Will Fiber-To-the-Home Create a New Digital Divide? 291
First time accepted submitter dkatana writes Having some type of fiber or high-speed cable connectivity is normal for many of us, but in most developing countries of the world and many areas of Europe, the US, and other developed countries, access to "super-fast" broadband networks is still a dream. This is creating another "digital divide." Not having the virtually unlimited bandwidth of all-fiber networks means that, for these populations, many activities are simply not possible. For example, broadband provided over all-fiber networks brings education, healthcare, and other social goods into the home through immersive, innovative applications and services that are impossible without it. Alternatives to fiber, such as cable (DOCSYS 3.0), are not enough, and they could be more expensive in the long run. The maximum speed a DOCSYS modem can achieve is 171/122 Mbit/s (using four channels), just a fraction the 273 Gbit/s (per channel) already reached on fiber.
No. (Score:3, Insightful)
It won't.
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
More on that:
Companies won't pay for infinite bandwidth, so they will throttle you eventually.
TCP_WINDOWS_SIZE will put a maximum on how much you can download based on how far away the server is. Anything more than 20 to 30ms and it won't be much faster than what we have today.
Anything that is encrypted is limited to the computational capacity of the CPU, unless you have an encryption acceleration chip. Around 25 to 35Mbps depending on the encryption method and how much load that crypt takes. More secure means more CPU, right now arc_four being the fastest, but least secure.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, but both sides have to agree and the protocol has to support it. SCP/SFTP in particular don't, unless you are using PSC's version of SSH that fixes it.
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http://www.psc.edu/index.php/h... [psc.edu]
explains the issue and the fix in detail.
Late FreeBSD 8 and up have HPN-SSH by default.
HPN-SSH with the "NONE" encryption option is blinding fast, up to 2.5Gbit per stream on bigger servers. Filling even an OC-48 is possible with very big servers.
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Sounds to me like you are arguing against future technologies and capabilities based on today's implementations. As soon as there is common need, fixed implementations or even new protocols will replace the old.
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How do you figure TCP window size can grow up to 2GB? The protocol limit for it is 65,535 bytes. The receive buffer can grow that large with scaling but not the window size.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
1) TCP alternatives are already being developed
2) TCP_WINDOW_SIZE problem was solved long long ago with TCP_WINDOW_SCALING. The limit is roughly 100 Gbit/s at 80ms
3) Not sure where you're getting your data from but reality is a very different place from where you live. 25 MBps would be an Intel Atom 230 decrypting AES-128-CBC. 5 year old mobile/low power processors were never meant to stand the test of time. Take something from around the same period, like say an Intel T5550 and all the sudden you're up to 80MBps for AES-256-CBC (or 109MBps AES-128-CBC). Even dropping down to a P4 you can get 75MBps for AES-256-CBC.
Also, arc_four (aka RC4) is not even worth discussing as it's completely useless as encryption. RC6 is (comparatively) fast at low byte counts on specific platforms but quickly plateau with little performance increase after 128 bytes and slows by a factor of 3 if the hardware is not optimal. Rijndael, which was chosen for AES, had consistently fast speeds no matter the bytes or platform. The reality is that any chip with the AES-NI instruction set makes it a moot point, by example the i7-3960X is churning out 5.7GBps. Without it, performance does suffer, but you're still talking 250-400Mbps on a 4 core chip.
The real question is how the heck this got posted to Slashdot. DOCSIS 3.1 bumps the limits to 10 Gbit/s down, 1 Gbit/s up and even on DOCSIS 3.0 - who says you've got to be stuck at 4 channels? 24 Channel is already actively deployed in Canada at 200-250Mbps down/15-30Mbps up, 1.5Gbps/150Mbps in the UK.
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More on that:
Companies won't pay for infinite bandwidth, so they will throttle you eventually.
TCP_WINDOWS_SIZE will put a maximum on how much you can download based on how far away the server is. Anything more than 20 to 30ms and it won't be much faster than what we have today.
Anything that is encrypted is limited to the computational capacity of the CPU, unless you have an encryption acceleration chip. Around 25 to 35Mbps depending on the encryption method and how much load that crypt takes. More secure means more CPU, right now arc_four being the fastest, but least secure.
