5 ms·
The obvious question now is, if Google can do this, why aren’t network operators banging down the company’s door to get involved and roll this out everywhere. Y
by jsz0 15y ago
The obvious question now is, if Google can do this, why aren’t network operators banging down the company’s door to get involved and roll this out everywhere. Yes, there’s big investment involved, but these companies are kidding themselves if they think waiting and dealing with a lack of bandwidth in the future is going to work for them. Whoever jumps first and starts investing in these fiber-to-the-home initiatives is going to be rewarded with a lot of new customers in years to come.
They don't need Google to do it. FTTH/G-PON solutions are available to any ISP in the country and have been for several years. They haven't done it yet (besides Verizon FIOS who provisions at much lower speeds) because the demand really isn't there yet. Most customers do not pay more for faster speeds even when they are available. You've got a lot more customers who downgrade to slower speeds to save money than customers who pay more for faster speeds. More competition would certainly help but until you can convince normal people they actually need faster Internet connections it's not much of a competitive advantage. (as long as you can match or slightly exceed your competitors)
Once you hit about 20Mbit/5Mbit faster speeds are almost completely unnoticeable by most people who are just doing some normal browsing, IP video, e-mail, FaceBook, etc. That's what most people are using their Internet connections for these days. We really need a killer app that pushes the limits of most Internet connections and you'll see more companies betting on (expensive) upgrades to deliver those speeds. I don't see much on the horizon. You can already do pretty decent 1080P video at 10-20Mbit/sec. What type of apps are going to push the demand?
- jdunck 15y agoP2P live video.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoThat's already a real thing and it doesn't require any higher bandwidth than even conventional cable/dsl provides.
- joelhaus 15y agoWhat if you want to steam high quality P2P video ( ≥720p )?
- InclinedPlane 15y agox264, 10mbps or less, there's no need for 100mbps or more for such things.
- taken11 15y agowhat if you have a video conference with 8 participants each at 720p?
- bobbles 15y agoFor some reason this comment put thoughts into my head of people having multiple large screens positioned around their house instead of windows. You could have beautiful HD panoramic views from around the world in your cheap wall-facing apartment. Of course the technology would need to come down in price but we all know how quickly that tends to happen.
- crizCraig 15y agoveetle.com does a really good job at this. I have a six year old media center box that doesn't run anything that well besides veetle and 1080p at that.
- maheshcasiraghi 15y agoAs per below here, 5ms ping [rather than 1Gig down] seems to be the central focus of this kind of optic social venture. It provides some insights on where BigG sees some future here. These are apparently times where synchronicity vs. asynchronicity begins possibly to be a way hotter topic than definition vs. pixelation. There is all the space to ponderate for a while on this as a social index: who would have said that only 3 years ago? I wouldn't.
- andreyf 15y agoI think a lot of passion behind this comes from Googlers having this kind of connection at work :) http://www.speedtest.net/result/894208160.png http://www.speedtest.net/result/894208160.png
- sjs 15y agoAlmost makes me want to apply at Google. I have a[n up to] 25 mbps line, Shaw is rolling out 50 mbps but upstream isn't really improving so big deal. Downstream is not my bottleneck for most things but online backups and such are painful. I'd blame the technology but DOCSIS 3 allows for more than that, and Telus has fibre in Canada with similarly castrated upstream bandwidth. sigh http://www.speedtest.net/result/1447275168.png http://www.speedtest.net/result/1447275168.png
- fl3tch 15y agoWhich makes me wonder what kind of connection Speedtest.net has.
- cuu508 15y agoPerhaps this measures capability of SpeedTest, not capability of Google :-)
- RyanKearney 15y agoNope http://www.speedtest.net/result/1285238984.png http://www.speedtest.net/result/1285238984.png
- onemoreact 15y agoSorry, that 3ms ping suggests you are inside their network. Try getting that over the internet.
- RyanKearney 15y agoIncorrect, I've gotten pings of less than 1 millisecond from over the internet. PING a152.g.akamai.net (204.0.5.50) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 204.0.5.50: icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=0.852 ms PING yahoo.com (209.191.122.70) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from ir1.fp.vip.mud.yahoo.com (209.191.122.70): icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=3.06 ms PING google.com (74.125.73.104) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from tul01m01-in-f104.1e100.net (74.125.73.104): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=8.38 ms PING e3191.c.akamaiedge.net (184.86.157.15) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from a184-86-157-15.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com (184.86.157.15): icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=1.15 ms
- drinian 15y agoHow about just convincing Verizon to sell the higher speeds to those who want them, at a higher price? The hardware's there, but their most expensive FiOS business connections are far short of Google's numbers.
