4 ms·

Just as a fun thought experiment, what /new/ things could be possible if we had 1Terabit/s?

veb 6y ago
tricky one. i've had 1Gbit internet here in nz for a few years now, and heck I'm usually on wireless which sorta caps out about 20MB/s (eventually I'll spring for a new router), but when they installed my connection at my current place and the ONT they put in was basically a router (even had wireless antennas on it). I asked why, and the fella said that when they upgrade me to 4Gbit, the specific ONT he installed would be able to utilise it and won't need the router anymore. honestly, it's more than enough to have 50 TVs streaming Netflix or YouTube, the computers downloading stuff, phones being used and so on. I am really not sure how 1Tbit would even matter for 99% of the population. Maybe if streaming (actual) 4k became a thing. Perhaps for remote-gaming, but latency would need to be very low. I cannot imagine the latency on a train.
ngngngng 6y ago
Computers could use small local hard drives and download what you need instantly. All of your documents would be backed up into the cloud because your entire hard drive would essentially be "the cloud"
- the8472 6y ago
  Bandwidth does not eliminate light speed latency or guarantee IOPS. Flipping through an image album or loading game assets could suffer.
  - Firerouge 6y ago
    With that much bandwidth, you'd just prefetch every single photo before the user was done viewing the first.
- phinnaeus 6y ago
  Bandwidth != latency
fastball 6y ago
Ultra high quality 3D VR content? Movies? Sports broadcasts? MMORPGs?
the8472 6y ago
Light field video.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
Further Cloudflare domination as smart toaster botnets achieve even more ddos power.
6510 6y ago
Stream instructions to a cheap processor.
v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
Full scale Matrix? VR cloud gaming to start with maybe.
znpy 6y ago
you can have it already! want to transfer data at 1Tbps across the city? just load a full truck with tapes and let it drive through the morning. there you go, probably even higher than 1 Tbps
mandada 6y ago
From the web development perspective, the network is no longer the bottleneck; its CPU processing power. Doesn’t matter how fast your website comes if it’s shove full of trackers and ads that mobile CPU can’t handle. Put another way, what’s the point of downloading a terabyte of data in seconds when it takes your computer minutes to process it into something useful? Also, where are we storing all this data that we can download at super fast speeds? Most computers cap out at around 8 GB of RAM (though this does seem to be trending upwards) and SSDs read/write speeds are measured in megabytes (with most capping out at single digit gigabytes) so with terabit we are potentially downloading more data than computers can physically store per second. Reducing latency though would be the real game changer. When Starlink finishes building out it’s fleet, we could see worldwide latency drop to he point that video games would no longer need to have regional game servers because of lag! But then the problem becomes “how to do you manage all those players on one server”? Annnd we’re back to our CPU limitations.
- tacocataco 6y ago
  "what’s the point of downloading a terabyte of data in seconds when it takes your computer minutes to process it into something useful?" Can you use the server you're connected to to compute some whatsits? Using part of the connection as RAM?
- samoa42 6y ago
  completely agree on most points but starlink is not likely to beat the speed of light, so geolocation is still the dominating factor for latency. it will improve the situation for regions with poor wired infrastructure. funny thou how 8gigs of ram seems to be good enough for a decade now.
jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
Massive, high-resolution video and audio surveillance.

veb 6y ago

tricky one. i've had 1Gbit internet here in nz for a few years now, and heck I'm usually on wireless which sorta caps out about 20MB/s (eventually I'll spring for a new router), but when they installed my connection at my current place and the ONT they put in was basically a router (even had wireless antennas on it). I asked why, and the fella said that when they upgrade me to 4Gbit, the specific ONT he installed would be able to utilise it and won't need the router anymore. honestly, it's more than enough to have 50 TVs streaming Netflix or YouTube, the computers downloading stuff, phones being used and so on. I am really not sure how 1Tbit would even matter for 99% of the population. Maybe if streaming (actual) 4k became a thing. Perhaps for remote-gaming, but latency would need to be very low. I cannot imagine the latency on a train.

ngngngng 6y ago

Computers could use small local hard drives and download what you need instantly. All of your documents would be backed up into the cloud because your entire hard drive would essentially be "the cloud"

the8472 6y ago
Bandwidth does not eliminate light speed latency or guarantee IOPS. Flipping through an image album or loading game assets could suffer.
- Firerouge 6y ago
  With that much bandwidth, you'd just prefetch every single photo before the user was done viewing the first.
phinnaeus 6y ago
Bandwidth != latency

fastball 6y ago

Ultra high quality 3D VR content? Movies? Sports broadcasts? MMORPGs?

the8472 6y ago

Light field video.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

Further Cloudflare domination as smart toaster botnets achieve even more ddos power.

6510 6y ago

Stream instructions to a cheap processor.

v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago

Full scale Matrix? VR cloud gaming to start with maybe.

znpy 6y ago

you can have it already! want to transfer data at 1Tbps across the city? just load a full truck with tapes and let it drive through the morning. there you go, probably even higher than 1 Tbps

mandada 6y ago

From the web development perspective, the network is no longer the bottleneck; its CPU processing power. Doesn’t matter how fast your website comes if it’s shove full of trackers and ads that mobile CPU can’t handle. Put another way, what’s the point of downloading a terabyte of data in seconds when it takes your computer minutes to process it into something useful? Also, where are we storing all this data that we can download at super fast speeds? Most computers cap out at around 8 GB of RAM (though this does seem to be trending upwards) and SSDs read/write speeds are measured in megabytes (with most capping out at single digit gigabytes) so with terabit we are potentially downloading more data than computers can physically store per second. Reducing latency though would be the real game changer. When Starlink finishes building out it’s fleet, we could see worldwide latency drop to he point that video games would no longer need to have regional game servers because of lag! But then the problem becomes “how to do you manage all those players on one server”? Annnd we’re back to our CPU limitations.

tacocataco 6y ago
"what’s the point of downloading a terabyte of data in seconds when it takes your computer minutes to process it into something useful?" Can you use the server you're connected to to compute some whatsits? Using part of the connection as RAM?
samoa42 6y ago
completely agree on most points but starlink is not likely to beat the speed of light, so geolocation is still the dominating factor for latency. it will improve the situation for regions with poor wired infrastructure. funny thou how 8gigs of ram seems to be good enough for a decade now.

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago

Massive, high-resolution video and audio surveillance.