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The Internet

How Far Will You Go For Highest Speed Internet? 142

Posted by Unknown Lamer 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."
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How Far Will You Go For Highest Speed Internet? More

How Far Will You Go For Highest Speed Internet?

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  • So how fast is it...? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QRDeNameland ( 873957 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @11:45AM (#46640393)

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

    • Did you read the article?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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...

        • 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. :)

      • 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?

        • 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.

        • 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.

      • Why, yes, yes I did. Twice, to make sure I wasn't imagining it.

        But noooooo, not a single mention of the speed.

        I've got fiber right to the little box under my table for 29.95 Euros a month+tax. I have to limit the Bit torrent rate because my hard disk can't keep up with full speed downloads and Windows 7 craps its pants trying to expand the page file to cope (does that make sense to any OS designers outside Redmond?). I'm sure his can't be that much better.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          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

          • If you're using uTorrent, it incorrectly uses memory mapped files in Windows,

            I am, yes.

            Maybe I should change...

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Also how is the backhaul? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @01:08PM (#46641291)

      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.

      • Your claim is nonsense. And just for your interest: it is not caled 'backhaul' but 'backbone', or 'interconnect'.

      • Well the local ISP WAN will be fine once Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, etc. all live on it locally. In fact, do we really need an "Internet" at all once that is in place?

      • In this case, the connection out of Svalbard is decent - 10 Gb/s, "with a future potential capacity of 2,500 Gbit/s" via currently unused fiber. See Svalbard Undersea Cable System [wikipedia.org].

        One imagines that with the $50 million cost partly funded by NASA, that they also paid some attention to the peering connection at Harstad, where the connection terminates.

    • Re:So how fast is it...? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @01:51PM (#46641731) Homepage

      Digging a little they're talking about a 50/50Mbit connection (Norwegian) [teknologia.no], so the article is wildly exaggerated... triple the mean connection yes, not 10-20 times.

      • Where I live, you can get cable Internet that is 150/20mbps. It has the backhaul to support it too, you really get those kind of speeds. I've a friend on the other side of the US with FIOS who has even faster, 150/65mbps again with the backhaul to support the speed.

        This is in the US too. There are other countries that claim better.

      • So much for "fastest in the world".
        I have 1000 Mbit at home for 18 bucks a month, flat rate, no limits.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ruir ( 2709173 )
        I have 100/100 at home and 1000Mbps at work. I live in Portugal, far better weather and food ;) So come again, why going so far?
  • Highest speed, or best throughput? Does 2ms of delay for a stock transaction matter more, or 2 seconds of buffering a 1080p movie?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Fastest bitcoin mining and best cooling is most important.

    • Re:Size of the pipe. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @12:19PM (#46640779)
      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        If you've just bought a new game on Steam and it's a 20GB download, do you want to wait half an hour (100Mbit) or 3 minutes (Gigabit)? If you're browsing 20MP+ photos online, do the pictures load faster in your browser? What if your disk crashed and you want to get something big from online backup? And as far as I know there's still no BluRay quality streaming service, if you're downloading a torrent then 5 minutes or an hour certainly matters. Yes, 100 to 1000 Mbit is less important than 10 to 100 and even

  • Back in my day (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alta ( 1263 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @11:47AM (#46640407) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • Re:Back in my day (Score:5, Funny)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @11:54AM (#46640483)

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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )

      I'm happy with a 5 MB connection, I hardly tap it out and the matter of bandwidth caps is also a consideration - I'm not planning to pay money when I hit a cap, it's better to just take a vacation from the interwebs.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Bandwidth doesn't really matter after a certain point, 10 Mb is certainly enough for most purposes. Latency is important, though. I'd rather have a 10 Mb connection with no significant latency than an 100 (or 1000) Mb connection with an annoying latency.

      My current connection is 1 Gb up and down (campus student housing network), with the real download bandwidth being around one third of that at peak times. I see no significant difference to my previous 100 Mb up/down, as no services support this high speeds.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by asylumx ( 881307 )

        Bandwidth doesn't really matter after a certain point

        Also, 640k will be enough for anyone!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by alen ( 225700 )

          i have 20/2 and netflix only needs 5 down for HD
          i can stream netflix and live TV or hbo go at the same time with no problems

    • If bandwith was 1 gb/s, video games would be better as there would be a great deal number of more players allowable in the game at once. AKA: Games could be better if bandwith was higher.

    • Sir, I work with the CIA and our sentiment analysis filters have flagged your post with a positive reaction towards Comcast Corporation. Please use this syntax in the future to assist us in avoiding such false positives: <span data-date-posted="April 1"></span>

  • How far? Not very... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @11:58AM (#46640539) Journal

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

  • My speed is fine, fix the latency (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @11:59AM (#46640543)
    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.
    • I moved into some crummy apartments in Dallas, TX just to get FiOS fiber (25Mbit/25Mbit). Really low latency: about 2ms to google if I recall.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crtreece ( 59298 )
      It takes time to decrypt those packets, figure out if they are going to netflix, piratebay, etc; decide how much delay and replacement advertising to introduce; and implement the decision.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

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

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

  • As soon as all your neighbours start using it too, it'll slow down.

