[GRLUG] FiOS -- NOT

[John-Thomas Richards]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 02:58:56PM -0400, Bob Kline wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Adam Tauno Williams
> <awilliam at whitemice.org
[snip]
> > It would be very interesting to see real-world benchmarking of such
> > services;  but I've not seen any [you'd need to connect each service
> > to the same place - which would be expensive - otherwise your tests
> > wouldn't be comparative].  On the other hand I'm pretty confident
> > that paying for "50MBps" would land squarely in the "waste of money"
> > category as I doubt you will get any substantial improvements of
> > real-world performance once you past 10MBps.  You rather quickly run
> > into constraints [very possibly administrative] on the remote.
> 
> Why 10 Mbps?
> 
> It's chicken and egg.  In 1980 I had a 300 bps modem.  A "Cat," with
> the handset cradle.  Today I have an actual 16 Mbps - under many
> conditions anyway.  More bandwidth has always found uses, and nothing
> I know says some kind of optimum speed has been passed already.  Maybe
> optimum in terms of bang for the buck using the old twisted pair
> technology.

I have Comcast's basic internet service.  I regularly see download
speeds around 10Mbps.  It really is fast enough.  Both my wife and I can
watch hulu.com (at the same time) without a problem.  I can download a
~680MB iso in a few minutes time.  The *only* benefit I can see from a
faster connection would be faster upload.  I'd say that real-world usage
indicates the optimum speed has been passed.  Streaming hi-def?  Some
day, but that's not how people are using the web.  Ten years ago many
were still transitioning from dial-up to broadband.  Dial-up was
insufficient based on today's usage.  Most people use the internet to
surf the web (including the social networking sites), send email, chat,
and, occasionally, download a show/watch tv.  Ten Mbps seems adequate.

You could argue that it's simply chicken and egg.  I wonder how Korea
and Japan uses its 100Mbps connections.  Based on the exchange students
from Korea and Taiwan we've hosted, my guess is it's very similar to how
we use our 16Mbps connections, which means the speed is overkill.  It's
like a car.  Sure, the speedometer indicates it can go 120mph—and maybe
it can.  But how often do you need your car to go that fast?

[snip]
-- 
john-thomas
------
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another
mind.
James Russell Lowell, poet, essayist, and diplomat (1819-1891)