6 ms·

When I was at Georgia Tech, I got 650 Mbps. You realize the bottleneck isn't your connection at that point -- it's everyone else's. Which means a lot of sites s

When I was at Georgia Tech, I got 650 Mbps. You realize the bottleneck isn't your connection at that point -- it's everyone else's. Which means a lot of sites still download just as slow. Although the big sites have optimized data centers, so it was pretty cool downloading an entire OS in a few seconds (although I think my hard drive write speed limited that a bit too). My father works in the fiber optics industry and has told me that if fiber was brought directly to each home, every person would have more bandwidth than they knew what to do with. One thin, tiny fiber can carry an INSANE amount of information. The problem is the processing circuitry that converts these light signals into digital signals. These NICs have a much lower throughput than the fiber itself, but if the fiber infrastructure was already in place everywhere, upgrades would be much cheaper and quicker. (In other words, Google Fiber has easy upgrade potential to 10, 100, ... Gbps).

stephengillie 14y ago
Would Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, Amazon cloud storage, et al exist today if we could send data across the US at even just 650Mbps?
- lsc 14y ago
  yes. They would have to dramatically decrease their bandwidth charges, and they'd have to lower their charges in general (just 'cause the barrier to entry for their competition would be lower) but if anything, having a fat pipe at home would make storing things remotely a lot more attractive. Think about it; with that kind of a pipe, you could boot your desktop off of a drive in my datacenter, two cities away.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Think about services like OnLive (who even offers Windows in the cloud). We have these today, but if we had fiber everywhere, we likely wouldn't have the dvd drive in the Xbox 360. We certainly wouldn't need BluRay.
  - agildehaus 14y ago
    You could, but the latency would still suck.
    - lsc 14y ago
      That's why I said "my data centre, two cities away" and not 'my data centre on the other side of the world'
- modoc 14y ago
  I'd use DropBox much MORE if I had more than 15 Mbit upstream. If I had 1 Gbit+ speeds, I'd use DropBox for EVERYTHING (5+ TB) and happily pay for it. As it stands now the upload would take far too long to be much use.
- wickedchicken 14y ago
  Housefires happen regardless of internet connection speed, so yes.
- abhishekkr 14y ago
  Yes they would. Its the same reason ftp servers, backup servers and NAS would exist no matter how fast the connection speed is. Its about availability, backups and more holistic access control. It would be interesting to see how these services innovate with such high speed connection though.
- betterth 14y ago
  Oh yeah! Think: a harddrive writes at what an average of 75MB/s [1], and 1Gbit internet is 125MB/s [2]. (Note, Google currently advertises 'up to 1Gbit up and down'). This means that dropbox no longer "syncs". It's just another harddrive in terms of how it works. Copies to and from just as quickly as your harddrive. Heck, it seems like if you installed an application to your dropbox, and ran your computer off of an SSD, it seems like you could enjoy BETTER performance than if you had that program installed on a 7200rpm drive and ran it locally... Can't wait to see what we end doing with 1GBit ubiquity! [1] http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3.5-hard-drive-charts-2008/Average-WriteTransfer-Performance,659.html http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3.5-hard-drive-charts-200... [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1Gbit+in+MB%2Fs http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1Gbit+in+MB%2Fs
  - tnorthcutt 14y ago
    First, even if you "installed an application to your dropbox", it would still be running from your local machine - that's just how Dropbox works. Second, even if it were running the application from Dropbox's server(s) (it seems like that's what you mean?), it would still have to read from their servers - you can't magically eliminate a bottleneck just by moving it to a different physical computer; data still has to be read from disk.
    - gregable 14y ago
      Though it could be read from several disks simultaneously / cached to flash/RAM and other neat tricks to improve I/O bandwidth.
    - randomdata 14y ago
      Though a big datacenter seems like the perfect place to spread the bits around so that you can read from multiple physical disks/computers simultaneously to improve performance. This is unlike your laptop where you are probably not carrying multi-disk arrays around with you.
    - sp332 14y ago
      Hm, could you write a client using the Dropbox API wrapped in, say, a FUSE filesystem driver? Just to use the remote storage directly as a filesystem?
cryptoz 14y ago
> every person would have more bandwidth than they knew what to do with. I think that is exactly the point. That's why they are doing this; Google doesn't know what exactly will happen when everyone in the USA/world has fiber connections, but they do know that incredible innovation will come. What kind of applications will be built? What kind of applications can be built? Couple this with the increasing computing power inside each home over the next many years, and Google will have control over an unbelievably fast and large network of computers. I'd be certain most applications are in the weak-to-strong AI arena.
- nemo1618 14y ago
  indeed. The scales of computing technologies have increased by many order of magnitude in their history, and it has never been "enough." Bill Gates infamously demonstrated the danger of predicting how much RAM/Clock speed/Bandwidth/etc. is "enough." EDIT: fixed a rather wacky typo
  - freehunter 14y ago
    * Bill Gates infamously demonstra...* Let me stop you right there. http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484 http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484
    - engtech 14y ago
      That's the first I've heard that Gates didn't say the 640k quote. Thank you for the correction.
- m_for_monkey 14y ago
  I fear, the surplus bandwidth will be simply wasted, just like the enormous computing power of modern desktop CPUs.
  - Xcelerate 14y ago
    But if you have fiber connecting all of these modern desktop CPUs, people could sell excess computing time to applications that need it.
hoka 14y ago
Yeah, Google's going to have to do a good job telling people their computers and NICs aren't going to cut it. It's amazing when you're limited by your machine instead of the internet!
- sadga 14y ago
  Who doesn't have a gigabit NIC? They've been standard for years.
  - mbell 14y ago
    Have you ever tried to actually get gigabit speeds from the crap hardware installed in most PCs? Most companies use low end realtek or marvell controllers which may, if your lucky, have a good switch and have jumbo frames enabled get you to ~650-700 Mbps on a single large continuous stream. Performance only goes down from there are multiple connections are dealt with. If you want to take a look for yourself download iperf and see what you can actually put through standard consumer NICs and switches. The only NIC controllers I've seen actually get to true gigabit speeds are from Intel, and you still need a decent switch.
bcrescimanno 14y ago
The thing I miss most about my internet connection at GT was the incredibly low latency to most everything. Now, this was circa 2000 or so; but, I remember page loads seeming more like loading files locally the latency was so low. Google today, for all it's speed an simplicity, is significantly slower to get to search results than Yahoo would load them for me in 2000 on a GT internet connection.
ktizo 14y ago
You can go all the way into the terabit range with single fibre, which is also around the same ballpark as what you need for full holographic video.
- datalus 14y ago
  So we can get a real holo Tupac now? Joy!
dudus 14y ago
> every person would have more bandwidth than they knew what to do with The same thing was said about floppy disks and RAM in the past. The reality is that the demand expands to fill whatever you have available and still ask for more. Once we have blazing fast speeds like that someone will come up with a crazy idea that will require still more bandwidth and lower latency.

