4 ms·

All of this assumes we’ve reached some plateau for how the Internet will always be used. Historically that’s never been the case — as more bandwidth becomes ava

All of this assumes we’ve reached some plateau for how the Internet will always be used. Historically that’s never been the case — as more bandwidth becomes available, new applications pop up to fulfill the need. Perhaps it feels like marketing fluff now, but generally reducing latency and increasing bandwidth has always historically lead to new kinds of use cases that become daily drivers. What would be newsworthy is if that didn’t happen.

ddingus 5y ago
The carriers themselves have an impact on this beyond physical layer improvements. A big one is data cost rates and caps. I've heard more than once, "5G means I will zip right through my data and will cost me more." LTE actually works great for me, and I do video calls and such over LTE fairly regularly. Now I do pay for that, and I'm compensated. That's what the carriers would love to see continue, but that also limits mass adoption too. Many people don't like extra charges appearing on their phone account. I don't, but I'm in a position to deal with them too. Annoyance. Plenty of people really feel that extra $20, $50, more depending on what it is they did, like drive too close to Canada with automatic data roaming turned on. That can be painful. Years ago, early 90's era, there was a magazine. Boardwatch, I believe it was. There were some great voices in that one, and all these topics we discuss today are nothing new, and most of us here know that. There are some constants: As mentioned, applications fill resources. Could be RAM, storage, throughput, bandwidth. Part of that is offering choice, the next one coming up. *In broadcast / streaming, where there is a defined bitrate possible, choice will win out over quality. Here's a little thought experiment that suggests why that is generally the case: Say you've got two streams or broadcast channels to use. One is boring, but exemplary quality, the other is poor quality, but compelling as it gets. Which one do you use? Which one do you believe most people will use? That leads to, "Content is king." One of the topics Boardwatch covered regularly was diversity in ISPs. As consolidation happened, another truism did as well, and that is basic economic trope at this point: More choice = more competition = buyer gets highest value for the dollar. Less choice = less competition = buyer gets lowest value for the dollar. The fight to prevent lock-in is therefore eternal. Carriers of all types will seek to limit choice however they can. Higher cost of change = lower choice. This is also driving the one I mentioned above. Content being king means making more content options available almost always trumps quality. I do have a small nit to pick: To me, the word "bandwidth" isn't quite right. Yes, it speaks to the maximum information possible, but throughput is the more accurate word, in my view, when it comes to the impact moving more bits per second at lower latencies has on society overall. Another quick thought exercise: Say you have a choice of a very fast connection, but latency is all over the place, and or there are random slowdowns vs. one that isn't as fast, but is super consistent. Which do you use? Which one do you believe other people will use? I prefer the latter most of the time given the constancy metrics match up with my use cases. My point here is the carriers have a huge impact today! We've consolidated down to a point where many truisms about the Internet are not so true in the wireless realm. Back in the 90's, when most of us were on wires most of the time, all that discussion about carriers, ISPs (when they were two different things often enough to make that distinction), and the up and coming "cloud" computing being equated to how things were in the late 60's and 70's, has played out fairly accurately. Kudos to the people with vision back then. Too bad it didn't have a bigger impact on public policy overall.
raghavtoshniwal 5y ago
> Historically that’s never been the case We overestimate how old history is here. There is a case to be made about how we've enjoyed exponential growth in cosumer technology over the last few decades but that could slow down on a few fronts. For ex- display resolution has reached "good enough" fidelity for a while. I certainly hope you're right and we find cool, novel use cases but I wouldn't be certain. I personally have not thought about bandwidth for a few years now. Meanwhile I remember the speed bumps being exciting earlier. Diminishing utility is real.
- ddingus 5y ago
  I still think about throughput and bandwidth from time to time. In my case, I am mobile enough to encounter the fast but high latency case and fast, but only in little bursts, too few to gloss over, cases. There is room for more here, and it might lead to something new, that scales. That said, I do agree with you. In my view, what the carriers do matters more. They are still wanting to gatekeep to a much higher degree than they currently are. Nothing pays like creating problems and then selling solutions does. Massive consolidation opens the door for the threat of artificial value to walk right through and into our wallets. Take the truisms in my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30822400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30822400 That quality vs choice problem can be made to go away for what could be called a nominal charge each month. Think all the ugly FastPass was for Disney, applied to our mobile experiences. It's very ripe fruit, sadly.
- NavinF 5y ago
  > display resolution has reached "good enough" fidelity Ehhh it was only a couple of years ago that 4K became affordable at 120hz. I would absolutely buy a 5K display if one with decent input lag and no DP compression existed.
- azinman2 5y ago
  You can go 100 years and see this, from telephone lines that were only local, to digital switched and dedicated lines, to satellite coverage, and all of the applications as we’ve gone from wired dial up internet to being able to FaceTime in the middle of the street. The same thing has happened with TV and it’s bandwidth increases on airwaves from just a few channels, black and white to color, cable, satellite, and now streaming online in 4K, soon 6K and even 8K… let alone in VR. The history isn’t so new. I would not take your bet the world is good enough and innovation is dead. That’s been a wrong bet for thousands of years. Every time a new discovery or technological advancement is made, new use cases come that then fuel the next one… from the Bronze Age to stainless steel and fiberglass, medicinal herbs to antibiotics and mRNA vaccines, writing systems to tablets, paper to the printing press and now this comment on HN.
zozbot234 5y ago
> Historically that’s never been the case — as more bandwidth becomes available, new applications pop up to fulfill the need. You're writing this on HN of all things, where your comment would take up no more bandwidth today than in the glory days of dialup, and only a bit more than serving it via a BBS or UUCP.
- azinman2 5y ago
  Loading this today is more/less instant. Even on dialup it would have been seconds. And HN-style content does not represent the majority of bandwidth usage, or the new applications that make use of higher bandwidth. TikTok simply couldn’t have existed in the dial up days, a company now worth billions. That has happened consistently with communications technology over the past century. Why would we think it should stop now?

