What would change if everyone had 100mbps down 50mbps up internet?

[techs]

What would change if everyone had 100mbps down 50mbps up internet?
Also, assuming there would be no caps.

Would colleges hold all or many of their classes online using two way video? That's a huge savings in everything from gas to get there, to the physical plant of the college.


So, thinking outside of the box, as they say, how would things change, and what could we do online?

 

[MotF Bane]

I would build a server farm in my basement and torrent EVERYTHING.

 

[gaidensensei]

I think in terms of general productivity, it'll remain the same except for video conferencing and the sort like that. It's already a huge thing with the deaf/sign language communities.

Not sure how much multiplayer aspects in games would or even could improve. I guess if you wanted to have video comms or something in an ingame situation.

For the adult industry though.. that's a major pioneering point for sure.

Edit: Hmm, yeah. That'd be interesting taking classes from your home on a webcam, conferencing with the professor and/or other students. Though I'm sure stuff can happen (pictures news headline about student stripping in class conference).

 

[Matthiasa]

Higher def porn? Holographic pron?

My university already has more then a few of there classes online... though mostly because it was forced to by the state since the 2 largest ones didn't want to.

 

[Blackjack200]

[Insert generic joke suggesting that massive amounts of internet porn would be consumed]

/thread

 

[HannibalX]

I have a 25/5 connection now that I'm satisfied with. Most of my problems have to do with the connection on the other end being swamped/overloaded, like YouTube.

 

[Kirby]

I'd go broke buying hard drives.

 

[vi edit]

Instead of taking time and resizing/compressing pictures people would just continue sending 4000x2000 pixel pictures of their kids to friends and family...only a little bit quicker.

Twitter updates would go about 3ms faster.

Content providers would move almost entirely to a subscription based service completely killing physical media and ultimately destroying all that is fair use and convenience.

We'll be subjected to even more lame flash adds and introductions.

Video news articles will become even more popular (and lame).

I'm sure there are some perks to telecommuters/teleconferencing but for most people they'll just continue on consuming the same mindless crap they always did...albeit faster.

 

[frostedflakes]

I think in terms of general productivity, it'll remain the same except for video conferencing and the sort like that. It's already a huge thing with the deaf/sign language communities.

Not sure how much multiplayer aspects in games would or even could improve. I guess if you wanted to have video comms or something in an ingame situation.

For the adult industry though.. that's a major pioneering point for sure.

Edit: Hmm, yeah. That'd be interesting taking classes from your home on a webcam, conferencing with the professor and/or other students. Though I'm sure stuff can happen (pictures news headline about student stripping in class conference).

Am taking an online class (enrollment was too low for us to meet normally, think there are only like four people in the course this semester) and they have something called Wimba Classroom for online collaboration. Kind of neat all the stuff you can do with it, although I haven't really taken advantage of it myself, I'd rather just meet face to face with a professor to discuss something. But I think in the future a lot more work will be done from home and people can just VPN into a work computer, teleconference, stuff like that. Would be a great way to save energy as well, when gas prices got ridiculous a few years ago I remember reading about companies that went to four day work weeks to cut down on costs.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I imagine stuff like video conferencing and online classes would become much more widely used, sure. Probably see more dedicated videophones getting sold/used...as well as maybe smart appliances, if their cost goes down.

on-demand content providers, like Netflix (who already pay for their own giga-whatever connections) would probably be inundated by the rise in demand. So they'd have some catching up to do. Possibly there'd be more competition cropping up for such services though, because of all the demand.

 

[0roo0roo]

you could host your own stuff if you had to send it to a bunch of people, whereas now you pretty much have to upload it to a 3rd party because the goddamned straw you are uploading through is so tiny

 

[RearAdmiral]

The biggest effect that it would have is it would help to narrow the digital divide or rather raise the floor of said divide up. I assume by everybody you mean AMERICA, cause we are important.

 

[evident]

more idiots posting youtube videos about how obama is a muslim and 911 was invented by jews

 

[Epic Fail]

1080p porn

 

[vi edit]

Most of my problems have to do with the connection on the other end being swamped/overloaded, like YouTube.

Bingo.

Somebody else mentioned VPN access too. That's problem with such high speed access to consumers for so cheap. Business simply can't keep up with demand.

On Friday's my VPN access is almost down to a 5 kb/s crawl when people try to work from home. While it's nice to think that the company can just slap up another OC3 to meet demands....that's another $30,000 a month.

 

[Crono]

I have a 25/5 connection now that I'm satisfied with. Most of my problems have to do with the connection on the other end being swamped/overloaded, like YouTube.

15/5 here, but same sentiment.

I can't take advantage of full speed for most sites, and I don't torrent that often. So getting 100 mbps (101/15 is available here through Optimum Online Ultra, actually) wouldn't do much unless content providers have better servers and higher bandwidth for me to use.

 

[Albatross]

What would change if everyone had 100mbps down 50mbps up internet?
Also, assuming there would be no caps.

Would colleges hold all or many of their classes online using two way video? That's a huge savings in everything from gas to get there, to the physical plant of the college.


So, thinking outside of the box, as they say, how would things change, and what could we do online?

you could create 300% moar threads:awe:

 

[Dominato3r]

Moar torrents

 

[PingSpike]

Driver packages would balloon from already obnoxious 10s of megabytes to gigabytes for no good reason at all. Every website would ass blast you with 50meg flash toolbars, 20 second splash screens using the companies logo and auto load a 3 hour infomercial video for a dishwasher on the side.

 

[gaidensensei]

Am taking an online class (enrollment was too low for us to meet normally, think there are only like four people in the course this semester) and they have something called Wimba Classroom for online collaboration. Kind of neat all the stuff you can do with it, although I haven't really taken advantage of it myself, I'd rather just meet face to face with a professor to discuss something. But I think in the future a lot more work will be done from home and people can just VPN into a work computer, teleconference, stuff like that. Would be a great way to save energy as well, when gas prices got ridiculous a few years ago I remember reading about companies that went to four day work weeks to cut down on costs.

Yeah this would be a great way to have more attendance at schools and possibly even end the shortcomings like the California budget crisis, etc. It's still a ways off I'd agree.





I guess there could be more people hosting their own sites as a response to the extra bandwidth? Minor improvements in apache and whatever else?

I'm thinking 50mb/s is good enough for a small business or something in the current internet age.

 

[somethingsketchy]

Considering the poor quality video feeds that my state college system implements for its "Video conferencing" services (used for a majority of satellite campuses) I'd doubt that a 100Mbps down/50Mbps up network connection would improve. The college system would still heavily throttle the connection for "academic purposes". :\

 

[purbeast0]

i'd buy a dual layer blu-ray burner.

 

[ViviTheMage]

business's may allow more work-from-home jobs.

 

[Homerboy]

in the grand scheme of things? Nothing would really change.

 

[InflatableBuddha]

Services like Netflix would probably suffer as people would be able to stream Blu-ray movies using a "Video-on-demand" type service.