[ILUG] Bandwidth/Internet use in Ireland

[Justin Mason]

Mike Knell said:

> Hum - the concept of "the net" as a creature of infinite bandwidth that
> is limited only by your provider's connection to it is one thing, but
> in reality the Internet is a congested mess of fibre and more-or-less
> working backbones that can't expand fast enough to cope with the
> clouds of HTTP segments that fill it up. If everybody suddenly got
> 45Mbps of bandwidth to their house, this doesn't mean everyone would
> be able to download anything from anywhere at 45Mbps. The core network
> just couldn't cope with it. Sure, you'd be fine for local stuff, and
> things would be generally faster, but all your internet use would not
> suddenly become 720 times faster.
> A network is only as fast as the slowest point in it, which in this case
> would be, well, most of the network beyond your local one. There's more
> bandwidth in the big backbones, yes, but it's shared between a lot more
> people and a lot of major networks. It'll improve your latencies, sure,
> but overall transfer rates won't get 720 times faster. They'll get faster,
> but not that much faster..

Yep -- there's been several articles in US mags along these lines in the
last few years; people reviewing new whizzy high-speed access, and
basically saying "well it's slightly faster than it was before".  (I think
Boardwatch would be a good spot to find some of these).

Personally I think it will be more revolutionary to have always-on
internet at home, than high-bandwidth internet at home.  Next benefit
would be latency reduction.  Finally, an increase in available bandwidth
is a benefit -- but not the be-all and end-all of it.

Also, I think that wide availability of high-speed home access through a
shared ISP's backbone will allow more peer-to-peer stuff; it'll change the
normal use of the internet from the current "dialup users reading
webpages" to something new... could be games, I'm sure there'll be other
new uses.  If it is games, then the latency reduction will certainly
revolutionise that area.  One thing's for sure -- people's use of the 'net
is a moving target... witness the sudden explosion of HTTP after Mosaic
went beta...

> > 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!
> 
> Getting stuff working in a lab is all well and good, but getting it
> working in the real world is something else. I'll remain happily
> sceptical until it's published stuff rather than "sorry, can't talk
> about it" right now. Secret technologies are all too often snake oil.

I agree with you on this one -- snake oil, or just pure
vapour/announceware.

> underlying infrastructure has speeded up a lot. Many users (not anybody
> in this thread, I should emphasise, it's merely a Slashdot-reading
> observation) seem to assume that high-bandwidth Internet access with
> no limitations is a right - see those US students threatening to take
> universities to court because they're blocking use of Napster on their
> _academic_ networks. Personally, I just think that's greedy and shows
> some pretty fundamental misunderstandings of the realities of today's
> Internet.

high-bandwidth Internet access may not be a right -- but it's something to
wish for... ;)

--j.