5 ms·

I think it's an issue of being good enough for the types of things we do now. If it got astronomically better, it would enable things that we flat out can't ev

by braveo 10y ago

I think it's an issue of being good enough for the types of things we do now. If it got astronomically better, it would enable things that we flat out can't even consider doing nowadays.

mindcrime 10y ago
Fair enough.
adrianratnapala 10y ago
If it got astronomically better, we could download have even bigger JavaScript frameworks to render magazine articles even slower than is done now.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Infrastructure enabling new uses and more waste seem to be intrinsically connected. The same bandwidth increase that enabled video streaming also enabled clueless people to put multi-megabyte hero images (or even worse, videos!) in their articles.
rhino369 10y ago
Plenty of people have it now and there isn't really a killer app for it. Even 4k streaming is only like 20mbit at reasonable quality. "If you build it, they will come" isn't a good reason for such a large investment. I think it makes more sense to focus on universal access to 50mbit for every household. Someone going from 600kb/sec DSL or Satellite to 50Mbit is a huge benefit. Going from 50Mbit to 1000mbit have very marginal benefits for a single family home.
- mjevans 10y ago
  Some sources: (video encoding guidelines) https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en For pre-encoded HDR 1080p Google (youtube) recommends 15Mbps target rate for the video and 0.5Mbps for the audio (5.1). For 4K the numbers go up to as high as 85 and 0.5. I use a rough rule of thumb that 'livestramed' things at the same quality should be double those bit-rates as a maximum. This gives: FHD 16Mb/s 4K 86Mb/s I'd say it's reasonable for a 'single household' to have a number of guests over, say if they're having a party or if relatives are visiting for the holidays. Lets call the peak use 12 guests. 86 * 12 ~= 1032 Mb/s ; Thus Gigabit is NOT overkill. It is capacity and freedom for a small family and some guests to enjoy content and/or collaboration without anyone 'hogging' the connection.
  - rhino369 10y ago
    12 guests streaming different HDR 4k is a ridiculous edge case. Nobody is going extra for gigabit just to throw crazy 4k LAN parties.
    - hvidgaard 10y ago
      It's not uncommon to have 4-6 simultaneous streams in a household. Two children with a TV and a tablet each, and the parents watching a movie. And they need to be able to game/browse at the same time. It may not be what the majority to, but it's a non trivial part of the population.
      - rayiner 10y ago
        4-6 simultaneous streams of what? Browsing and gaming require little bandwidth on a sustained basis. 4K is the only thing that makes a dent in modern broadband connections, and it's not like people can watch more than one of those at a time even if they have multiple devices capable of doing so. We're a "cord cutter" household with three adults and a four year-old who has her own iPad. I wouldn't be surprised if we were top 1% for bandwidth users. Tops for us is probably one 4K stream (25 mbps), 2 HD stream (5 mbps), and then trivial amounts on top of that from the three adults intermittently playing on their phones. I've got 150/150 now, and will be upgrading to 750/750 when Verizon rolls it out in Annapolis. But really only because I can, not because I can use it.
        hvidgaard 10y ago
        Teenagers stream some series to the TV, watch a twitch on the tablet and game. I kid you not, this seems to be a normal usecase for some teenagers. Thats potentially a 4k and 1080p stream. Have two of those in the house and parents that want to watch a movie. That is, with your numbers of todays streaming, 85mbit, so a 100mbit connection will have very little room for improvement. And improvements are coming, 4k 60fps HDR streams will come sooner rather than later, and they consume upwards of 100mbit pr stream.
    - 10y ago
ovulator 10y ago
This is the campaign Google sent out when rolling out Google Fiber, imagine the possibilities. Okay, get me started, what is something? If they possibilities are endless, there must be a concrete example, right? When I had a 56.6k modem, I was trying things way beyond it's capabilities as far as sending and receiving large files, playing games online, it was a disaster and there was very obvious and very real problems to be solved. And much more came after that, streaming movies!? Who knew. With fiber, nothing seems to be coming close to pushing that limit from a consumer perspective. If there was something that was kinda shitty but still works okay on cable, what is it? Or what thing just isn't possible that is waiting for a faster connection? I have a 25mbps connection, slow cable, and it does everything I need pretty flawlessly. Does it have to buffer sometimes for HD movies? Sure, not worth $50 more a month for that. I don't know what I'm missing out on with my slower connection, and if I am, people are doing a horrible job marketing what that is.
- brians 10y ago
  Lots more devices in your home. Think about how many Tvs some people have. Now consider that many 4K TVs each playing a couple streams.
- daurnimator 10y ago
  (I help people get faster internet connections): One common example I run into is people trying to stream IP security cameras to off-site. Once you have more than a couple of cameras then the upload on cable and DSL isn't enough. Once they get things set up for their cameras, they realise that they can suddenly reliably watch 4K netflix; some have started streaming to twitch/youtube because it costs them nothing, and heaps more. On the other side of the argument, there is the 'privacy' aspect of things: most people would never run a home server that runs email/social/backup for you (and connect to it from your phone while out and about). However once fast home internet connections are ubiquitous, I fully expect people to start taking back their data from google/facebook/etc of the world Faster internet is like wider roads: the mere presence of it increases demand.
- wtbob 10y ago
  Well, with fibre every light bulb, ever thermostat, every smoke detector in your home could be sending all the details of your personal life to the Cloud! think of the possibilities: unaccountable corporations could analyse and parse your daily habits: your health insurance company could charge you more because you don't leave every morning to go for a run, the local Committee for the Promotion of Virtue & the Prevention of Vice could see when you're watching porn, the local fire department could see when you're using your charcoal grill, the local mafia could break in (because of course those unaccountable corporations are running unpatched and poorly-designed served) and see when you're not at home, and only break in when you're away! The future is now!