ddingus 5y ago

The carriers themselves have an impact on this beyond physical layer improvements. A big one is data cost rates and caps. I've heard more than once, "5G means I will zip right through my data and will cost me more." LTE actually works great for me, and I do video calls and such over LTE fairly regularly. Now I do pay for that, and I'm compensated. That's what the carriers would love to see continue, but that also limits mass adoption too. Many people don't like extra charges appearing on their phone account. I don't, but I'm in a position to deal with them too. Annoyance. Plenty of people really feel that extra $20, $50, more depending on what it is they did, like drive too close to Canada with automatic data roaming turned on. That can be painful. Years ago, early 90's era, there was a magazine. Boardwatch, I believe it was. There were some great voices in that one, and all these topics we discuss today are nothing new, and most of us here know that. There are some constants: As mentioned, applications fill resources. Could be RAM, storage, throughput, bandwidth. Part of that is offering choice, the next one coming up. *In broadcast / streaming, where there is a defined bitrate possible, choice will win out over quality. Here's a little thought experiment that suggests why that is generally the case: Say you've got two streams or broadcast channels to use. One is boring, but exemplary quality, the other is poor quality, but compelling as it gets. Which one do you use? Which one do you believe most people will use? That leads to, "Content is king." One of the topics Boardwatch covered regularly was diversity in ISPs. As consolidation happened, another truism did as well, and that is basic economic trope at this point: More choice = more competition = buyer gets highest value for the dollar. Less choice = less competition = buyer gets lowest value for the dollar. The fight to prevent lock-in is therefore eternal. Carriers of all types will seek to limit choice however they can. Higher cost of change = lower choice. This is also driving the one I mentioned above. Content being king means making more content options available almost always trumps quality. I do have a small nit to pick: To me, the word "bandwidth" isn't quite right. Yes, it speaks to the maximum information possible, but throughput is the more accurate word, in my view, when it comes to the impact moving more bits per second at lower latencies has on society overall. Another quick thought exercise: Say you have a choice of a very fast connection, but latency is all over the place, and or there are random slowdowns vs. one that isn't as fast, but is super consistent. Which do you use? Which one do you believe other people will use? I prefer the latter most of the time given the constancy metrics match up with my use cases. My point here is the carriers have a huge impact today! We've consolidated down to a point where many truisms about the Internet are not so true in the wireless realm. Back in the 90's, when most of us were on wires most of the time, all that discussion about carriers, ISPs (when they were two different things often enough to make that distinction), and the up and coming "cloud" computing being equated to how things were in the late 60's and 70's, has played out fairly accurately. Kudos to the people with vision back then. Too bad it didn't have a bigger impact on public policy overall.

raghavtoshniwal 5y ago

> Historically that’s never been the case We overestimate how old history is here. There is a case to be made about how we've enjoyed exponential growth in cosumer technology over the last few decades but that could slow down on a few fronts. For ex- display resolution has reached "good enough" fidelity for a while. I certainly hope you're right and we find cool, novel use cases but I wouldn't be certain. I personally have not thought about bandwidth for a few years now. Meanwhile I remember the speed bumps being exciting earlier. Diminishing utility is real.

ddingus 5y ago
I still think about throughput and bandwidth from time to time. In my case, I am mobile enough to encounter the fast but high latency case and fast, but only in little bursts, too few to gloss over, cases. There is room for more here, and it might lead to something new, that scales. That said, I do agree with you. In my view, what the carriers do matters more. They are still wanting to gatekeep to a much higher degree than they currently are. Nothing pays like creating problems and then selling solutions does. Massive consolidation opens the door for the threat of artificial value to walk right through and into our wallets. Take the truisms in my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30822400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30822400 That quality vs choice problem can be made to go away for what could be called a nominal charge each month. Think all the ugly FastPass was for Disney, applied to our mobile experiences. It's very ripe fruit, sadly.
NavinF 5y ago
> display resolution has reached "good enough" fidelity Ehhh it was only a couple of years ago that 4K became affordable at 120hz. I would absolutely buy a 5K display if one with decent input lag and no DP compression existed.
azinman2 5y ago
You can go 100 years and see this, from telephone lines that were only local, to digital switched and dedicated lines, to satellite coverage, and all of the applications as we’ve gone from wired dial up internet to being able to FaceTime in the middle of the street. The same thing has happened with TV and it’s bandwidth increases on airwaves from just a few channels, black and white to color, cable, satellite, and now streaming online in 4K, soon 6K and even 8K… let alone in VR. The history isn’t so new. I would not take your bet the world is good enough and innovation is dead. That’s been a wrong bet for thousands of years. Every time a new discovery or technological advancement is made, new use cases come that then fuel the next one… from the Bronze Age to stainless steel and fiberglass, medicinal herbs to antibiotics and mRNA vaccines, writing systems to tablets, paper to the printing press and now this comment on HN.

zozbot234 5y ago

> Historically that’s never been the case — as more bandwidth becomes available, new applications pop up to fulfill the need. You're writing this on HN of all things, where your comment would take up no more bandwidth today than in the glory days of dialup, and only a bit more than serving it via a BBS or UUCP.

azinman2 5y ago
Loading this today is more/less instant. Even on dialup it would have been seconds. And HN-style content does not represent the majority of bandwidth usage, or the new applications that make use of higher bandwidth. TikTok simply couldn’t have existed in the dial up days, a company now worth billions. That has happened consistently with communications technology over the past century. Why would we think it should stop now?