7 ms·

I just moved to San Francisco and got Webpass (about 800mbps symmetrical). It has wildly changed my perceptions about how I use the internet. For example, inste

I just moved to San Francisco and got Webpass (about 800mbps symmetrical). It has wildly changed my perceptions about how I use the internet. For example, instead of buying a $1000 Raided NAS, I just use arq to push my backups straight to S3. It's fast enough (~70MB/s to AWS NorCal Region). Uploading a 2GB video to YouTube? That'll take 45 seconds. It has really changed the fundamental way I use the internet.

XorNot 12y ago
This. I would use cloud backups extensively...but when it'll take 6 months to actually upload all the data I'd want to, then that goes out the window. If I had gigabit ethernet, the keeping files local practically no longer makes sense - my internet is faster then my disk storage. I can work almost entirely with cloud-based files and only keep a small amount of locally cached things. What's worse is people are also just completely ignorant about how new technologies work. In the recent NBN debate in Australia, there was no end of "the future is wireless! Femto-cells on every power pole!" With absolutely no consideration (or willingess to acknowledge) that any idea like that would absolutely require gigabit fiber backhaul (of much higher capacity then the wi-fi bandwidth if you want to use wavefront shaping techniques).
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
  I'd say the exact opposite: If I had gigabit internet, then keeping files outside my own premises pactically no longer makes sense. The only reason I do that at all is because my DSL is the bottleneck when I need to share something. If I had a gigabit connection, why should I bother with the unreliability and surveillance of "cloud services"?
  - NateDad 12y ago
    I guarantee cloud services are more reliable than your home server. Also, if your house burns down, you're boned.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
      Well, yeah, of course you want to have offline offsite backups, but cloud services obviously don't help you with that, so I obviously was talking about online data. And no, cloud services certainly are not more reliable, and even if they were, using them would be the wrong solution. When assessing reliability, you have to consider the whole system and the impact of various failure modes you have to expect, not just simple technical availability, as you presumably are doing (and even on that front it seems to me like "the cloud" isn't all that much more reliable than my home server, they've all had their outages, and my home server also tends to have a multi-year uptime). How often have you had your home server decide to delete all your videos with a week prior notice, for example? With cloud services, economic and political failure are a much bigger risk than with your home server, and they tend to be much higher impact than your internet connection being down for a day or something (which obviously still would be a problem if you relied on "the cloud" while you are behind that broken connection). If your concern is technical availability, then the solution to that should be higher quality software for your home server rather than making yourself dependent on one central entity.
- harshreality 12y ago
  1. Even if your internet were fast enough, cloud storage outbound transfer is expensive. If the primary purpose is archival, then it works. If you do anything interactive, you quickly lose the cost benefit. 2. Latency will hurt when you do anything interactive.

XorNot 12y ago

This. I would use cloud backups extensively...but when it'll take 6 months to actually upload all the data I'd want to, then that goes out the window. If I had gigabit ethernet, the keeping files local practically no longer makes sense - my internet is faster then my disk storage. I can work almost entirely with cloud-based files and only keep a small amount of locally cached things. What's worse is people are also just completely ignorant about how new technologies work. In the recent NBN debate in Australia, there was no end of "the future is wireless! Femto-cells on every power pole!" With absolutely no consideration (or willingess to acknowledge) that any idea like that would absolutely require gigabit fiber backhaul (of much higher capacity then the wi-fi bandwidth if you want to use wavefront shaping techniques).

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
I'd say the exact opposite: If I had gigabit internet, then keeping files outside my own premises pactically no longer makes sense. The only reason I do that at all is because my DSL is the bottleneck when I need to share something. If I had a gigabit connection, why should I bother with the unreliability and surveillance of "cloud services"?
- NateDad 12y ago
  I guarantee cloud services are more reliable than your home server. Also, if your house burns down, you're boned.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 12y ago
    Well, yeah, of course you want to have offline offsite backups, but cloud services obviously don't help you with that, so I obviously was talking about online data. And no, cloud services certainly are not more reliable, and even if they were, using them would be the wrong solution. When assessing reliability, you have to consider the whole system and the impact of various failure modes you have to expect, not just simple technical availability, as you presumably are doing (and even on that front it seems to me like "the cloud" isn't all that much more reliable than my home server, they've all had their outages, and my home server also tends to have a multi-year uptime). How often have you had your home server decide to delete all your videos with a week prior notice, for example? With cloud services, economic and political failure are a much bigger risk than with your home server, and they tend to be much higher impact than your internet connection being down for a day or something (which obviously still would be a problem if you relied on "the cloud" while you are behind that broken connection). If your concern is technical availability, then the solution to that should be higher quality software for your home server rather than making yourself dependent on one central entity.
harshreality 12y ago
1. Even if your internet were fast enough, cloud storage outbound transfer is expensive. If the primary purpose is archival, then it works. If you do anything interactive, you quickly lose the cost benefit. 2. Latency will hurt when you do anything interactive.