- slewis 15y agoWhy are people comfortable with paying for tiered connection speeds, but not comfortable with a monthly data cap (that can be removed by paying more for a business connection)?
- wmf 15y agoBecause ISPs are keeping prices the same when introducing caps, effectively providing less service for the same money.
- Jach 15y agoI don't think this is the case at all. The problem people have with monthly caps is that they're frequently done with plans that advertised "UNLIMITED X!". There are also people who don't mind paying per GB. The problem most people have is when ISPs react according to content, such as capping your torrenting but leaving youtube untouched, or capping Netflix but not Facebook, etc.
- SolarUpNote 15y agoI thought there was a law against doing that (net neutrality). I've heard that ISPs discriminate between "types" of content (video vs text). But I wasn't aware they were discriminating based on the company (Netflix vs YouTube).
- Goronmon 15y agoI thought there was a law against doing that (net neutrality). There is no law enforcing Net Neutrality. And really, the concern isn't that a company like Comcast will meter Netflix, but not Facebook. It's that they will meter Netflix, but not "Comcast Video Streaming" if they were to offer such a service.
- sirlancer 15y agoThe first productive applications that will utilize these speeds will be grid-based computing projects. Initial iterations of artificial intelligence will require large computing resources (GPGPU) in addition to high bandwidth, and low latency. Projects like 'Test4Theory' that utilize Monte Carlo simulations will help us to accurately visualize and better predict the fundamental nature of our universe. The best contributors to these kind of projects will have high bandwidth fiber connections. The first unproductive applications will be the next generation of first person games.
- Klinky 15y ago"Grid computing" is going to need more than speeds similar to 100mbit Ethernet. "AI" has been around practically since computers were invented, so I am not sure how the "first iteration" of AI will be created thanks to these higher speeds. Test4Theory is typical distributed computing setup with "small" datasets that require high processing time/simulation to get results. It's not like they are streaming live data from the LHC to your computer. They rely on an actual distributed/grid computer to do that. Also next gen FPS will certainly not require or take advantage of 100mbit connections because most people don't have them. No one is going to make a game that comes near needing 100mbit/sec.
- Geee 15y agoIn the coming 2-5 years most 3D games will be ray-tracing-based and streaming technology would not only be very suitable for it but very beneficial, allowing huge game worlds with unlimited detail. Highly detailed or scanned 3D objects take easily terabytes of storage and streaming everything from the servers is really the only viable option.
- DasIch 15y agoIn that case you will still end up with a latency problem.
- Geee 15y agoThere's local cache(s) too to help with latency. Basically, you have to keep your GPU memory full, cache on RAM, cache on SSD, cache on HDD and continue all the way down to the cloud servers. Check out this demo for example, which streams data from disk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HScYuRhgEJw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HScYuRhgEJw
- Klinky 15y agoGame devs are not interested in making games that no one will be able to run. Regardless of the benefits of raytracing it is currently inefficient when compared with raster tech currently on GPUs. Hardware tessellation makes inefficient voxel tech moot except for scientific purposes. We can already stream data from the hard disk to the system ram into GPU memory. I'd put mainstream voxel/raytracing tech as more like 10 - 20 years in the future.
- jpadkins 15y agoIf that is true, than most games in production and pre-production now are using ray-tracing based engines. Can you cite examples of major studios using ray tracing engines today?
- Astrohacker 15y ago> We really need a killer app that pushes the limits of most Internet connections and you'll see more companies betting on (expensive) upgrades to deliver those speeds. I don't see much on the horizon. If bitcoin gets very popular, running a node will require very fast download and upload speeds to get and rebroadcast the transactions.
- kayoone 15y ago> Once you hit about 20Mbit/5Mbit faster speeds are almost completely unnoticeable by most people who are just doing some normal browsing, IP video, e-mail, FaceBook, etc. People always say this, some years ago it was 6Mbit, before that it was 2Mbit etc. The services change and with it the demand for higher bandwidth. In a few years when everything (TV, phone, internet) runs in super high quality through your broadband you will need more again. That said, i am currently happy with my 64/5Mbit at home, still have the option for 128/10 but dont need it right now. Only have 32/2 in the office though and thats a bit on the low end when 6-7 people use it all the time.