Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'm from the US. Can I at least have 100Mbps to my house please? Kthxbye.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
Please keep me UPDATED on this TECHNOLOGY. It seems to be very PROMISING. I would be ULTRA happy if I had access to 10Gbps!
(sorry, I have that disease which makes it IMPOSSIBLE to modulate the volume of my TYPING)
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.
Tech like this will help content delivery over one connection. Everyone in the house can watch HD streams at the same time, other services like phones, power meters, video conferencing etc can easily use up bandwidth like this. It is a HUGE pipe when it comes to current consumer tech but it will help tech of tomorrow...
Remember BT's catchphrase: "At least we're better than Virgin."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
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.
> "could give EU companies a massive competitive advantage on a global scale"
Indeed. Which is why they have invested the vast sum of 1 MEEEEEEEEELION dollars.
Clearly, forwarding the Departmental Press Release your boss insisted on issuing to SlashDot has paid dividends!
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.
Knowing how the UK government (and certain ISPs) think, I am concerned that the might use higher speeds to leverage people into more intrusion on their private communications. Virgin currently offer the fastest broadband and they are notorious.
Also, there is a difference between what a UK ISP sells you as a high speed connection and what you actually get. The ISPs spat the dummy out not so long ago about how IPlayer was 'ruining' the Internet because *gasp* people were actually starting to use the bandwidth they had paid for. Just because you've got a bazillion gigabits between your house and the ISP, doesn't mean the ISP is planning to support that at its end. They might well be counting on you buying an uberfast connection just to show off then not using it.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Isn't 10Gb internet access going to further increase the technical requirements for implementing the kinds of surveillance and recording systems the UK government wants? If you think that the associated complexity and costs of their current & proposed systems are extreme already, just imagine if everyone's access were to get 5000x faster!
Maybe they'll have to give it up. I suppose we can only hope!
-- "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all."
1 Million GBP
Aside from this looking like Mr Ombasa's email to me saying that his grandfather had died, we have this little symbol to denote this. It's above the 3, and looks like this. £. You can use £ if you have some weird furrin keyboard.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Competitive advantage on a global scale could be much more easily achieved by patent and copyright reform. Furthermore there should be a rule that all results from publicly funded research (even if only partially funded) are made publicly available.
Faster internet is nice but it won't help the economy if the relevant information is locked up legally!
It's now well known that Gordon Brown is totally indecisive and unable to make important decisions. As a result we have lots of initiatives to spend a little money to be seen to be "doing something". We have silly little uneconomic feeder schemes on solar and wind power, a fiddly little car scrappage scheme, endless talking about ID cards - but at the end of the day it's all fluff, and Brown is just working on the basis that the Conservatives will inherit the resulting mess and get the blame for dealing with it.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You can't use it for anything! Online gaming doesn't use so much bandwidth. The slowest part of browsing web or email is quite often the connection on the other side. At every turn someone is trying to place a cap on the byte count and everything people download is suspect.
I for one (IFO) think that the use of (TUO) a three or four letter acronym (TFLA) makes the post much easier to read (ETR)
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
If this is long term development, like they are starting to work on the fundamental theoretical stuff now so it can be implemented in 10, 15, 20 years or something, then I can see the use. After all, there is very well the possibility that in the not too distant future there will be a use for this kind of bandwidth. For one, as nice as high def is, it clearly isn't fooling anyone in to thinking it's real. That's the ultimate goal: A picture so real you can't tell the difference. Well that'll need a lot more resolution in all definitions (higher pixel count, better colour depth, more frames, etc). There's also the issue of purchasing software online. Getting increasingly popular. It'd be nice to have the downloads happen much faster though. A modern game on a 10mbit line can take a couple hours to download. Minutes, or seconds of download time would be better, and future games will only get larger.
So, in the timescale of a couple decades, I could see this starting to be useful.