Well, now. Those are some of the most ignorant, non-arguments for higher bandwidth that we've seen today. So I shouldn't have something many parts of the world already have because, what, TCP window size? Huh? Using encryption would make something more than my 20 Mbps cable connection economically unfeasible? WTF? The plain fact is (and has been for some time) that we are getting screwed by ineffective regulation of monopoly telecom companies who are screwing us even worse. Competition scares the shit out o
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True, and it helps file sharing, which tends to have multiple connections. Unless you are encrypting, then the encryption slows you down.
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
Incorrect. Many older protocols don't support it. FTP, SSH based, etc. BOTH sides must agree to the larger window size. As little as .01% packet loss can reduce throughput by 50%.
I run into this all the time at work, where moving data over large pipes over long distances still limits transmission speeds. I move datacenters for IBM, so I see it a LOT.
If it were not such a problem, CISCO WAAS, Silverpeak, Riverbed and others would not make appliances to fix this exact problem. Riverbed even makes end user software that talks to concentrators at the corporate datacenter to eliminate TCP window size issues impacting application performance.
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually AC was very correct. TCP window scaling was a proposed standard back in 1992 (rfc1323) and the issue does not lie with FTP/SSH/etc but with the application implementing those protocols failing to set a larger receiving buffer. Yes, both sides need to send the window scaling SYN option, however, once sent protocols running on top of it should not be affected (unless the receiving buffer is smaller than the scaling)
It's funny because they even make reference to LFNs (long fat networks) and how the proposal fixes the problem.
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By all means it's a standard, RFC1323 (now RFC7323) proposed standard. While it's an optional component that specific applications fail to implement, that is the fault of the application not lack of protocol support.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry! Service providers usually aim for the lowest common denominator to maximize their market, so a divide means you won't have haves and have-nots. Just have-nots.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to elaborate...the author is extremely vague here. Let's just pick an arbitrary number, say 10mbit, which is actually quite slow (in my opinion, but the local cable co provides 150mbit connections, and just started rolling out gigabit, so maybe I'm biased.)
Anyways what services CAN'T you obtain at 10mbit? Nothing health related comes to mind, nothing education related comes to mind, and social goods..what the FUCK does that even mean? Anyways, a 10mbit link is fully capable of streaming 1080p video, which is about the most demanding consumer grade application I can think of.
Therefore, I have no idea what possible "divide" the author could be referring to. Furthermore, the author strikes me as being grossly uneducated about the topic because of the blatant misspelling of the acronym DOCSIS.
If he wants to make a better case (which it sounds like he's pushing for some kind of socialist and/or social justice agenda) then he should at the very least give examples of WHAT, EXACTLY these people wouldn't have access to.
He would have a case for a slow upstream (it's common for DSL providers to only provide less than megabit data rates) in health care if, say for example, a medical practitioner needed an HD video feed to evaluate their patient (which doesn't seem to be a likely scenario) but he didn't state that. But, that still doesn't apply to anything else he mentioned.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
You should not notice any issues. If you do, you don't have enough bandwidth.
Let me repeat... You should not EVER have thing think about your bandwidth or how you are using your internet connection. If you ever have to stop and think, "why is this slow", you don't have enough. You should have to micromanage what is ran and when, or who can do what at what times, etc.
We have the technology to provide every user so much bandwidth, that it's nearly impossible for them to ever run into an issue of using it all.
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Let me repeat... You should not EVER have thing think about your bandwidth or how you are using your internet connection. If you ever have to stop and think, "why is this slow", you don't have enough. You should have to micromanage what is ran and when, or who can do what at what times, etc.
I can't even begin to describe how much of a ridiculous "first world problem" this is, let alone how inaccurate...
Despite what the author and many other people seem to pretend, much of the US (and other parts of the world) *does* in fact get 50Mbps+ for under $100 already without FTTH. That's enough bandwidth to stream 3 HD videos and whatever web browsing or game patches you want at the same time.
We have the technology to provide every user so much bandwidth, that it's nearly impossible for them to ever run into an issue of using it all.
