Internet connections for home users

[DaTT]

OK, so we've come a long way since our 9500 baud MODEM's....we got our 14.4k, 26.6k, 33.3k, and our 56k modems. Now most of the population is either on DSL or Cable....HIGH SPEED. In the not to far past, most DSL and Cable ISP's introduced DSL or Cable PRO (of which I am a proud subscriber to). I went from 2Mbits down/400Kbits up, all the way up to 4Mbits down/640Kbits up.

We have also our T1' and T3's and OC connections...fiber optics.....all that good stuff. What I'm getting at is, does anyone see those super high speed connections ever being common with the home user? I mean we've come a REALLY long way in the past 10 years with our internet connections.....does it get any better down the road?????

 

[Shockwave]

I personally dont think you'll see a big improvement much over the next few years, except possibly in 2 areas. 1 will be wireless. Take everything you get now and make it portable. I've seen people surf the web using the PCS cellphone connected to a laptop. I was fairly impressed with the speed.
Other area is bundled services. Have 1 droppoint for everything. Phone, video, audio, internet. Everything comes in on one pipe.

My opinion now is we already have more badnwidth then we really can use. My 2meg cable connection rarely sees it. Why? Far end. Most places cant support it, either because the P2P client on the other side cant upload to my download, or the popular website cant support 6,000 users, each with 2 meg downloads, pulling all the time (Case in point, file planet)

But, who knows? Thats just my speculations, for whatever thats worth.

 

[DaTT]

You see, I agree with you on that. I have hit my 4Mb cap a few times only to dwindle down slowly. But, I didn't think they could really get any faster when I got my cable connection, and *POOF*, like magic, they doubled the speed for a slightly higher cost. I guess the newest thing now would be sattalite internet, of which I am not at all sold on that idea. I liek to know that when node goes out in my network, they can call a guy out and have it repaired promptly, and not have to set up a shuttle launch.......

 

[Shalmanese]

Your post just proves that we DO need more, high speed pipes, downstream on your end is simply upstream on their end. What I think would seriously alleviate a lot of network congestion would be some sort of "broadcast" system, sort of similar to TV stations nowadays. So when the new DOOM 3 Beta comes out, instead of 1 million people hammering a server, it gets "broadcasted" out at say 12 midnight, and then again at 12:05, 12:10 etc. You just have to tune in to the right channel and you can grab it. Proprietry software could be broadcast on an encrypted channel and smaller distros could come together and broadcast each program less frequently. There would still be servers for people who absolutely must get something this minute, but for those who can wait for an hour or so, they could just set there computers like they set a VCR.

 

[BurnItDwn]

downstream ... I'd say 1-2mbit is plenty for most, however on the upstream side ... most people only get 128 or 256kbit ... because of that unbalance, p2p networks will always be somewhat slow people will rarely max out their connections.

If upstream bandwidth were improved by 100% to 200% ... that more people would get more use out of their downstream capabilities ....

 

[spikemike]

how provides Cable PRO service i have never heard of it.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: DaTT
OK, so we've come a long way since our 9500 baud MODEM's....we got our 14.4k, 26.6k, 33.3k, and our 56k modems. Now most of the population is either on DSL or Cable....HIGH SPEED...

Wrong. Just because these forums are dominated by those with broadband, does not mean that the general populace has access to broadband, or wants it. At this point, the majority still has dialup, and that's enough for most of them. However, some of them (like me) are stuck on dialup even though we would much rather get broadband. :frown:

The problem with broadband is that while you people in the big cities will have 100mbit/sec pipes in a few years, nobody cares about providing broadband to the more "rural" areas (cities with only 2,000 people or fewer). Thus, those of us who just can't move (or don't want to do so just for the broadband) will be forever left behind as technology progresses. :|

 

[blahblah99]

It's because transistors can only switch so fast. Servers would be brought down to their knees if everyone had a T1 to their home.

As smaller and faster transistors are being developed, server bandwidth will increase.

 

[Genx87]

Unless something changes in the future. I bet 2-4Mbit will be the limit. What outside of downloading vast amounts of pr0n do people really need with 4Mbits of bandwidth? On top of that. If a cable ISP has 1000 people on a node and wants to move them from 2-4 Mbit. They probably just made a rather large need for bandwidth from the telcos.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Unless something changes in the future. I bet 2-4Mbit will be the limit. What outside of downloading vast amounts of pr0n do people really need with 4Mbits of bandwidth? On top of that. If a cable ISP has 1000 people on a node and wants to move them from 2-4 Mbit. They probably just made a rather large need for bandwidth from the telcos.

