4 ms·

I honestly can't think of any applications. In the same way people bought new computers regularly until they got Fast Enough then sales really slowed, I think

I honestly can't think of any applications. In the same way people bought new computers regularly until they got Fast Enough then sales really slowed, I think we've reached the same state for home-use comms. BTW Shakespeare's full works uncompressed are about 5.4MB

noneeeed 7y ago
I've often wondered about this. I get about 50mbps at home, and it's essentially more than enough for everything I do. Sure, having a faster connection speed would be great for big downloads, but I've never had any idea what I might do differently if I had gigabit fibre. Even something like 4k video streams fit in several tens of mbps, a family of 4 could all stream different 4k programmes with less than 200mbps between them. I'm not sure if I'm just suffering a lack of imagination, and don't realise what I'm missing out on. People who have really fast connections (gigabit): what do you do differently online that those of use with just "quite quick" connection don't?
- whatshisface 7y ago
  If enough people had super-fast internet, downloads would get bigger. You could stream a desktop from a remote server for example. On a scale less threatening to software freedom, games could stream their art assets, allowing you to explore petabyte-sized worlds on consumer hardware. You could easily toss trained neural networks back and forth for whatever applications were dreamed up for them. However, you're not going to see this if 99% of people have 50mpbs. In that world, you'll only see things that use 50mpbs.
  - ianai 7y ago
    Being able to subscribe to a high end gaming machine that always has the latest hardware and streams local is one option. Imagine always being able to play games in max resolution and settings with no hiccups? Or maybe virtualizing presences more often. We could manufacture displays the size of walls right now - and presumably someday OLED that size will be affordable. Who knows what sort of real time innovations could be made. Ie tracking objects at a small scale for large patches of land. Weather, wild life, idk. Remote controlled drone surveillance for wild fires.
- tsbinz 7y ago
  Things I do with gbit fibre at home: * Buying a game on steam and playing it very soon after. * Buying a movie right before I leave on a trip and still being able to watch it on my iPad offline. * Putting a video on a cloud hoster and not needing to wait until I can give a shareable link out. It's all things you can do with 50mbit, but the speed difference really makes a difference. I rarely get the full gbit though, with steam (after I tinkered around a bit with regions) it's more like 60 megabytes per second for example.
- lodi 7y ago
  I recently got 1.5Gbit fiber in Toronto (it was only $10 more than gigabit, and that was only ~$20 more than 250Mbit...) Anyway, it hasn't been hugely transformative, but it alleviates a few headaches: 1) The biggest benefit is that uploads/downloads are symmetric. If you backup to the cloud, this is a big deal. All of the "definitely overnight" stuff can now be done in under an hour anytime. 2) I never worry about what anyone else in the house is doing. Stream all you want over wifi, there'll still be a full gigabit of bandwidth for my workstation. I don't have to mess with QoS or anything; there's literally just an oversupply of bandwidth. In fact, until I upgrade to 2.5 or 5gbit ethernet I literally can't saturate my connection... 3) I'm less likely to hoard stuff. I don't bother downloading steam games in advance and keeping them installed forever; I just download on demand and delete it after I'm done with it. This is currently allowing me to transition everything to SSDs.
asavadatti 7y ago
It's funny that in threads on displays the comments usually say that we'll never have enough bandwidth for 8K streams, VR, instantaneous gaming etc. But in threads on bandwidth the comments say that they can't think of any applications.
inflatableDodo 7y ago
>I honestly can't think of any applications. real time holography
z3t4 7y ago
The network would be much faster then local hard-drives. So more data would be stored in the cloud, we are already seeing this transition now because even 10Gbe is faster then most hard drives. With a Tbit network it would be many times faster to load from the network then to load from the computer's own memory. Everything would probably be sent via the network if it weren't for latency. RAM still has some orders of magnitude (nano vs micro) better latency then networks. I'm sure latency can be improved though, even for wireless. As for applications, we will definitively get virtual reality (VR) like in sci-fi movies, with very high res imaging and IO. There are already some crude VR devices and applications, but the market is still tiny. Being able to stream interactively directly to a VR device via the network, to every household - it would suddenly become a huge market. As for file sharing, we would probably ask the network "who has hash-of-file" and the closest device would send it. Or for search, you would specify a category, then query all databases listed under that category simultaneously. No need for a central index. Or something like grep "Under the Sea" com.tech.news.* and everything would be downloaded, searched and discarded if not matched.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  Reading this just gets me down. I wouldn't mind if these were phrased as questions but no, we get blanket assertions. > The network would be much faster then local hard-drives. Figures? Are you distinguishing between bandwidth and latency? (no you aren't). How long are reads/writes going to take compared to a local disc: HDD seek times ~ 10 milliseconds, SDD in the microseconds. Speed over a network to 'the cloud' - tens of milliseconds (try pinging BBC from the UK, ~22 milliseconds. Example.com is 98 MS). > 10Gbe is faster then most hard drives. is 1 Gig/sec, approx. A couple of SSDs will match that in theory, in practice I doubt you'll get anything like saturation from a distant datacentre > With a Tbit network it would be many times faster to load from the network then to load from the computer's own memory OMG. C? > and everything would be downloaded, searched and discarded if not matched OMG redux. I'm no network guy but do you think tying up dozens of routers with multi-gigabytes of data you're going to discard, is free? efficient in energy or time? Some reading matter. <https://dzone.com/articles/latency-numbers-everyone-should-know> https://dzone.com/articles/latency-numbers-everyone-should-k... <https://www.cloudways.com/blog/how-server-location-affects-latency/> https://www.cloudways.com/blog/how-server-location-affects-l... That kind of response would be OK if it asked questions, expressed a knowledge of the limits of their knowledge, I'd be ok with that and pointing the asker to relevant material but as it stands, as in that famous quote, it isn't even wrong.