Sure, obviously the technology exists, but why would anyone assume it should be free? We could give everyone
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm in Australia and I get 10mbit/s sync with ADSL2+ (there is a NBN fibre bolted to the side of my house, but no light in it).
From that:
- 4 VoIP lines
- 2 people working from home, copious calls/video calls.
- My 33TB NAS gets data from somewhere
all runs from it just fine.
I could use 100mbit or faster better than most, but realistically I start to struggle thinking about what I'd do after 20mbps or so, and any more than that is just doing silly crap with it.
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Why South Korea and Japan can do it and USA can't? (Score:2)
People living in South Korea and Japan get to enjoy gigabit bandwidth - and they are relatively cheap too!
Why can't the USAians get the enjoy the same?
If there is a digital divide, it would put USA in the bottom pile
Re:Why South Korea and Japan can do it and USA can (Score:5, Insightful)
S.Korea is much smaller than the US so the cost to provide gigabit internet is lower as you need less manpower, fewer routers and shorter cables to connect.
This argument comes up every time people discuss American internet rates. It is nonsense. The overall population density makes NO difference. Only the local density matters. There is no reason that someone living in New York City should pay more for internet because there is a lot of empty space in Arizona. Furthermore, there is little correlation between density and cost. Small towns generally do not have more expensive internet than large cities. And there are plenty of countries with population densities lower than America, that nonetheless have cheaper and faster internet.
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I don't buy it. Fiber's cheap, and our cities are plenty dense enough to support fiber to the home. Indeed, we already have fiber to the home in many cities.
We could probably connect 90% of the country's population with fiber just as easily as South Korea did. But we don't, because lobbyists.
So Who Cares (Score:3, Interesting)
Income inequality matters (particularly if you're trying to get elected) but how, exactly, is the difference between a cable modem and "ultra-fast broadband" going to change anyone's standard of living substantially? We're already at the point where there's very little food insecurity and housing insecurity in the US and Western Europe (and most of that is due to immigrant cultural problems). Does it really matter if your Netflix is in 4K v.s. SD?
Re:So Who Cares (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. There are probably a few applications (like video conferencing with your doctor) that might need a slightly
higher bandwidth but nothing that should significantly affect a person's standard of living.
I'm a computer programmer who works from home and I'm on a 1M/256k connection. It serves my needs just fine.
I can't stream high quality videos but VOIP works fine as do 100% of all websites, job applications, etc...
Internet access is quickly becoming a basic necessity for stuff like emails, applying for jobs, buying stuff online,
and paying bills but there are no critical applications yet that require an ultra high speed connection yet.
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"like video conferencing with your doctor"
I expect that Doctors will charge more for video conferemcing than for an office visit, so the question is will medicare and your insurance pay the difference?
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I've not paid mine in any other way BUT online in years.
Telecommuting is now a real thing (Score:2)
Re:Telecommuting is now a real thing (Score:4, Funny)
Video calls suck, you have to shave. At least you don't need to put on pants.
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Anyways, that's just it... there's no social pressure without eye contact. It is too tempting to websurf during a teleconference.
So I want to have stable, low-latency, 20-way video conferencing before I hear anybody claim more bandwidth wouldn't be useful.
(Of course even then telecommuters have to download big files often enough).
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>> It is too tempting to websurf during a teleconference.
I'm usually websurfing during video conferences too. You basically just need to point your camera from the monitor where you're surfing, and keep your browser near the camera to look like you're really into the topic at hand when you're really making picks for the weekend. (Also, be sure you're on mute most of the time and keep your desk - mouse and keyboard - off camera.)
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Re:Telecommuting is now a real thing (Score:5, Insightful)
20 person meetings are generally a complete waste of time for the 19 who aren't monologuing.
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Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fiber is no panacea. It is still controlled by terrible ISP's that throttle reflexively and go cheap on the back haul. Frontier has made comments about offering much faster speeds over existing fiber connections, but only after Google started making serious noise about bringing in their own fiber option. The higher speeds were not available for purchase, so fiber gets us 20 Mb/s. It is not slow as such, but the speed offerings haven't changed in years, and to discussed 100 Mb/s is still just a press release to quell the masses. 20 Mb/s over fiber is just pretty lame as their best foot forward.
