The fate of the symmetrical internet

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...-destroy-the-web-as-we-know-it?obref=obinsite

 

[Railgun]

While good on paper and something that I've always been vocal about, in practice, until service providers beef up their networks to actually handle that kind of load, it won't be feasible.

All too often you see massive slowdowns during "peak" periods. In my case, I'm at 50/5. I've seen myself hit fractions of 1Mbps down during those times while latency nearly quadruples. Granted, the tech is full duplex and should handle uploads symmetrical to downloads, depending on the HW they use, that can easily overrun something at the HW level, some ASIC, or higher up, the interface itself.

Also, even if we get these high speeds, there's nothing that says a service provider won't block certain things. I'm sure in many contracts for home users, there are stipulations about servers and whatnot. I do a simple file server myself, but it's such a low volume thing that it's irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Start pushing gig files to/from constantly, and I'm sure a few eyebrows will be raised. While they don't need to block a particular port per se, it's not that difficult to block a certain traffic pattern depending on what kind of gear they have in place.

It will all come down to who's going to pay for it. If there's a significant cost that's passed to consumers, some will pay, but many will not. If it's subsidized, then all the better, but in the US, where would that come from? The government? Not likely.

I'm ok with 20Mbps up. That would suit me fine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, I have 30/25 FIOS, and I have a VPN server, so I can get into my own network from anywhere, and access my NAS.

 

[zerogear]

This article assumes that everyone is a geek and will try to setup their own mail server/backup solutions/cloud, which simply isn't the case for 90% of the population.

 

[1ceHacka]

This article assumes that everyone is a geek and will try to setup their own mail server/backup solutions/cloud, which simply isn't the case for 90% of the population.

No but say your friends and family all have 100/100 internet with you. Would you not be inclined to setup something of this sort for them to use? Maybe not as far as the mail service, but surely file storage and other things. Also, DC++ (Direct Connect) is already very popular on university campuses everywhere. One can compare a university network to the vision of Tomorrow's internet where everyone is connected to a giant LAN.

 

[drebo]

No but say your friends and family all have 100/100 internet with you. Would you not be inclined to setup something of this sort for them to use?

Absofuckinglutely not. I hate supporting other people's shit.

That said, this article is bogus. Consumer-driven services are just that, driven by consumption. You don't need symmetrical internet service to consume web services.

No, symmetrical internet access is not what needs to happen to drive Internet progress. What needs to happen is some form of standardized, cross-carrier, trusted CoS marking.