stephengillie 14y ago

Would Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, Amazon cloud storage, et al exist today if we could send data across the US at even just 650Mbps?

lsc 14y ago
yes. They would have to dramatically decrease their bandwidth charges, and they'd have to lower their charges in general (just 'cause the barrier to entry for their competition would be lower) but if anything, having a fat pipe at home would make storing things remotely a lot more attractive. Think about it; with that kind of a pipe, you could boot your desktop off of a drive in my datacenter, two cities away.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Think about services like OnLive (who even offers Windows in the cloud). We have these today, but if we had fiber everywhere, we likely wouldn't have the dvd drive in the Xbox 360. We certainly wouldn't need BluRay.
- agildehaus 14y ago
  You could, but the latency would still suck.
  - lsc 14y ago
    That's why I said "my data centre, two cities away" and not 'my data centre on the other side of the world'
modoc 14y ago
I'd use DropBox much MORE if I had more than 15 Mbit upstream. If I had 1 Gbit+ speeds, I'd use DropBox for EVERYTHING (5+ TB) and happily pay for it. As it stands now the upload would take far too long to be much use.
wickedchicken 14y ago
Housefires happen regardless of internet connection speed, so yes.
abhishekkr 14y ago
Yes they would. Its the same reason ftp servers, backup servers and NAS would exist no matter how fast the connection speed is. Its about availability, backups and more holistic access control. It would be interesting to see how these services innovate with such high speed connection though.
betterth 14y ago
Oh yeah! Think: a harddrive writes at what an average of 75MB/s [1], and 1Gbit internet is 125MB/s [2]. (Note, Google currently advertises 'up to 1Gbit up and down'). This means that dropbox no longer "syncs". It's just another harddrive in terms of how it works. Copies to and from just as quickly as your harddrive. Heck, it seems like if you installed an application to your dropbox, and ran your computer off of an SSD, it seems like you could enjoy BETTER performance than if you had that program installed on a 7200rpm drive and ran it locally... Can't wait to see what we end doing with 1GBit ubiquity! [1] http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3.5-hard-drive-charts-2008/Average-WriteTransfer-Performance,659.html http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3.5-hard-drive-charts-200... [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1Gbit+in+MB%2Fs http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1Gbit+in+MB%2Fs
- tnorthcutt 14y ago
  First, even if you "installed an application to your dropbox", it would still be running from your local machine - that's just how Dropbox works. Second, even if it were running the application from Dropbox's server(s) (it seems like that's what you mean?), it would still have to read from their servers - you can't magically eliminate a bottleneck just by moving it to a different physical computer; data still has to be read from disk.
  - gregable 14y ago
    Though it could be read from several disks simultaneously / cached to flash/RAM and other neat tricks to improve I/O bandwidth.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    Though a big datacenter seems like the perfect place to spread the bits around so that you can read from multiple physical disks/computers simultaneously to improve performance. This is unlike your laptop where you are probably not carrying multi-disk arrays around with you.
  - sp332 14y ago
    Hm, could you write a client using the Dropbox API wrapped in, say, a FUSE filesystem driver? Just to use the remote storage directly as a filesystem?