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I learned not to believe anything Frontier says regarding their ability to serve specific locations. I was recently home shopping in one of their territories and was excited to see 24mbps service available at many of the locations I was considering. I was looking at places out in the sticks where I figured I'd be lucky to get any kind of internet beyond 1-3 meg DSL. I started getting suspicious when all but one address was eligible for fiber so I put in an address down 15 miles of dirt roads. They claim
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Ahh, I get 150 Mb/s down, same speed up, today, on FIOS...
Expensive, at $105 per month, but it is here now...
I can get up to 500 down, 500 up, but it is expensive... :)
Also (Score:3)
Speed matters less with each step up. Going from a modem to broadband is amazing, going from something like 256k DSL to 20mb cable is pretty damn huge, however going from 20mbps cable to 200mbps cable is nice, but fairly minor and going from a few hundred mbps to gbps is hardly noticeable.
I have 150mbps cable at home, and get what I pay for. Games from GOG and Steam download at 18-19MB/sec. It is fun, I can download a new game in minutes... however outside that I notice little difference from the 30mbps con
you only need 5mbps for netflix HD (Score:2, Informative)
google can advertise 1gbps all they want but the truth is that if you're poor, a 5-10mbps connection is more than enough to get your kids watching educational shows on netflix and youtube. and torrentfreak had an article today about google drive and dropbox and onedrive throttling people on their end because most end points cannot support their user base at 1gbps per user. all the servers are virtualized and over subscribed in the cloud, they aren't built for performance.
i know people on 10mbps connections
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first of for the record, internet speeds are measured in bits per second this is also the case with video, but not everyone is a movie head. ergo a 60mbps connection is actually a 7.5mBps connection.
http://help.encoding.com/knowledge-base/article/understanding-bitrates-in-video-files/ [encoding.com] says a typical 720p will use 2.5 mbps and a 1080p 5 mbps. this is wrong for many reasons. how many audio channels does it have if it's more than 0 it needs at a minimum 64 kbit/s per horrible lossy audio. then the problem with
Let's solve basic connectivity first (Score:5, Insightful)
I live 40 miles southeast of Chicago. My community has access to high speed internet, but going much farther south or east, the options for faster-than-dialup services evaporate. Huge parts of the US aren't even served by 3G cell service or DSL lines, let alone cable internet. Let's solve that problem. It's far more important in the big picture than getting enough bandwidth to stream a dozen 4k streams for some theoretical 5% of the USA that has been gifted with fiber-based connectivity.
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Wireless might be good enough to leapfrog over asshole landlords (and maybe restrictive/corrupt municipalities with hostile neighbors willing to host towers aimed into the restrictive municipality), but at the end of the day, you really need to get real fiber within at least a thousand feet of the end user. The upper microwave band is still mostly empty and has enormous amounts of available bandwidth, but there's a good reason why: at those frequencies, even things like smog, air pollution, humidity, and fo
But- but- (Score:2)
The maximum speed a DOCSYS modem can achieve is 171/122 Mbit/s (using four channels), just a fraction the 273 Gbit/s (per channel) already reached on fiber.
According to this page [timewarnercable.com], the DOCSYS 3.0 ARRIS/Motorola SB6183 and Netgear C6300 can handle 300 Mbit/s.
The SB6183 [amazon.com] uses 6 download & 4 upload channels.
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Wikipedia has a table that shows various bandwidth tiers depending on the number of channels configured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Submitter addicted to technologies (Score:2)
The submitter must be addicted to technologies. I started with a 300 baud modem and I am happy with what I have today. I feel progress is catching up fast enough for my use case:
100mps/100mps for my data center
1.5mps/10 mps for my home connection
Total cost: 110$/month
Of course, give me more for the same price and I will take it but I wouldn't raise any issue with this.
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if your personal website is sucking up 90Mbps for just 400 visits a day I have news for you, You have been hacked and are serving up games and video's for piracy sites. My enterprises datacenter pumps out approximately the same volume to the web, yet we handle approximately 30,000 users a day.