    *ducks and runs*

  • I can understand perhaps 25% of the people leaving, but who is going back there to replace them? Is it like EA, they entice new recruits with the fun of playing video games?
  • Rural Electrification Act of 1935 brought electricity to rural U.S. In 1949 we extended the act to allow loans to telephone companies wishing to extend their connections to unconnected rural areas. Why can't we apply the same concept to broadband?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by alen ( 225700 )

      why can't these republicans, and the rural areas are almost fully republican who preach the evils of taxes and high government spending not pay for it themselves? all the tea party nonsense is how bad the blue high tax parts of the country are and yet it's the red states that suck up most of the federal government money for airports that like 5 people use in a year and bridges with one car a day of traffic

  • One part conveniently left out (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @12:07PM (#46640637) Homepage

    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 [unep.org]. 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.

    • Supplying the about 2600 permanent inhabitants with really fast broadband (100% fiber optics now) is just a side effect.

      That's not how the telco official described it. He seemed to say that they were treating Svalbard as a small version of mainland Norway, where they could try new things and get quick feedback to make sure they're doing it right. He claimed that Svalbard was 10 years ahead of mainland Norway. He also suggested that they were seeing substantially lower maintenance costs with fiber, and were looking into removing all of the phone lines and coax and just using fiber. He seemed to imply that all of this was

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        That's not how the telco official described it. He seemed to say that they were treating Svalbard as a small version of mainland Norway, where they could try new things and get quick feedback to make sure they're doing it right. He claimed that Svalbard was 10 years ahead of mainland Norway. He also suggested that they were seeing substantially lower maintenance costs with fiber, and were looking into removing all of the phone lines and coax and just using fiber. He seemed to imply that all of this was in preparation for rollout across mainland Norway.

        We have a lot of cheaper places they could use as test beds, they don't pull long underwater fiber cables just for that but as PR it sounds better. It is true that they're planning to move off copper though, actually the first trial county has already gone all fiber - no more copper service just fiber + mobile and maybe cable for those who already have that. They've said the copper network is supposed to be phased out by 2017, so if Svalbard is 10 years ahead then they're many years behind schedule on the m

  • 50 - 100 Mb/s (Score:4, Informative)

    by iktos ( 166530 ) * on Wednesday April 02, 2014 @12:15PM (#46640735)

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

  • I am fine with my home high speed 30-50 Mbps. I however the crazy 350 GB monthly limit is nuts. ISPs boast bandwidth at a low price and find profit with the industry standard 250 and 350 monthly limits. With higher bandwidth I seem to just hit my limit faster
    • Yeah, the ISPs in my area all have really low monthly limits. I did some calculations, and found that no matter which package you choose, you only get around 9-15 hours of full speed transfer before you go over your quota. And you don't always get more hours by moving up to the next tier. Sometimes moving up to the next tier means you get less time on your full speed connection than on the lower package. And 250-350 would be more than I would ever use. The ISPs in my area seem to think that 80-150 should

    • It has gotten seriously out of control. There are some monthly plans around where I live where you can hit your Monthly cap in well under an hour of usage. What use is that?

  • As someone who just had Gigabit fiber-optic broadband installed this week I know I would move quite a distance for a connection like this. There's no going back to my 4Mb ADSL connection I had Monday. The other comments pointing out that 50 or even 20Meg connections are only half right. What really matters is the up speed. I have 1Gb (actually tests about 850Mb/s) down and 100Mb up, and that up speed kicks major ass. Hard to describe really, but there is no more waiting for Dropbox to sync files, uploadin
  • ...someone start some torrent exchanges, and all will go down! :D

  • Typical slashdot bad editors. Fastest in Norway != fastest in world.

    I now live in a small beach town in Uruguay, on a dirt road, and I got a free upgrade to fibre-to-home, which is being extended to every home in Uruguay. Time for me to get my bogus submission ready for "Uruguay has the best internet in the world". Just because a country is socialist on basic services, and extends fiber to everywhere, does not make it the best in the world. Makes it damn good, but "best" or as hyperbolically stated, "the hi

  • Is it standard Internet access or Internet II access?

    Because Internet II kicks the ever living hell out of standard internet even with the best and shiniest fiber connections. Your in route switches and routing means everything and Internet II still is massively faster than the old public internet.

  • I live on the edge of the urban growth boundary in my area, and have fiber to the house, so internet access is just fine, thanks. And we have a total lack of polar bears here. Health care sucks, but we can do our own medical research on the net and order medical supplies from Amazon, so I guess it's not all bad.

  • Well I won't, but I would have to leave my continent to get decent Internet.

    At least Northern Norwegia borders places with good Internet speed, so all they needed was a few dozen miles of cable. As a rural Canadian I would have to cross Oceans to get to decent Internet.

  • So ... they came here to Alaska? We don't have fiber.
  • > Bandwidth doesn't matter after a certain point LOL! When you can load a Linux distro in seconds instead of tens of minutes you'll re-think that... I'd move for bandwidth :)

    • Bandwidth is important because it's usually a bottleneck. When your ISP connection is faster than your LAN, faster than anything upstream from your ISP, and faster than your disk drives, the exact speed is irrelevant.

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