2 ms·

Well, it was shared by like 20k (occasional) users and 1-2k students with campus Ethernet network connections. (Still, it never really got saturated. There wasn

Well, it was shared by like 20k (occasional) users and 1-2k students with campus Ethernet network connections. (Still, it never really got saturated. There wasn't that many interesting AND bandwidth-consuming services out there in the rest of the world.) I think Sweden was quite good at getting people connected at decent speeds. In retrospect, I think this was a very wise way to spend tax money. My personal Internet-connection history goes like this: 1994: 28.8 kbps modem at home in a small village. It cost like $2/hour. 1996: 10 Mbit/s - residential student university network, for like $10/month 2000: 10 Mbit/s - moved away from the student area to an apartment with a commercial connection (Bredbandsbolaget - they got loads of investements, some of it in the form of hardware from Cisco). $30/month 2002: Upgraded to 100 Mbit/s. $30/month 2009: My homeowner association accepts a 10 year deal where all apartments get 100 Mbit/s Ethernet-based access for $10/month (in exchange for "monopoly" - everyone needs to pay $10). (Since 1996, it's been all direct Ethernet, no silly old stuff like DSL or cable.)

keithpeter 11y ago
UK: I'm on adsl over copper (actually solid aluminium) wire from a phone exchange 6km away. No plans for fibre upgrade. 2.4Mbit/s down and something like 0.8Mbit/s up costing £12 per month to the ISP and around £65 per quarter to the national phone company for landline service. All this and I'm about 2km from the centre of a major city.
dalke 11y ago
"There wasn't that many interesting AND bandwidth-consuming services out there in the rest of the world." MIT had a video capture system. If you told it your IP address, and did the xhost + correctly (we were so trusting back then), it would pop up an X window on your machine and show video. We watched part of the 1994 World Cup that way, at a few frames per second and 1/3rd of a continent away. And no sound. Regarding network in Sweden, part of me drools over the $100/month 1Gbit/s offerings from Com Hem and Bredbandbolaget. The bigger part of me wonders if the extra bandwidth would be worthwhile.

keithpeter 11y ago

UK: I'm on adsl over copper (actually solid aluminium) wire from a phone exchange 6km away. No plans for fibre upgrade. 2.4Mbit/s down and something like 0.8Mbit/s up costing £12 per month to the ISP and around £65 per quarter to the national phone company for landline service. All this and I'm about 2km from the centre of a major city.

dalke 11y ago

"There wasn't that many interesting AND bandwidth-consuming services out there in the rest of the world." MIT had a video capture system. If you told it your IP address, and did the xhost + correctly (we were so trusting back then), it would pop up an X window on your machine and show video. We watched part of the 1994 World Cup that way, at a few frames per second and 1/3rd of a continent away. And no sound. Regarding network in Sweden, part of me drools over the $100/month 1Gbit/s offerings from Com Hem and Bredbandbolaget. The bigger part of me wonders if the extra bandwidth would be worthwhile.