noneeeed 7y ago

I've often wondered about this. I get about 50mbps at home, and it's essentially more than enough for everything I do. Sure, having a faster connection speed would be great for big downloads, but I've never had any idea what I might do differently if I had gigabit fibre. Even something like 4k video streams fit in several tens of mbps, a family of 4 could all stream different 4k programmes with less than 200mbps between them. I'm not sure if I'm just suffering a lack of imagination, and don't realise what I'm missing out on. People who have really fast connections (gigabit): what do you do differently online that those of use with just "quite quick" connection don't?

whatshisface 7y ago
If enough people had super-fast internet, downloads would get bigger. You could stream a desktop from a remote server for example. On a scale less threatening to software freedom, games could stream their art assets, allowing you to explore petabyte-sized worlds on consumer hardware. You could easily toss trained neural networks back and forth for whatever applications were dreamed up for them. However, you're not going to see this if 99% of people have 50mpbs. In that world, you'll only see things that use 50mpbs.
- ianai 7y ago
  Being able to subscribe to a high end gaming machine that always has the latest hardware and streams local is one option. Imagine always being able to play games in max resolution and settings with no hiccups? Or maybe virtualizing presences more often. We could manufacture displays the size of walls right now - and presumably someday OLED that size will be affordable. Who knows what sort of real time innovations could be made. Ie tracking objects at a small scale for large patches of land. Weather, wild life, idk. Remote controlled drone surveillance for wild fires.
tsbinz 7y ago
Things I do with gbit fibre at home: * Buying a game on steam and playing it very soon after. * Buying a movie right before I leave on a trip and still being able to watch it on my iPad offline. * Putting a video on a cloud hoster and not needing to wait until I can give a shareable link out. It's all things you can do with 50mbit, but the speed difference really makes a difference. I rarely get the full gbit though, with steam (after I tinkered around a bit with regions) it's more like 60 megabytes per second for example.
lodi 7y ago
I recently got 1.5Gbit fiber in Toronto (it was only $10 more than gigabit, and that was only ~$20 more than 250Mbit...) Anyway, it hasn't been hugely transformative, but it alleviates a few headaches: 1) The biggest benefit is that uploads/downloads are symmetric. If you backup to the cloud, this is a big deal. All of the "definitely overnight" stuff can now be done in under an hour anytime. 2) I never worry about what anyone else in the house is doing. Stream all you want over wifi, there'll still be a full gigabit of bandwidth for my workstation. I don't have to mess with QoS or anything; there's literally just an oversupply of bandwidth. In fact, until I upgrade to 2.5 or 5gbit ethernet I literally can't saturate my connection... 3) I'm less likely to hoard stuff. I don't bother downloading steam games in advance and keeping them installed forever; I just download on demand and delete it after I'm done with it. This is currently allowing me to transition everything to SSDs.

asavadatti 7y ago

It's funny that in threads on displays the comments usually say that we'll never have enough bandwidth for 8K streams, VR, instantaneous gaming etc. But in threads on bandwidth the comments say that they can't think of any applications.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

>I honestly can't think of any applications. real time holography

z3t4 7y ago

The network would be much faster then local hard-drives. So more data would be stored in the cloud, we are already seeing this transition now because even 10Gbe is faster then most hard drives. With a Tbit network it would be many times faster to load from the network then to load from the computer's own memory. Everything would probably be sent via the network if it weren't for latency. RAM still has some orders of magnitude (nano vs micro) better latency then networks. I'm sure latency can be improved though, even for wireless. As for applications, we will definitively get virtual reality (VR) like in sci-fi movies, with very high res imaging and IO. There are already some crude VR devices and applications, but the market is still tiny. Being able to stream interactively directly to a VR device via the network, to every household - it would suddenly become a huge market. As for file sharing, we would probably ask the network "who has hash-of-file" and the closest device would send it. Or for search, you would specify a category, then query all databases listed under that category simultaneously. No need for a central index. Or something like grep "Under the Sea" com.tech.news.* and everything would be downloaded, searched and discarded if not matched.

tempguy9999 7y ago
Reading this just gets me down. I wouldn't mind if these were phrased as questions but no, we get blanket assertions. > The network would be much faster then local hard-drives. Figures? Are you distinguishing between bandwidth and latency? (no you aren't). How long are reads/writes going to take compared to a local disc: HDD seek times ~ 10 milliseconds, SDD in the microseconds. Speed over a network to 'the cloud' - tens of milliseconds (try pinging BBC from the UK, ~22 milliseconds. Example.com is 98 MS). > 10Gbe is faster then most hard drives. is 1 Gig/sec, approx. A couple of SSDs will match that in theory, in practice I doubt you'll get anything like saturation from a distant datacentre > With a Tbit network it would be many times faster to load from the network then to load from the computer's own memory OMG. C? > and everything would be downloaded, searched and discarded if not matched OMG redux. I'm no network guy but do you think tying up dozens of routers with multi-gigabytes of data you're going to discard, is free? efficient in energy or time? Some reading matter. <https://dzone.com/articles/latency-numbers-everyone-should-know> https://dzone.com/articles/latency-numbers-everyone-should-k... <https://www.cloudways.com/blog/how-server-location-affects-latency/> https://www.cloudways.com/blog/how-server-location-affects-l... That kind of response would be OK if it asked questions, expressed a knowledge of the limits of their knowledge, I'd be ok with that and pointing the asker to relevant material but as it stands, as in that famous quote, it isn't even wrong.