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)
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.
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?