Absolutely not (Score:5, Interesting)
My home has no POTS and has a choice of either FTTP (fiber to the premises) or cable.
When we first moved in, I choose fiber... because it's fiber! It must be awesome.
AT&T fiber maxes out at 18Mbps and that it at a crazy unaffordable rate. Cheaper service from Comcast is 120Mbps.
It's not the physical medium that matters, it is the service and cost.
I'd do LTE if that had the best bang/buck.
Waa! Without 4K video, I can't get an education! (Score:2)
digital divide (Score:2)
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The people I have seen who don't know how to use computers are generally very poorly educated or are just poor. Usually the two go hand in hand.
Lots of different reasons for this. Laziness is one of the less common.
Pedantic (Score:5, Interesting)
It is DOCSIS, not DOCSYS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
With that said, no, it isn't going to create anymore of a divide than already exists. I have Brighthouse Cable, and I can get their 90mb plan for around $80/mo, but I am sticking with their 30mb plan that is bundled with their basic HD plan. Why? I used mrtg to monitor my usage and found that I wasn't taking advantage of the extra bandwidth. We (at least in the US) have no services that take advantage of the extra bandwidth. I can stream Netflix, Amazon, etc... in HD just fine. Granted, their idea of HD sucks, but that isn't the point. Before the MPAA found out about USENET (and I still want to find out who talked -- and beat them), I more than took advantage of the extra bandwidth, but now that USENET is gone (well, so neutered as to be useless for my purposes), I never find myself "waiting".
Now, what we need is more UPSTREAM bandwidth. I get 5mb up, and that is usable, but having 30/30 would be REAL nice.
With all that said, this is obviously *MY* use case scenario. I would love to hear from others in the US that need more than 30mb, and what you use it for / how you use it.
holy cr*p look out the window. You'll be so happy (Score:3)
"cable (DOCSYS 3.0), are not enough, The maximum speed a DOCSYS modem can achieve is 171/122 Mbit/s"
Ho-ly crap. This must have been by the most spoiled, self-centered, self-indulging, entitled little spoiled brat in California. You have no idea what life is like for 99.99% of the world, do you? Here's a clue - your housekeeper may well be a "one percenter". The other 99% (aka almost everyone) doesn't have Netflix and they don't have a computer. They have a small plot where they try to grow enough food to eat, and they have a need for shoes - not they want another $250 pair of Nikes, they have no shoes.
If 170 mbps just isn't enough for you and you're crying about it, you're seriously in need of some perspective. Go live like an average human for two weeks. Seriously, you need to go into your dad's reading room, spin the globe, and without looking stop it and put your finger in a random place. Get a big map of that country an toss a dart at the map to hit a random place. Then go there. Not to the nearest big city that you've heard of at a charity ball, but to the exact place where dart hit. Go there and find the closest person working. Do their work with them for two hours, then ask where is the NEAREST place you can rent a room. Not the nicest place, the nearest place. Don't reject the room just because it doesn't have a toilet, you're going to live like the average human for two weeks. When you get back, 170 Mbps will be more than enough. After you live like an average person for two weeks, your life back home will be so.awesome you'll never complainabout anything again.
I did the first part for you. Savinki $405/month (Score:3)
I chose your random location for you, using random.org to generate latitude and longitude. You're going to Savinki, Ukraine, where the average income is $405 / month. You'll get to meet some nice Russians while you're there. Enjoy your trip.
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Interesting. The world population is about 7 billion now. 1% of that population is 70 mllion. So you think only 70 million people in the world have access to computers?
That's very easy to show you're way the hell off. The US population is 300 million, of which 75% have internet access at home. So that's 225 million people in the US ALONE that have access to a computer and internet access.
You also might want to update your view of the 3rd world from 50+ years ago. It's not simply a mass of people that
Healthcare? (Score:4, Informative)
Not having the virtually unlimited bandwidth of all-fiber networks means that, for these populations, many activities are simply not possible. For example, broadband provided over all-fiber networks brings education, healthcare, and other social goods into the home through immersive, innovative applications and services that are impossible without it.