cryptoz 14y ago

> every person would have more bandwidth than they knew what to do with. I think that is exactly the point. That's why they are doing this; Google doesn't know what exactly will happen when everyone in the USA/world has fiber connections, but they do know that incredible innovation will come. What kind of applications will be built? What kind of applications can be built? Couple this with the increasing computing power inside each home over the next many years, and Google will have control over an unbelievably fast and large network of computers. I'd be certain most applications are in the weak-to-strong AI arena.

nemo1618 14y ago
indeed. The scales of computing technologies have increased by many order of magnitude in their history, and it has never been "enough." Bill Gates infamously demonstrated the danger of predicting how much RAM/Clock speed/Bandwidth/etc. is "enough." EDIT: fixed a rather wacky typo
- freehunter 14y ago
  * Bill Gates infamously demonstra...* Let me stop you right there. http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484 http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484
  - engtech 14y ago
    That's the first I've heard that Gates didn't say the 640k quote. Thank you for the correction.
m_for_monkey 14y ago
I fear, the surplus bandwidth will be simply wasted, just like the enormous computing power of modern desktop CPUs.
- Xcelerate 14y ago
  But if you have fiber connecting all of these modern desktop CPUs, people could sell excess computing time to applications that need it.

hoka 14y ago

Yeah, Google's going to have to do a good job telling people their computers and NICs aren't going to cut it. It's amazing when you're limited by your machine instead of the internet!

sadga 14y ago
Who doesn't have a gigabit NIC? They've been standard for years.
- mbell 14y ago
  Have you ever tried to actually get gigabit speeds from the crap hardware installed in most PCs? Most companies use low end realtek or marvell controllers which may, if your lucky, have a good switch and have jumbo frames enabled get you to ~650-700 Mbps on a single large continuous stream. Performance only goes down from there are multiple connections are dealt with. If you want to take a look for yourself download iperf and see what you can actually put through standard consumer NICs and switches. The only NIC controllers I've seen actually get to true gigabit speeds are from Intel, and you still need a decent switch.

bcrescimanno 14y ago

The thing I miss most about my internet connection at GT was the incredibly low latency to most everything. Now, this was circa 2000 or so; but, I remember page loads seeming more like loading files locally the latency was so low. Google today, for all it's speed an simplicity, is significantly slower to get to search results than Yahoo would load them for me in 2000 on a GT internet connection.

ktizo 14y ago

You can go all the way into the terabit range with single fibre, which is also around the same ballpark as what you need for full holographic video.

datalus 14y ago
So we can get a real holo Tupac now? Joy!

dudus 14y ago

> every person would have more bandwidth than they knew what to do with The same thing was said about floppy disks and RAM in the past. The reality is that the demand expands to fill whatever you have available and still ask for more. Once we have blazing fast speeds like that someone will come up with a crazy idea that will require still more bandwidth and lower latency.