However, if they are talking about rolling this out next year, then yes, it is just so much fluff. There's not the bandwidth further up the chain to support it in any meaningful capacity, nor for that matter can your computer even make use of it. Currently, gig ethernet is pushing the limits of what consumer disks can handle. A good, modern 7200rpm drive can sustain somewhere in the realm of 100Mbytes/second on sequential data. Thus even with various network overhead, GigE is enough to slam that. So 10 times that to the desktop won't get you shit, assuming you even had a 10gig network card.
Basically I think it is smart to look to the future with broadband technologies, because new apps will continue to need more bandwidth. When computers first came about, the idea of even needing 10mbits to a house was ludicrous. After all, how could you possibly need those kinds of speeds for text? Now it is around what you want to get a good, fast experience with all the rich media out there. So that trend will continue.
However I also think it is stupid to try and push amazing speeds to the house right now, since invariably you end up starved for bandwidth further up and thus it is nothing more than marketing fluff. That's been my experience with some of the ultra-high bandwidth services offered in places like Japan. They sound good on paper, but more or less it's a giant WAN so you never get anywhere near the speed your connection is in theory.
If this really proves to be useful, do they really think they will have this speed to themselves for any substantial period of time? DARPA-sponsored universities and firms, Cisco, AT&T, and many other U.S. entities are probably working on the same thing.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
English Heritage has the potential to do quite well in the private sector. So could a lot of the arts which are currently subsidised, though that reminds me of a Yes, Minister episode...
In the latest edition of Private Eye I read that British Waterways are currently leaving the public sector because they're fed up of being punished for DEFRA's mistakes.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Yet another "strategy board" to waste huge chunks of our money to sit around and pretend to work, under the guise of helping. Do we really believe amazing advances are going to come of this, or are we all just going to have forgotten about this a few years from now when some or other new "strategic initiative" is launched, while we fall further behind the East? Leave the money in the hands of the companies who stand to benefit from this, and set up true free market competition - if it's really good for the companies, they will not only do it themselves, but spend the money far more efficiently, because unlike these bureaucrats, they aren't assured of a future salary regardless of whether or not they produce anything at all. That's basically how we got ahead in the first place.
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. 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).
You misinterpreted my second point, however. 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 - 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.
How was that a troll? *Puzzled* ... guess I trod on somebody's biased toes.
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
Because it makes the numbers sound so much bigger !
The same way anything on Discovery Channel is described as being "thousands of pounds", when it's actully only about a ton-and-a-half.
can we first get cheap/commodity 10Gbps **LANs** please?
Having 10Gbps broadband will be cute 'n all, but useless if my PC only uses 1Gbps...
Since I've been modded by a biased moderator, I'll ask again, please explain what an "Internet Libertarian" is ... I mean, the Internet is just a communications medium, so if someone advocates Libertarianism over the phone does that make them a "just a Telephone Libertarian"? If someone promotes Socialism in a newspaper opinion column, does that make them a "just a Newspaper Socialist"? Honestly, it sounds like it means something insightful, but when prodded, you see it means nothing at all.
Do you want to explain how that applies to bankers?
They seem to have done worse than sit on their backsides, made shed loads of cash and are still getting payed bonuses on the facetious argument that if they don't they will go elsewhere. In the current economic climate I would like to know where they are going to go mind you.
Clearly your arguments are flawed.
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.
I think it means that to be an Internet Libertarian you have to have mod points first.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
There must be an UK's government importance why there's a research to find 10Gbps Broadband Technology.
> "the UK Government...has invested £1M into over a dozen research projects for the
> development of...up to 10Gbps broadband technologies.
Cisco CEO Dr. Evil: Oh no! One million pounds. Our corporation cannot afford that kind of competition.
Number Two: Actually, sir, last year we invested over $9 billion alone in R&D.
Cisco CEO Dr. Evil: $9 billion, huh?
Number Two: Yes.
Cisco CEO Dr. Evil: Well, I see. In the future, could somebody tell me these things? I'm the boss. Need the info.
> "The ultimate aim, the development of pan-European Ultra Fast Broadband, could
> give EU companies a massive competitive advantage on a global scale."
For about two weeks.
Maybe.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.