handle at the consumer level. Drop a 1Gbps trunk on the floor and you have a major problem. Putting 10Gbps to the edge makes the network more "nervous" and much harder to maintain and control.
While full service delivery over Active Ethernet has scaled up incredibly well to the point where it is now accepted at corporate mission-critical level, do we have the necessary capability to design, deploy and maintain networks at the proposed capacities?
At a technical level, Bandwidth Delay Product will kill your throughput over anything but short distances. You probably reach a point of diminishing returns where 10Gbps is enough for metro and national connections, but beyond that it is trunked and we know how to do that.
So if it isn't competitive advantage and it isn't enabling consumer-level killer applications, then what is it? Are we getting to the point where we need to start thinking about massive high-speed interconnectivity in a totally new way? That it isn't just to enable commerce or competition or local or global advantage, but that it in fact is something much more valuable? Global self-awareness, anyone?
I wish I had some modpoints to mod you down.
English Heritage is well worth the money, as is this research as it will be the future of broadband.
It really seems you're just trying to find something to complain about. The NHS is also well worth the money but that's another argument.
I'm sick of seeing Libertarians misquote Orwell - George Orwell was a Socialist and I am sure he would have supported national investment in technology and preserving our history.
I wonder, what you are going to do about it. Just complain? Or rise up?
Because as long as you do not rise up, it seems like it still is far from bad enough, and has to become much worse, before you actually rise up.
Please act. Or stop complaining.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Firstly: it's lucky you don't have modpoints, that's not how the system's supposed to work. There's no '-1: Disagree' moderation. You're supposed to discuss, not to hide what you don't happen to agree with.
Secondly: yes, I think the NHS is worth the money, overall at least. I also agree with you that organisations which would never work in the private sector (I don't know enough about English Heritage to comment specifically) can often, but not always, be a good use of public money.
I agree with the GP too, though. The multiple layers of bureaucracy waste an astonishing amount of money doing things that we have come to accept are 'part of what the government does'. The majority of politicians are in it for money and power, just like the majority of businesspeople; we should accept that, because it's not changing any time soon. It's not necessarily inherently harmful, it just means that the limitations on the remit of any particular agency should err strongly on the side of 'too strict' - that is very much not the case now.
Well I consider the OP a troll - see they are posting on a website dedicated to technology news against investment in technology using clearly flawed arguments.
The whole argument with Down Syndrome at the end is a classic Ignoratio elenchi. And the same argument could be made against the space program, or any major public investment.
And then using Orwell quotes against public spending, does the OP not know that Orwell was an outspoken Socialist (even moving to and fighting in the Spanish Civil War). The OP is just a classic Internet Libertarian, with a superficial understanding of what they quote - I am sure they saw V For Vendetta and now praise Guy Fawkes as a hero despite the fact he would've changed England to a theocracy under the Pope.
The majority of politicians are in it for money and power, just like the majority of businesspeople;
Don't pretend these two are equivalent though; unlike "businesspeople", government bureaucrats are assured of continuing to receive a salary regardless of whether they actually deliver, or just sit on their thumbs for a few years. Businesspeople also don't take money by force. Businesspeople also are forced to invest their money wisely in ways that helps others (i.e. that generate sales), because otherwise they soon wouldn't have any money left.
we should accept that, because it's not changing any time soon.
That's the stupidest statement I've heard in a very long time. Hey, let's all just "accept" anything that isn't going to change anytime soon, regardless of how bad or damaging it is ... that makes so much sense. No, let's not "accept" it, let's work hard to keep it in check, not just hand people with the power to take our money even more power and money just because it's always going to exist.
With regard to your first point, I have to disagree. I think I have more power to remove a member of my government (thus depriving them of that salary) than I do to change the upper management of major companies which have a major impact on my life.
In theory you do, in practice, I don't really agree ... the majority just keep voting fools and crooks in, and those fools and crooks seem to be good at one thing - convincing people to vote for them the next time round and give them more money (I live in South Africa, where the majority have just voted in a known corrupt rapist with no education as President, so I've seen that voters cannot be trusted). People by and large have short memories and are too distracted and obsessed by inane garbage than wanting to worry about whether or not their politicians are performing.
The self-interest of individuals would be a better way of keeping people "in check", *provided* that self-interest rewarded success and punished failure.
I also think history has shown that poor performance on the part of a business owner is by no means a guarantee to failure and good performance from a politician is no guarantee of success (and vice versa).
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but in most cases this is not because the free market model is flawed, but because the free market model *wasn't actually followed*. For example, all the recent government bail-outs and bonuses etc. that are going straight into the pockets of the very same assholes whose crookedness or incompetence caused the problems in the first place. An actual free market system would see those people out on the street or in jail where they belong; what we're seeing now is a corrupt system of crony capitalism where politicians reward their failing buddies ... that's more akin to theft.
You misinterpreted my second point, however.
Well, it did sound an awful lot like you were saying people "can't ever totally get rid of X, so might as well accept X". If that wasn't what you were saying, OK.
I actually agree with your take on the matter. I wasn't saying that we should accept the consequences of the selfish actions of politicians, I was saying that we should acknowledge that many (most? all?) people are often going to act in their own self interest at the expense of others
That is true, I agree with you. I just think that true free markets do a better job of taking this into account, because (again, in *true* free markets, which is not what we've had) self-interest is (basically by definition) rewarded typically when it also benefits others, and punished when it doesn't. I own a small business, and if my products didn't genuinely help my customers, I would go bankrupt quickly. On the other hand, I've seen government organisations here "competing" in the same field get millions more than I do, year after year, and produce absolutely nothing, year after year after year. They get contracts that should rather go to us, and literally deliver nothing that actually works. The system is simply not working. Taxpayers are dumping a fortune into corrupt black holes.
we are not going to be able to change this part of people's nature, so we should ensure (to use the exact words of my original post) "the limitations on the remit of any particular agency should err strongly on the side of 'too strict'". That sounds pretty much like what you're saying when you suggest we "work hard to keep it in check". Accept that's how people are going to behave, and set up the system to prevent it from being damaging, or indeed to make it so that their self interest and the public's interests are one and the same.
That would work if there was a good way to make sure that public agencies were performing. Unfortunately there isn't. And bureaucrats who run these shows tend to be people who become skilled at things like getting gov
It's not marketing, actually. IIRC, serial connections are generally described in terms of bits per second because they are moving one bit at a time (think modems or SATA drives), and parallel connections in bytes per second since they're moving a byte's worth of bits together, (think SCSI or PATA drives). Since broadband connections are serial in nature ... bits per second.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.