5 ms·

This is precisely the kind of long term investment that cities should make.

by ttul 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
morley 8y ago
I agree with you, but governments will ask: is it better to back an expensive technology, or a cheaper one like wireless? Is it the government's responsibility to provide the state-of-the-art. or the minimum viable? I'd prefer it if us Americans would believe in the former, but unfortunately I think our culture expects the government to do the latter (or nothing at all).
- ttul 8y ago
  I enjoy the state of the art sewer system in my city. It keeps the brown stuff contained and properly disposed of. And it cost billions, with a 100 year replacement cycle that is constantly in progress.
  - bdowling 8y ago
    I’m really glad that my sewer system isn’t expected to handle 1000 times the traffic it did 20 years ago.
- zdragnar 8y ago
  It's entirely possible that within a year or two, it won't be state of the art at all, if the hype around 5g wireless speeds and bandwidth are to be believed. Spending a significant amount of money on something that requires a significant install and maintenance (trenching bedrock, cut lines) when there are potential solutions just around the corner seems to me like bad policy. I'm sure that there are other, more effective uses the government could put that money towards. Maybe the most efficient and beneficial thing for Boulder would be to not take on more debt, I don't know. Just don't be too quick to assume that all expenses and public works projects are net positives.
tptacek 8y ago
That's twenty years. There is a decent chance that mainstream high speed Internet will be wireless in 20 years.
- bigtex 8y ago
  Agreed. Invest heavily in WISP technology if possible. Running fiber through bedrock sounds ridiculous.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  That would be awesome, and would have been awesome 10 years ago, but FCC have been successfully fighting against this for a long time so we can't make assumptions. Regardless, fiber will always have more bandwidth than radio, and we'll always need more bandwidth.
- StillBored 8y ago
  Wireless has been perpetually behind star topology wired networks despite the fact that it tends to be much easier to upgrade a few antenna's and radios around a city then make people buy new modems every couple years. Worse, wireless is really spotty, I can barely get a data connection where I work and at my house with my carrier, much less a few Mbit/sec. Like WiFi, the advertised peek rates tend to be far in excess of what your likely to get most of the time. Optical communication is the same way, there is massive bandwidth that isn't being used, so while it might roll out at 1Gbit, it wouldn't' surprise me that in 20 years a x8 stranded fiber network would be well into the Tbit/sec rate.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    I think you are significantly underestimating just how long a timespan we're talking about here. Twenty years is a very long time. Twenty years back predates 802.11b. In 1998, our houses and apartments were all wired up with cat5. In San Francisco, at the time, we were thrilled to have Ricochet modems that asymptotically approached ISDN BRI speeds (for that matter, we were generally pretty thrilled to get ISDN BRI speeds to our apartments to begin with). You don't have to expect breakthroughs to think digging new trenches might be a mistake; all you have to believe is that wireless network performance will continue roughly along the trends it's already been following.

This is precisely the kind of long term investment that cities should make.

by ttul 8y ago

This is precisely the kind of long term investment that cities should make.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

morley 8y ago

I agree with you, but governments will ask: is it better to back an expensive technology, or a cheaper one like wireless? Is it the government's responsibility to provide the state-of-the-art. or the minimum viable? I'd prefer it if us Americans would believe in the former, but unfortunately I think our culture expects the government to do the latter (or nothing at all).

ttul 8y ago
I enjoy the state of the art sewer system in my city. It keeps the brown stuff contained and properly disposed of. And it cost billions, with a 100 year replacement cycle that is constantly in progress.
- bdowling 8y ago
  I’m really glad that my sewer system isn’t expected to handle 1000 times the traffic it did 20 years ago.
zdragnar 8y ago
It's entirely possible that within a year or two, it won't be state of the art at all, if the hype around 5g wireless speeds and bandwidth are to be believed. Spending a significant amount of money on something that requires a significant install and maintenance (trenching bedrock, cut lines) when there are potential solutions just around the corner seems to me like bad policy. I'm sure that there are other, more effective uses the government could put that money towards. Maybe the most efficient and beneficial thing for Boulder would be to not take on more debt, I don't know. Just don't be too quick to assume that all expenses and public works projects are net positives.

tptacek 8y ago

That's twenty years. There is a decent chance that mainstream high speed Internet will be wireless in 20 years.

bigtex 8y ago
Agreed. Invest heavily in WISP technology if possible. Running fiber through bedrock sounds ridiculous.
jessaustin 8y ago
That would be awesome, and would have been awesome 10 years ago, but FCC have been successfully fighting against this for a long time so we can't make assumptions. Regardless, fiber will always have more bandwidth than radio, and we'll always need more bandwidth.
StillBored 8y ago
Wireless has been perpetually behind star topology wired networks despite the fact that it tends to be much easier to upgrade a few antenna's and radios around a city then make people buy new modems every couple years. Worse, wireless is really spotty, I can barely get a data connection where I work and at my house with my carrier, much less a few Mbit/sec. Like WiFi, the advertised peek rates tend to be far in excess of what your likely to get most of the time. Optical communication is the same way, there is massive bandwidth that isn't being used, so while it might roll out at 1Gbit, it wouldn't' surprise me that in 20 years a x8 stranded fiber network would be well into the Tbit/sec rate.
- tptacek 8y ago
  I think you are significantly underestimating just how long a timespan we're talking about here. Twenty years is a very long time. Twenty years back predates 802.11b. In 1998, our houses and apartments were all wired up with cat5. In San Francisco, at the time, we were thrilled to have Ricochet modems that asymptotically approached ISDN BRI speeds (for that matter, we were generally pretty thrilled to get ISDN BRI speeds to our apartments to begin with). You don't have to expect breakthroughs to think digging new trenches might be a mistake; all you have to believe is that wireless network performance will continue roughly along the trends it's already been following.