by braveo 10y ago

I think it's an issue of being good enough for the types of things we do now. If it got astronomically better, it would enable things that we flat out can't even consider doing nowadays.

mindcrime 10y ago

Fair enough.

adrianratnapala 10y ago

If it got astronomically better, we could download have even bigger JavaScript frameworks to render magazine articles even slower than is done now.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Infrastructure enabling new uses and more waste seem to be intrinsically connected. The same bandwidth increase that enabled video streaming also enabled clueless people to put multi-megabyte hero images (or even worse, videos!) in their articles.

rhino369 10y ago

Plenty of people have it now and there isn't really a killer app for it. Even 4k streaming is only like 20mbit at reasonable quality. "If you build it, they will come" isn't a good reason for such a large investment. I think it makes more sense to focus on universal access to 50mbit for every household. Someone going from 600kb/sec DSL or Satellite to 50Mbit is a huge benefit. Going from 50Mbit to 1000mbit have very marginal benefits for a single family home.

mjevans 10y ago
Some sources: (video encoding guidelines) https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en For pre-encoded HDR 1080p Google (youtube) recommends 15Mbps target rate for the video and 0.5Mbps for the audio (5.1). For 4K the numbers go up to as high as 85 and 0.5. I use a rough rule of thumb that 'livestramed' things at the same quality should be double those bit-rates as a maximum. This gives: FHD 16Mb/s 4K 86Mb/s I'd say it's reasonable for a 'single household' to have a number of guests over, say if they're having a party or if relatives are visiting for the holidays. Lets call the peak use 12 guests. 86 * 12 ~= 1032 Mb/s ; Thus Gigabit is NOT overkill. It is capacity and freedom for a small family and some guests to enjoy content and/or collaboration without anyone 'hogging' the connection.
- rhino369 10y ago
  12 guests streaming different HDR 4k is a ridiculous edge case. Nobody is going extra for gigabit just to throw crazy 4k LAN parties.
  - hvidgaard 10y ago
    It's not uncommon to have 4-6 simultaneous streams in a household. Two children with a TV and a tablet each, and the parents watching a movie. And they need to be able to game/browse at the same time. It may not be what the majority to, but it's a non trivial part of the population.
    - rayiner 10y ago
      4-6 simultaneous streams of what? Browsing and gaming require little bandwidth on a sustained basis. 4K is the only thing that makes a dent in modern broadband connections, and it's not like people can watch more than one of those at a time even if they have multiple devices capable of doing so. We're a "cord cutter" household with three adults and a four year-old who has her own iPad. I wouldn't be surprised if we were top 1% for bandwidth users. Tops for us is probably one 4K stream (25 mbps), 2 HD stream (5 mbps), and then trivial amounts on top of that from the three adults intermittently playing on their phones. I've got 150/150 now, and will be upgrading to 750/750 when Verizon rolls it out in Annapolis. But really only because I can, not because I can use it.
      - hvidgaard 10y ago
        Teenagers stream some series to the TV, watch a twitch on the tablet and game. I kid you not, this seems to be a normal usecase for some teenagers. Thats potentially a 4k and 1080p stream. Have two of those in the house and parents that want to watch a movie. That is, with your numbers of todays streaming, 85mbit, so a 100mbit connection will have very little room for improvement. And improvements are coming, 4k 60fps HDR streams will come sooner rather than later, and they consume upwards of 100mbit pr stream.
  - 10y ago

ovulator 10y ago

This is the campaign Google sent out when rolling out Google Fiber, imagine the possibilities. Okay, get me started, what is something? If they possibilities are endless, there must be a concrete example, right? When I had a 56.6k modem, I was trying things way beyond it's capabilities as far as sending and receiving large files, playing games online, it was a disaster and there was very obvious and very real problems to be solved. And much more came after that, streaming movies!? Who knew. With fiber, nothing seems to be coming close to pushing that limit from a consumer perspective. If there was something that was kinda shitty but still works okay on cable, what is it? Or what thing just isn't possible that is waiting for a faster connection? I have a 25mbps connection, slow cable, and it does everything I need pretty flawlessly. Does it have to buffer sometimes for HD movies? Sure, not worth $50 more a month for that. I don't know what I'm missing out on with my slower connection, and if I am, people are doing a horrible job marketing what that is.

brians 10y ago
Lots more devices in your home. Think about how many Tvs some people have. Now consider that many 4K TVs each playing a couple streams.
daurnimator 10y ago
(I help people get faster internet connections): One common example I run into is people trying to stream IP security cameras to off-site. Once you have more than a couple of cameras then the upload on cable and DSL isn't enough. Once they get things set up for their cameras, they realise that they can suddenly reliably watch 4K netflix; some have started streaming to twitch/youtube because it costs them nothing, and heaps more. On the other side of the argument, there is the 'privacy' aspect of things: most people would never run a home server that runs email/social/backup for you (and connect to it from your phone while out and about). However once fast home internet connections are ubiquitous, I fully expect people to start taking back their data from google/facebook/etc of the world Faster internet is like wider roads: the mere presence of it increases demand.
wtbob 10y ago
Well, with fibre every light bulb, ever thermostat, every smoke detector in your home could be sending all the details of your personal life to the Cloud! think of the possibilities: unaccountable corporations could analyse and parse your daily habits: your health insurance company could charge you more because you don't leave every morning to go for a run, the local Committee for the Promotion of Virtue & the Prevention of Vice could see when you're watching porn, the local fire department could see when you're using your charcoal grill, the local mafia could break in (because of course those unaccountable corporations are running unpatched and poorly-designed served) and see when you're not at home, and only break in when you're away! The future is now!