I think this point requires further explaining.
Why exactly do I need Gbit service to bring healthcare into my home?
Alternatives to fiber, such as cable (DOCSYS 3.0), are not enough, and they could be more expensive in the long run. The maximum speed a DOCSYS modem can achieve is 171/122 Mbit/s (using four channels), just a fraction the 273 Gbit/s (per channel) already reached on fiber.
Huh?
DOCSIS 3.0 does not have a maximum limit on the number of channels that can be bonded.
The initial hardware would only bond up to 8 channels (~304 Mbit/s), but 16 channel (608 Mbit/s) hardware is already being rolled out by Comcast in the form of rebadged Cisco DPC3939 Gateways.
2015/2016 we might see 24 channel (912 Mbit/s) and 32 channel (1.2 Gbit/s) hardware.
2016/2017 is most likely, in the form of DOCSIS 3.1 modems, which use completely different modulation, but will have 24/32 channel DOCSIS 3.0 baked into them so that the ISPs can seamlessly upgrade from DOCSIS 3.0 to 3.1.
Cable's game plan is to use DOCSIS 3.1 to put off pulling fiber to the home, which keeps their costs low and will allow them to offer (multi)gigabit speeds using a hybrid fiber/co-ax infrastructure. [wikipedia.org]
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Was just about to mention he has numbers off when i saw your post. Also would like to point out they aren't avoiding fiber to the home in all areas, I am aware of a few communities that have negotiated for fiber the home for comcast so its not like such an event is not impossible if there's strong enough community demand for it. I personally don't see the need for the cost of it, I'm personally satisfied with my 50mbps as most places I connect to do not saturate what I already have and likely will no
All rural residents need High Speed Internet (Score:2)
How fast is fast enouch (Score:2)
I, for one, would be happy with 1GigE connection. Extra bandwidth would just bring diminishing returns. What education, what healthcare and social good needs that kind of bandwidth? So now you get your Youtube videos a millisecond faster.
Think of all the children that grew up using 28.8k modems. Oh, the humanity.
4k Cat Videos = Prosperity (Score:2)
I, for one, am certain that the only thing standing between Africa and prosperity is 4k cat videos. And/or pornography. Support the diaspora of your neocolonialist hegemony today!
Cable not fast enough? (Score:2)
I get 40 Mbps down on my cable connection, and that's enough that each of my four family members can watch a different Netflix HD movie at the same time. I could pay more to get 100 Mbps. How is cable not fast enough?
if it matters to you... (Score:2)
If you think that fiber to the home is really important, move to an area where you can get it. Other people think that low housing costs, clean air, a nice job, wildlife, or other factors are more important.
Nothing is good enough for you people (Score:2)
Any nice thing happens and some asshat comes along to say "but we won't all have it at the same time instantly!"... Seriously?
Can you just be happy someone has something nice? And eventually it will get around to everyone. It is better that someone has something then that no one has it. This envy based value system is really getting old.
Digital Divide was always largely myth (Score:2)
If anything tech heavy schools hurt more because of a magic blend of
A. the tech funds rush to the worse schools where it is the last thing th
Ohhh nooo! (Score:2)
I always ask myself how I could possibly survive with only 1.2MB/s down (basic DSL). Then I turn my Internet TV on and notice that it works just fine.
Sure I can get fiber but why would I? I'd have to pay more for no benefit other then that I can download a 20-40GB game quicker.
A note on the human factor (Score:2)
I live in a third-world country.
Talk of high speed internet for education, medical applications and small business empowerment is all very noble.
But all I read in the news about your first-world high speed 'ternet is how you complain about streaming TV restrictions.
The real world is not so pragmatic.
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I bet you still have 640K memory in your computer and use floppy drives.
Because no one will ever need more than 640K and 128K storage media.
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You may "need" a car, but you don't "need" a Porsche.
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Re:Spoiled much? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Name ONE use case other than streaming multiple 4K video channels which REQUIRES anything more than the 6.5Mbit/s connection
Remote support of friends and families running GUI enabled operating systems.
Telecommuting (basically the same thing as above but for money)
Usable WAN backup and recovery.
Family and friends VPN.