Right now, there are only a few things that could use much bandwidth; one of them is the webcam (even then, couldn't you get a decent image at only 25% of 2mbit/sec or less with decent compression?). Webcams still remain a novelty item, given the fact that they serve virtually no purpose to most people (with few exceptions, the only people I know of in real life who use webcams also frequent AOL chatrooms).

The only thing I can guess that would make higher bandwidth "useful" to the general public is if Microsoft's Palladium stuff is successful (God forbid!) and they follow through with their (currently almost halted) push to force everyone to "rent" their software. Given the scientifically proven fact that Microsoft can not write tight code, I would suspect that lots of people would be clamoring for more bandwidth so that they could do their (coerced) upgrade to Office XP 2006 in less than a month.

 

[Shalmanese]

2 Mbits is all? Thats like saying that 4 GB of HD space is more than enough while conveniently ignoring games, movies, mp3's and the like. Lets see, Full defintion HDTV, 40Mbps, Internet Radio 256Kbps, Holographic projections A fsckload of Mbps. Look up some stuff on Internet 2 applications and you see there is a whole lot of stuff that requires up to 10Gbps to work reliably. One really cool thing is where they have up to 17 (I think) cameras recording a person and then have a computer compisite it all into a huge 3d image on the other side. It does funky stuff like track where your head position is and where you are looking so it can adapt the image so it really does work exactly like a pane of glass.

I think that eventaully, two types of bandwidth requiring apps will be developed, those which are latency dependant will live on low bandiwdth, networks when they run into inherant physical limitations of latency and those which require huge datasets will just keep on pushing bandwidth up until we hit some sort of theoretical limit.

I can agree that stuff like CPU speed or HD capacity might have hit a slump but bandwidth is something that still has a looong road ahead of it.

 

[liquidtech]

I think that instead of worrying about how fast connections will become we should start worrying about the price. I dont know about you but im not willing to pay $50 /month just to check my email and download the occational hits in mp3. Im a movie junkie so i would use it to download movies but right now i rather rip them myself into divx after renting them than downloading them. A drastic price drop for either dsl or cable is what im trully waiting for to make the switch from 56k to broadband.

 

[DaTT]

Not too sure you will see a price drop in the near future for braodband....I mean, they just raised the price in my area. It was 39.99, they upped it to 44.99. Thats for basic cable internet. Now they have begun putting bandwidth limits on....ie. I can download 20GB/month, and upload 20GB/month. Once I reach my limit, thats it.....they cut me off till the next month begins. Its a good thing I only d/l movies once in a while....mostly I play online games which doesn't take shit....but I do d/l a lot of games. Oh well, they will definitely get an ear full if I am ever cut off.

 

[dejitaru]

I dont know about you but im not willing to pay $50 /month just to check my email and download the occational hits in mp3.

For that, a modem would suffice.

 

[MajorC]

Originally posted by: DaTT
Not too sure you will see a price drop in the near future for braodband

You will never see a price drop! When is the last time you saw a 'wanted' commodity decrease in price? The economics of this follow the original railroad business model - tons moved per mile of track - in this case users per switch. Cable providers will continue to push limits on users until the technology is very mature (cheap) and upstarts show up again to offer options.

DSL is the same way for rural users, why should the regional Bell pay to implement technology in their switching center when only a small percentage of the surrounding small population will pay for it?

Just my $0.02.........

 

[capybara]

Originally posted by: Shalmanese
I can agree that stuff like CPU speed or HD capacity might have hit a slump but bandwidth is something that still has a looong road ahead of it.

a tv channel takes 4 mbps (or more accurately, 4mhz analog bandwidth)
so thats all MOST poeple need for bandwidth. and a wonder what kind of slump cpu speed or
hd capacity are in? I wish my earnings capacity were also defined by moore's law!

 

[AbsolutDealage]

Originally posted by: Shalmanese
Your post just proves that we DO need more, high speed pipes, downstream on your end is simply upstream on their end. What I think would seriously alleviate a lot of network congestion would be some sort of "broadcast" system, sort of similar to TV stations nowadays. So when the new DOOM 3 Beta comes out, instead of 1 million people hammering a server, it gets "broadcasted" out at say 12 midnight, and then again at 12:05, 12:10 etc. You just have to tune in to the right channel and you can grab it. Proprietry software could be broadcast on an encrypted channel and smaller distros could come together and broadcast each program less frequently. There would still be servers for people who absolutely must get something this minute, but for those who can wait for an hour or so, they could just set there computers like they set a VCR.

