1Gbps Broadband!

What is the point in a 27Mb service, a 1Gb service, or even a 10Mb service - people seem to forget that just because you have a link capable of these speeds you will rarely (if ever) actually get such speeds from the general internet - (unless you are downloading from your next door neighbours).

[Ramrod]

Originally Posted by Richard M

I have a 1Mb DSL service for £39 - I'm sure something's wrong somewhere...

Yep......population density, bb uptake, and infrastructure

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by Paul M

What is the point in a 27Mb service, a 1Gb service, or even a 10Mb service - people seem to forget that just because you have a link capable of these speeds you will rarely (if ever) actually get such speeds from the general internet - (unless you are downloading from your next door neighbours).

The point is that you can do whatever you want whenever you want!
Imagine being able to stream a 128kbit radio station while downloading 10 different torrents at up to 10MBit each as well as hosting a 40 player game server on the same machine!

Originally Posted by Richard M

The point is that you can do whatever you want whenever you want!
Imagine being able to stream a 128kbit radio station while downloading 10 different torrents at up to 10MBit each as well as hosting a 40 player game server on the same machine!

The point is you won't be able to do that. Only the local link to your house would be that speed - not everything beyond (many servers are only on 10mbit connections, many pipes into whole data centres are only 100mbit (or 155mbit)), this and all the interconnecting infrastructure could never sustain more than a few such high speed connections.

[punky]

Originally Posted by Paul M

What is the point in a 27Mb service, a 1Gb service, or even a 10Mb service - people seem to forget that just because you have a link capable of these speeds you will rarely (if ever) actually get such speeds from the general internet - (unless you are downloading from your next door neighbours).

I guessed it was for busy, high end servers anyway. It didn't say downstream, it just said throughput, generically. I think they can split it how they want.

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by Paul M

The point is you won't be able to do that. Only the local link to your house would be that speed - not everything beyond (many servers are only on 10mbit connections, many pipes into whole data centres are only 100mbit (or 155mbit)), this and all the interconnecting infrastructure could never sustain more than a few such high speed connections.

What I'm getting at is that you'd be downloading from multiple locations at their max speed.
OK, so a typical webserver will put out 10MBit, but if you have 100MBit you could download from 8 or 9 different servers at full speed.

Originally Posted by Richard M

What I'm getting at is that you'd be downloading from multiple locations at their max speed.
OK, so a typical webserver will put out 10MBit, but if you have 100MBit you could download from 8 or 9 different servers at full speed.

A nice thought - but at the present time, you are very unlikely to get such high speed links to most servers in the first place, especially ones outside of the uk, or in smaller datacentres - and even if you managed it, if any other people connected and started downloading, the speed would start to fall, or even nose dive.

[Gareth]

Using your logic, Paul, maybe we should all ditch broadband and go back to 9600 baud dial-up modems?

I see it as progress. It has to start somewhere, and eventually it will spread elsewhere. Admittedly, it's not always much use being an early adopter, but someone has to do it.

[Mattitude]

[]Me want...[/]

[Matthew]

I want it! Well anything has got to be better than 56k!

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Gareth

Using your logic, Paul, maybe we should all ditch broadband and go back to 9600 baud dial-up modems?

I see it as progress. It has to start somewhere, and eventually it will spread elsewhere. Admittedly, it's not always much use being an early adopter, but someone has to do it.

I think Paul's point is that if you are on a link faster than a couple of megabytes, you really don't see faster downloads from it. Even where a site is on a fast link. they may limit the bandwidth to individual users.

TBH, I think he is right. At work, I am on a link that is extremely fast, and most of the time, I really don't notice the difference between than and the 1.5 Meg link at home.

Not sure how the faster link would affect P2P and bittorrent as I cannot use these at work (they are banned, and blocked at the firewall), but in my experience, the limiting factor for speed on those appears to be at the server end (by server, I mean the machine serving the file you are downloading).

Originally Posted by Gareth

Using your logic, Paul, maybe we should all ditch broadband and go back to 9600 baud dial-up modems?

If you say so

[philip.j.fry]

Originally Posted by Richard M

The point is that you can do whatever you want whenever you want!
Imagine being able to stream a 128kbit radio station while downloading 10 different torrents at up to 10MBit each as well as hosting a 40 player game server on the same machine!

On the other hand most pc's wouldn't be able to cope with that much intensive stuff running on it.

[OinkyBoinky]

Originally Posted by Richard M

What I'm getting at is that you'd be downloading from multiple locations at their max speed.
OK, so a typical webserver will put out 10MBit, but if you have 100MBit you could download from 8 or 9 different servers at full speed.

And another thing... surely if speeds availible to the end user are starting to get faster and faster, then surely the pipes that the servers are on will have to be increased too... i know thats easier said than done, but surely thats just a logical step... imagine... one day.. ever one at home has this 1gbps broadband at home.. and all the servers are on 1tbps pipes....

[Gareth]

Yep, Oinky - my point exactly. Without forward thinkers, like those looking at implementing this kind of speed now because they can, we'd all be sitting around a camp fire watching black and white telly by candle light!