Imagine anything you do at your job and imagine doing that between your friends and family or with some commercial cloud provider. The same goes for stuff you do at home and just want to extend over a larger network.
If you can't figure out what to do with a better-than-a-cablemodem networking then you really don't have any imagination at all.
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Remote support is fine on 6.5Mbits/s, I did that for years before I moved to a 50 Mbits/s connection. Same for Telecommuting depending on what you are working as. Hell corporate desktops where I work they still put through on a 10 Mbit port as the vast majority even within the office don't need more.
WAN backup and recovery is certainly valid, but hardly a necessity, same with family and friends VPN. The reality is you are reaching and didn't really come up with any must haves and yet you are saying others h
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You make a good case for increasing upload bandwidth, but other than WAN recovery (a full restore of a 1TB disk will take 18 days), none of those requires better than a 6.5Mbit symmetric connection.
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Remote support of friends and families running GUI enabled operating systems.
I used to do remote support on Windows NT 4.0 servers over a 33.6kbps dial-up connection. With the right remote admin tool, it's no problem at all.
You young ones and your insatiable hunger for bandwidth.
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Sweet!
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It's called "peak demand".
One of the games on my PS4 had a 14 gig update recently. Update, not the entire game. I'm glad I didn't have to wait until next week to play it. The pre-load for the new Halo on my XBone is 45 gigs and it's supposed to have a 20 gig day-one update. Unlike streaming video, I can't "consume" the product as it's delivered. I have to wait for delivery to finish before I can consume so the faster it's delivered, the faster I can enjoy the product.
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According to my calculations (and experience), your download would have taken about 23 hours, not "a week".
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Why artificially limit our speeds? What if someone came out with a 400mhz single core CPU and tried selling it for $3k. Would you not say that's crazy in this age of tech? Same thing. Fiber i
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If I were downloading and uploading multi gigabyte images to my home system for any company I've ever worked at, I'd be fired for stealing "company secrets." You use a remote desktop, not do everything locally.
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And even so, I already have more bandwidth than the last company I worked for had for all the users and customers of their systems, so I could have saturated the corporate link by myself if I were abusing it.
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Fiber is also shared. Everything is shared at some point unless you're leasing a dedicated connection between locations.
Re:DOCSYS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Going fiber essentially removes all choke points from the last mile, completely gets rid of the middle mile, and lets customer plug directly into the trunk. Then it's just a matter of sizing the trunk. It doesn't matter how shared it is as long as there is no congestion.
Re:DOCSYS? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is not at all true. A single fiber cannot handle the world's internet bandwidth. And the PON systems used for homes don't even dedicate 1Gbit to each termination (house). You don't have a dedicated connection to a chassis with 2,000 other customers, you are PON split from a single fiber with a lot of other houses, then that goes to a chassis.
"It doesn't matter how it is shared as long as there is no congestion." is a useless truism. It's true for copper too.
I think it's hilarious that you think that your ISP is only oversubscribing their links 2x (2,000 1Gb connections to 1Tb backhaul). That's fantasyland at the prices that residential customers pay.
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The limiting factor of shared fiber broadband is the packet turnaround time just like coax and radio combined with scheduling the upstream data. The *PON networks were designed for sending lots of cable TV bits one direction and being able to cope with a small percentage going the other way. There are all sorts of techniques to fix that problem and all of them fail in different ways. So far the fastest home internet isn't PON based but a dedicated point to point links to a somewhat local fiber switch tha
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You can get more throughput out of fiber over copper with WDM where different wavelengths of light can go through a single piece of fiber without interference. Sure, a WDM upgrade would be expensive but not as expensive as laying more copper. The upgrades would be done at strategic places where they would be easy as opposed to cable where the infrastructure is inherently shared in the last mile. Fiber brings the congestion points to locations that are easily upgraded if more speed is required.
Re:DOCSYS? (Score:4, Informative)
A single fiber cannot handle the world's internet bandwidth
Current state of the art is 1pb/s over a single fiber, about 10x the speed of the Internet. Obviously impractical for a single fiber to connect every house in the world. The Internet is about 100tb/s right now, you can get 30tb/s over a single fiber with commercially available technology.. So 3 fibers?
And the PON systems used for homes don't even dedicate 1Gbit to each termination
WDM-PON, which is what Google Fiber uses, is 40gb/40gb with 32 lambdas of 1.25gb/1.25gb each, given each end point it's own 1.25gb/s.
You don't have a dedicated connection to a chassis with 2,000 other customers, you are PON split from a single fiber with a lot of other houses
With GPON this is the most common setup, but WDM-PON is backwards compatible with regular GPON. The most common setup is dedicated fiber back to the CO, which means an upgrade to WDM-PON is as simple as switch out the line card, then placing lambda filters on each customer's fiber, which is done back at the CO. I've called up my ISP and had them change which GPON port I was plugged into, took them about 5 minutes from the time the tech said "give me a second".
I think it's hilarious that you think that your ISP is only oversubscribing their links 2x (2,000 1Gb connections to 1Tb backhaul). That's fantasyland at the prices that residential customers pay.
I wasn't talking about the backhaul, there is no backhaul. Fiber is best described as a "Non blocking consolidator that plugs directly into the trunk". My ISP has a 3x undersubscription, in that the trunk is 3x the peak monthly peak.
Fiber can't fix bad designs, but fiber lends itself naturally to cheap, easy, and scalable designs. A single consolidator/chassis can support 2,000+ customers with 3tb+ of bandwidth. If the ISP only uses 1gb uplinks, then they're screwed anyway. But for a one time cost of $6k, you can purchase a 100gb port. They're not expensive anymore. The point is fiber makes it retardedly simple to have the entire bottle-neck be the backbone, instead of some complicated mixture of middle-mile nodes and shuffling around customers.
Re:Rural fiber (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, except "fiber to the house" in rural Ontario means eating a bowl of All Bran and going to the outhouse.
You are the 1%, asshole. $115/month avg person (Score:2)
The average person makes $115 per month. You ARE the 1%. Realizing that, you can quit complaining, asshole.
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Your attitude is the root cause of the ever increasing divide between the rich and the rest in the US.
I can't figure it out. Do you want to be a member of the lower strata of society with no upward mobility and no ability to change your status? Do you want to be a surf in the 21st century?
Either say something useful and back it up, or go back and hide in your mother's basement and leave the adults alone.
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A lot of what you describe is voluntary, and regional. For example the state of Massachusetts has one of the best education systems in the world.
http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/n... [mass.edu]
Other aspects of it have a lot to do with the bimodal population distribution, for example the lack of passenger rail. If you look at other aspect of the US rail system for example freight you will quickly find the US is absolutely world leading. For example the US ships 10x more freight by rail than Europe does.
Ultimately what coun
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Is it? If the economy were to grow by 5%, but all of that extra money then went to a tiny slice of the population (less that 0.1%), does that growth really matter?
If the vast majority of a society gets poorer, while a tiny, tiny slice of the population gets vastly richer, has that society improved?
First World, First World Problems (Score:3)
This is another symptom that the US is sliding out of the first world and into the third world. It goes along with our creaky unmaintained road, water and sewage infrastructure, along with our badly out of date airports and crappy passenger rail system.
You have OBVIOUSLY never been to a real third world country, or anywhere even close. What you call an unmaintained road is like a forty lane superhighway in some places.
And then there's our overpriced and underperforming health delivery system. (Note: ACA/Ob
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Oh man, that was hysterical! The very force that is dramatically raising healthcare costs, by pouring "free" government money into the system! God that was funny.
Bullshit. I've recently started a company with a friend (he's based in the US). Prior to Obama care this would have been substantially harder because as an individual not getting royally fleeced for insurance was apparently next to impossible.
Now, we can start the business since he doesn't need nearly so much money to actually live.
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It will introduce new regional competitive divides. Countries with corrupt governments feeding the existing mass media and telecoms at the expense of the rest of the population as those countries fall behind creatively and technologically. A few years of corruption will results in decades of trying to catch up. Australia is a prime example of the most extreme corruption where one government instituted a modern network build only to have the effort crippled and dismantled by the next government brought into