Multicasting already exists, although the organization of the technology does not exist such that it will work in the way you have described. Perhaps some day we will see this.

 

[0roo0roo]

enough speed for crystal clear video phone/conferencing? right now it kinda sucks still.

 

[Shalmanese]

High definition HDTV takes UP TO 40Mbps although the average is much, much lower.

For those of you who can get access to the IEEE "Computer" magazine, there was an excelleng article in the June edition about Scinet, an annual conference serving as a testbed for high-bandwidth apps. There is a link here although I havent checked it out.

While raw bandwidth may not be so important, stuff like QoS apps requires far greater bandwidth than they actually use. Currently, I dont think commodity ethernet has any QoS protocols.

 

[nugglife4me]

Originally posted by: MajorC

Originally posted by: DaTT
Not too sure you will see a price drop in the near future for braodband

You will never see a price drop! When is the last time you saw a 'wanted' commodity decrease in price? The economics of this follow the original railroad business model - tons moved per mile of track - in this case users per switch. Cable providers will continue to push limits on users until the technology is very mature (cheap) and upstarts show up again to offer options.

Exactly, I worked for a dial up ISP for awhile that started out as claiming 10 to 1 ration on our modem racks which was suffiecient but we quickly surpassed that and then you couldn't get a "solid" connection every time you dialed in, but maybe had to try 2 or 3 times to get in, SO, we were reaching our limitations and 56k had just been "standardized" officially so we were on the verge of an upgrade to our racks. Owners ended up selling out to larger telco(read EATEL buys PremierOne) who basically just bought our user base (2,000+) instead of eating upgrade cost which they said couldn't be justified based on current returns($25/month per user). *side note* they could have waited sevral months to do this but they leaned on this reasoning to make us feel better about selling the company out from under us without telling us till the last minute when it was too late to do anything about it.

 

[ScottMac]

One of the other factors that will keep the speeds in their current ste is the cost of upgrading the infrastructure. The organizations that have the money and the resources (Telcos) have no incentive to upgrade, thanks to the recent ruling by the FCC (in the USA). There are/were a number of high-speed initiatives "on hold" until the FCC ruling that will not be implemented now because there is no financial incentive. The Telcos are now concentrating on tightening their belts (cost cutting and layoffs) to keep the business profitable - not growing the infrastructure.

Any infrastructure installed by the Telcos must be shared with the other companies at rates below wholesale. The other companies can sell it below the retail price offered by the compaines that own and maintain the infrastructure. They CAN sell it cheaper because they pay less for it, and don't have to pay for the facilities and personnel to maintain it.

The FCC recently ruled that this practice will be continued for at least the next three years. SBC will probably appeal the ruling once it becomes an official "on paper and filed" ruling. If it remains the way it is (fails the appeal), don't expect much in the way of upgrading the infrastructure or extension / expansion (i.e., DSL "gateways" to extend the DSL raduis).

The "little guys" (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers - CLECs) don't have the capital, equipment, or manpower to put in this kind of infrastructure... and if they did, they'd have to share it at a loss too ... not much incentive there.

Most expansion will likely occur in the Cable TV sector, because they are not bound by the same regulations (they do not have to share their media - except to competing Cable TV companies in the same area, and usually only by local regulation).

There is some expansion, mostly with locations that were due to be updated anyway, but the overall growth is not going to be anywhere near what it would have been if the FCC allowed the regulated rate structure to be updated.

FWIW

Scott

 

[ProviaFan]

Thanks for the excellent explanation, Scott. Guess that means that most of us small-town people will never be seeing any DSL, so we'll just have to wait and see what cable and wireless have to offer.

 

[titanmiller]

I have dial up curently and let me tell you there is no limit to the number of red mad faces that I could put down to express how much I want broadband. I dont even live "in the boonies" only 6 miles from Burlington Iowa (35,000 people) and I have NO HOPE of getting broadband until I go off to the USAF in 2.5 years.
To make all of you with broadband feel good about your connection.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: titanmiller
I have dial up curently and let me tell you there is no limit to the number of red mad faces that I could put down to express how much I want broadband. I dont even live "in the boonies" only 6 miles from Burlington Iowa (35,000 people) and I have NO HOPE of getting broadband until I go off to the USAF in 2.5 years.
To make all of you with broadband feel good about your connection.

Damn, that's terrible! :frown:

Makes me appreciate my relatively reliable 52 kbit/sec connection a bit more, but still...