[ILUG] Bandwidth/Internet use in Ireland

[Justin Mason]

tim at maths.tcd.ie said:

> > Having said all that the bandwidth looks good, so if you want lots of
> > bandwidth but don't care about the latency, and have the $$$,
> > satellite = good ;)
> 
> But could the bandwidth possibly be of the order of 40--50Mbs?
> Remember, this has to be multiplied by the number of people accessing
> the satellite.

Nope, I would imagine most broadband services currently available in
Ireland now, or in test, would have pretty low bandwidth from the ISP to
the net at the moment.

Maybe this 60-gig cable that the government has been talking about will
change this, but I personally can't see how they'll square that when the
telcos charge such vast prices for leased lines as it stands...

> Incidentally, I don't believe any "new technology"
> can possibly result in speeds of this order down telephone wires.
> If you are talking about compression,
> there is a theoretical limit to this of perhaps 10:1 for ASCII messages
> (I mean that there is a theoretical limit for each message,
> and I would expect the value for any normal message to be less than 10.)

Well, I understand the use of digital signalling mechanisms on dedicated
copper, will achieve much greater data rates than the current modem speeds
over telco-operated analogue lines (ie POTS lines).  And the use of
different signalling systems != compression.

Someone on ILUG mentioned that the Genesis thing sounds like VDSL (see
http://www.dsl.com/intro.html#22), which is very high bandwidth but with a
very short max cable length (3000 ft apparently).  So it does exist --
maybe only in a lab somewhere -- but it is out there!

> It seems a pity to me for the Linux community
> to get involved with what basically sounds like snake-oil to me.

Yeah, I'd be worried about that too; however I think most of us are
cynically sitting on the fence as usual ;)

--j.