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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

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.
- StillBored 8y ago
  But wired speeds are getting faster too, you need only compare your ISDN modem, with what is possible with DOCSIS 3.1. I used CDPD (early cell phone data service) in the late '90's and that was 19.2 kbit/s which was actually at least in the same ballpark as the POTs modems. So its not like wireless is getting massivly faster and copper has hit a wall. It seems that faster DSP's also help wired communications mechanisms..
  - tptacek 8y ago
    There is a clear and obvious point of diminishing returns, which you can see from the fact that to a pretty good first approximation nobody uses wired connections to connect their computers to the Internet; everyone uses 802.11. Yes: wired connections will be faster. But past a threshold, it doesn't matter, and the ease and lower cost of deployment will win out.

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.

StillBored 8y ago
But wired speeds are getting faster too, you need only compare your ISDN modem, with what is possible with DOCSIS 3.1. I used CDPD (early cell phone data service) in the late '90's and that was 19.2 kbit/s which was actually at least in the same ballpark as the POTs modems. So its not like wireless is getting massivly faster and copper has hit a wall. It seems that faster DSP's also help wired communications mechanisms..
- tptacek 8y ago
  There is a clear and obvious point of diminishing returns, which you can see from the fact that to a pretty good first approximation nobody uses wired connections to connect their computers to the Internet; everyone uses 802.11. Yes: wired connections will be faster. But past a threshold, it doesn't matter, and the ease and lower cost of deployment will win out.