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How Far Will You Go For Highest Speed Internet?

Posted by Unknown on from the be-back-in-a-year dept.

Zecheus (1072058) writes "This community is extraordinarily rural. It is considered among the northernmost in the world. In the summer, temperature rises as high as 40F. There are more polar bears than humans. Even the usual ubiquitous and generous Norwegian health care is out of reach: inhabitants leave for the south to give birth or to die. On the other hand, it enjoys the highest quality Internet experience in the world due to recently installed fiber. Care to give it a try? By the way, the area has a turnover rate of over 25% every year."

22 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. So how fast is it...? by QRDeNameland · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How do you write an article about the "highest speed internet" in the world without a single quantification of how fast it actually is?

    --
    Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
    1. Re:So how fast is it...? by Like2Byte · · Score: 2

      The most specific the article gets is

      Svalbard enjoys speeds estimated to be 10 to 20 times as fast as any in the rest of Norway.

      .

      Given that it's possible to get gbit fiber, well...

      But you *did* read it. See what they did there?

      Thus endith the lesson. :)

    2. Re:So how fast is it...? by QRDeNameland · · Score: 2

      Did you read the article?

      Yes. And the closest thing to a quantification was "10 to 20 times as fast as any in the rest of Norway." Which means....what? It tells me that the guy has 43 TB of storage capacity, and even specific climate info about the town, but I'm left to guess the specs of the internet link, which is the subject of the article?

      Did I miss something?

      --
      Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
    3. Re:So how fast is it...? by Like2Byte · · Score: 2

      No, no. Not at all. I was simply suggesting that maybe their point wasn't to get statistics out; but, rather, obtain eyeballs.

      I think you're totally spot on - what a wasted opportunity and inferior article. They made a claim without substantiating it at any length.

      Oh, and sorry if I offended you. That certainly wasn't my intent. The whole thing is humorous to me.

    4. Re:So how fast is it...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you're using uTorrent, it incorrectly uses memory mapped files in Windows, which causing the Kernel to not release memory mapped ranges and eventually uses all of your physical memory. This is actually working as intended for Windows, which means there is a known way to DOS the host if you have local access. The best part is this memory does not show allocated to a user, but to the kernel, so you can't easily find what is causing the havok.

      It's as much uTorrent's fault as it is Window's. It is clearly documented that it works this way when using certain memory mapped file types that uTorrent uses, but it is a horrible design by Microsoft. uTorrent refuses to "fix" this issue because they consider it entirely a problem of Windows. All they need to do is not use memory mapped files and do their own cashing or not cache at all. But nope. This issue is several years old, but is only now becoming more prevalent with faster Internet connections.

    5. Re:So how fast is it...? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2

      And the closest thing to a quantification was "10 to 20 times as fast as any in the rest of Norway." Which means....what?

      A Norwegian will tell you that the rest of Norway is twice as fast as Sweden. A Swede will claim the opposite.

      Hope that helps.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    6. Re:So how fast is it...? by houghi · · Score: 2

      For the people selling it, it is extremely fast. For peole who start using it, it is very fast. For people who use it for a longer time it is pretty fast. For /. people using it on day 2 it is meh.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    7. Re:So how fast is it...? by Kjella · · Score: 4, Informative

      Digging a little they're talking about a 50/50Mbit connection (Norwegian), so the article is wildly exaggerated... triple the mean connection yes, not 10-20 times.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  2. Back in my day by alta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I remember how happy I was the first time I had cable internet. I was beta testing for comcast. Free for the first 6 months. So exciting. Now, I'm old (37) and bandwidth doesn't excite me the way it used to. I'm paying for 10MB I get 12MB... I could get up to 100, but why bother. I come home, sit on my couch and have a beer. The kids can and I can play all the minecraft we want on that 12MB connection.

    --
    Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
    1. Re:Back in my day by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      The cynic in me would say, all customers of Comcast are beta testing for them...

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Back in my day by asylumx · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Bandwidth doesn't really matter after a certain point

      Also, 640k will be enough for anyone!

  3. Re:I'd Walk A Mile... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk five hundred more, just to be the man who streams Netflix and torrents even that much more...

  4. How far? Not very... by fustakrakich · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Eventually it will come to me. Every couple of years I get a free upgrade as the pipe gets fatter. I can wait.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  5. My speed is fine, fix the latency by Snotnose · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been happy with my throughput for years. However, my latency seems to rise few ms every year. As I spend more time gaming on-line than watching movies I'd be more willing to pay extra for lower latency.

    1. Re:My speed is fine, fix the latency by PPH · · Score: 2

      However, my latency seems to rise few ms every year.

      That's just old age catching up with you. You need more fiber.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  6. Re:I'd Walk A Mile... by StatureOfLiberty · · Score: 3, Funny

    Thanks for your proclamation! (It threw a little sunshine on my day)

  7. One part conveniently left out by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One part conveniently left out is the military's part in this, they want fiber optics for a bunch of NATO surveillance activities, polar satellites and so on. It's pretty obvious why if you look at a map. Supplying the about 2600 permanent inhabitants with really fast broadband (100% fiber optics now) is just a side effect. True, this cabin area about 3 miles from the main settlement wasn't originally included in the plans, but when the inhabitants dig the ditch and all the fiber company has to do is roll out the cable drum it's a pretty good deal for them too. There are several rural areas - though not quite that remote - here in Norway which has done the digging as a community effort to make the cost bearable for the fiber company. Just last quarter the median broadband in Norway passed 10 Mbit/s, the mean is 18.4 Mbit/s and improving at a nice pace.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  8. 50 - 100 Mb/s by iktos · · Score: 3, Informative

    Of course Telenor themselves mention the bandwidth: http://www.telenor.com/media/a...
    Fibre optic with lots of Gb/s to the European mainland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
    Can be noted that any citizen of a country which has signed the Svalbard treaty can move there without needing any permit.

  9. Re:The real story: by noh8rz10 · · Score: 2

    i go outside to Skate or Die.

  10. Re:Size of the pipe. by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Exactly. High speed connections aren't any good if your ping times are terrible because you're so far away from civilization. Also, once you get up around 100 mbit/s, it doesn't really matter how fast the connection is. At that point you could stream more than a few HD movies. Let us also not forget that many spinning platter drives have sustained write speeds of less than 100 MB per second, which means that as you approach gigabit speeds, you network connection actually exceeds the speed you can write the data to disk.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  11. Re:Chattanooga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Except the polar bears will be better neighbors.

  12. Also how is the backhaul? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I mean sure, they have fast FTTH. Fair enough, but that doesn't do you much good if the backhaul to the rest of the Internet isn't sufficient to support the speeds.

    This is something that always gets left out of the "OMG t3h fast internetz!!!" articles on Slashdot. A lot of the "really fast" Internet in the world is basically a big WAN where you have a fast line, and thus fast speeds to your neighbors and ISP, but then lack the backhaul to get those kind of speeds to the wider Internet, since that's the really expensive part.

    Not saying that's the case here or not, but it is the kind of info that needs to be included to be useful. Along with, of course, the actual speed.