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Why We Don't Need Gigabit Networks (Yet)
AmyVernon writes "Most computers today can't support gigabit connections and current Wi-Fi networks can't offer those speeds either. The first trial of Sonic.Net's gigabit network was a speed test on a generic laptop that showed off 420 Mbps down; the laptop couldn't handle a full gig. Plus, few applications need those speeds. It's hard to justify such a huge investment in a network that will have few subscribers and few applications that need it. Of course, that can change, and then these networks will be vital. This story has a good analysis of where things stand and what has to change."
Gigabit networks are important when working with almost any kind of file copy. I am not sure the last time someone tried to backup even just 100GB of data (Think backups) over a 100 megabit network. Copies like that can take for ever a fully saturate 100 megabit network and slow down traffic for everyone. While copies over gigabit rarely use the entire pipe its good to know that there is still bandwidth left over for other tasks.
How DARE you say we don't need faster networks! This article should be purged from the interwebs and timothy should be strung up by his gonads for even considering posting it!
I have 2 computers, a ps3, and a wii connected to the net. even if I am doing something simple like streaming a movie from one computer to the ps3 to watch on my tv while someone else is playing a game online, downloading something or the other, or just generally using the web to watch anything in HD, I could easily find a use for that bandwidth.
The reason this post is stupid is that infrastructure is long term. When you go to the trouble of sending out a crew to dig up and put fiber in the ground your putting in an infrastructure asset that should have a 15-30 year lifespan. The fact that can average machine can't saturate it today means we're being forward thinking.
... and 640K computers.
Build a faster network and someone will invent more devices to connect to the network to shove around data that they don't need.
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is not for one computer to saturate it, but for 10 machines to get decent throughput simultaneously.
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The streaming model can die the death it deserves at that point.
Streaming is still the only model I can see for live events such as news talk shows, sports, scripted sports (e.g. WWE PPV), concerts, and the like where viewing begins before the whole video has even been recorded.
Eh.. nothing wrong with the streaming model, as far as network bandwidth goes, and there are advantages for things that lots of people are trying to get: under the streaming model, you can use multicast a little better. For instance, if something just needs to be downloaded, you can multicast it in a continuous loop and clients can assemble the pieces in the right order at their end, waiting until they have enough to finish.
Or you can have multiple streams staggered (for say, video), so that people can join in at almost any time and get on a stream.
The other advantage of streaming is that if, say, a client is downloading video and the user decides halfway through to stop watching, you don't have to send any more bits.
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No, but the argument is "this cheap and shitty laptop could only manage to use half of the gig connection, so therefore no one needs gig speeds for the home".
An argument that is easily destroyed by saying "ok, do you live alone? Do you have more than one person using a computer at the same time?"
It's not just servers. I share a house with 4 other people and we can all watch HD streaming video on the connection we have, just. If the bandwidth goes up a little, or people start using off-site backup more frequently I can see a market for a consumer-level gig connection. I know you can already get them in some other European countries (here in the UK, the best you can get on a consumer budget is 100Mb (soon to be 200Mb) from Virgin cable).
One shitty laptop might choke on a gig connection, but three or four computers will happily share it.
My organization is on the verge of needing to move our equipment to 10gig soon, because the 1gig network is starting to become a serious bottleneck...
Um, probably not. He's rolling out fiber in my town of 7000. But it's also his business to know whether it's really going to be saturated so they can do the right network on the backend. Sonic.net is a pretty kick-ass ISP. They instituted outbound SMTP blocking. But they noticed I'm running my own SMTP server and sent me an email saying they weren't blocking SMTP to/from me, but I could enable/disable it just by visiting my member account page. Also, they just rolled out free fax numbers (gateway to PDF/email) and outbound faxing for everyone.
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I read the article as a laptop being too slow because of its drive not handling data that quickly.
That neatly bypasses a very real need for high speed low latency remote connections where disk speed is irrelevant -- remote desktops, remote apps and VPN, often in combinations. And in combination with other things that suck bandwidth too.
There's more to bandwidth than file transfers.
Holy shit... as a developer of broadcast television infrastructure equipment which is used throughout the world, though predominantly in Europe, I thought I was clued in quite a bit on the back-assward methods used within the industry for transmitting TV and Internet signals.
This was a total shocker for me though. I'm a huge fan of using wavelength multiplexing within fiber. Especially when the fiber in my house is a single fiber as opposed to pairs which are much harder to make look pretty in a house. However this is one of the funniest things I ever heard of.
It's taken a really long time for the industry to finally come up with a less than insanely shitty method of using coax cabling for digital media access. Oddly enough, the cable companies have more or less completely rebuild their coax backbones to make it happen... what makes it odd is that they wanted to keep the coax to avoid having to lay new cable.. haha wow that worked well.
Now, it appears that Verizon has decided to transmit the entire cable multiplex over a single wavelength, therefore allowing them to a) guarantee their bandwidth usage even if it's insanely high, b) decrease hackability of TV fiber as it is on a not so common wavelength and therefore difficult for consumers/hackers to get receivers for it. c) run less expensive multiplexers they wouldn't require conditional IP multicasting at the switches. d) decrease the cost of maintaining a huge TCP/IP network of devices as it would be possible to remove the IP layer altogether and use a more reliable ATM style layer.
This design so fantastically screws consumers into buying/leasing equipment exclusively from Verizon that it damn near guarantees Verizon a minimum of $30 a month extra per average household just in equipment rentals. And what's best is, they can claim "Sure, we support using third party hardware with our system Mr. FCC, but there's no law that says we have to help anyone make equipment that works with out network is there? But if anyone ever does... sure, we'll support them".
The only true benefit of this design to the consumer is that it would be possible to make a fiber to DVB-C converter that would theoretically make it possible for a TV to receive the signal using the digital coax connection within the TV.
I am SOOOOO glad I don't live in the states anymore... this stuff would infuriate me... it's bad enough I had to make an FPGA for brute forcing DVB-CAS in order to cut my power usage in the house by 100watts (24/7 since the shutting off the set top box from the fiber company requires a 3-5 minute startup time). Now I use an FPGA which consumes 5watts to crack the keys and shared them out with the rest of the house. Saves me a fortune. The FIOS thing would drive me nuts... oh there's the additional bitch about FIOS which is that it's DOG SLOW!!!!