4 ms·

Clearly, there is pent-up demand from US businesses and consumers for such high speeds, but AFAIK the country's long-haul and last-mile infrastructure is nowher

by cs702 14y ago

Clearly, there is pent-up demand from US businesses and consumers for such high speeds, but AFAIK the country's long-haul and last-mile infrastructure is nowhere near ready for handling end-user traffic at 400Gbps, let alone 1Tbps. On the long-haul side, service providers like Level 3 Communications appear unlikely to invest aggressively to add a lot more capacity any time soon, because they are still dealing with the financial consequences of their over-investment during the 1990's telecom boom (remember Worldcom?). On the last-mile side, service providers like Comcast also appear unlikely to invest aggressively to add a lot more capacity any time soon, because their traditional business models are under threat from companies like Netflix -- our last-mile providers fear higher speeds. So, we have demand for ever-faster speeds on one hand, and constrained supply on the other hand. Economics 101 suggests Internet service pricing is bound to stabilize or even (gasp!) increase over the coming years.

noselasd 14y ago
Still, the short haul market is also huge. There are _a lot_ of data centers around. If you got a top of the rack switch serving 40 machines each with 10Gb ethernet, you want more than a 100Gb uplink.
amalcon 14y ago
This is not for end users, it's for datacenters. Consumer hardware never has fiber ethernet as it is, because there's simply no need. Not only do consumers have no use for that amount of bandwidth, typical hardware has trouble saturating a gigabit connection anyway. Adding more unusable bandwidth isn't going to help. Of course, for some crazy reason consumer hardware often has fiber audio jacks. People are weird. In core routers, the landscape is entirely different. It's actually very easy to saturate a 40-gig connection coming out of a major interchange, and there are lots of BGP tricks to work around that. Individual ISPs routinely only have one, for political reasons. It would be difficult to saturate 400. (For now.)
- Maakuth 14y ago
  Emphasis on "for now". It wasn't that long ago when saturating 100Mbps link seemed distant. And I'm fairly sure home fiber installations, at least as WAN link, are going to grow pretty dramatically both because of the falling prices and because of the growing performance demands. DSL connections are growing increasingly insufficient and there's not that much room to grow in TV cable based home connections either, so fiber seems to be the way to go.
- elithrar 14y ago
  > Of course, for some crazy reason consumer hardware often has fiber audio jacks. People are weird. "Optical" audio connections are more about noise resistance than distance or throughput, especially if you're running cables behind gear with big magnets (speakers) and all that. (We use optical fibre in electrical substations and switchyards for its resistance to noise and induction; not for the capacity. Most switchroom-switchroom SCADA systems wouldn't saturate 10Mbit Ethernet!)
- theatrus2 14y ago
  Fiber audio (TOSLINK) isn't for bandwidth or even distance (both suck on TOSLINK for the record), but for allowing a ground isolated digital audio connection. Plus the red LED looks cool.
  - Wingman4l7 14y ago
    For the truly lazy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSLINK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSLINK

by cs702 14y ago

noselasd 14y ago

Still, the short haul market is also huge. There are _a lot_ of data centers around. If you got a top of the rack switch serving 40 machines each with 10Gb ethernet, you want more than a 100Gb uplink.

amalcon 14y ago

This is not for end users, it's for datacenters. Consumer hardware never has fiber ethernet as it is, because there's simply no need. Not only do consumers have no use for that amount of bandwidth, typical hardware has trouble saturating a gigabit connection anyway. Adding more unusable bandwidth isn't going to help. Of course, for some crazy reason consumer hardware often has fiber audio jacks. People are weird. In core routers, the landscape is entirely different. It's actually very easy to saturate a 40-gig connection coming out of a major interchange, and there are lots of BGP tricks to work around that. Individual ISPs routinely only have one, for political reasons. It would be difficult to saturate 400. (For now.)

Maakuth 14y ago
Emphasis on "for now". It wasn't that long ago when saturating 100Mbps link seemed distant. And I'm fairly sure home fiber installations, at least as WAN link, are going to grow pretty dramatically both because of the falling prices and because of the growing performance demands. DSL connections are growing increasingly insufficient and there's not that much room to grow in TV cable based home connections either, so fiber seems to be the way to go.
elithrar 14y ago
> Of course, for some crazy reason consumer hardware often has fiber audio jacks. People are weird. "Optical" audio connections are more about noise resistance than distance or throughput, especially if you're running cables behind gear with big magnets (speakers) and all that. (We use optical fibre in electrical substations and switchyards for its resistance to noise and induction; not for the capacity. Most switchroom-switchroom SCADA systems wouldn't saturate 10Mbit Ethernet!)
theatrus2 14y ago
Fiber audio (TOSLINK) isn't for bandwidth or even distance (both suck on TOSLINK for the record), but for allowing a ground isolated digital audio connection. Plus the red LED looks cool.
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  For the truly lazy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSLINK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSLINK