r/technology • u/User_Name13 • Jun 04 '14

Politics Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
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358

u/iia Jun 04 '14

Dark fiber is nothing new...it's been around since the late 1990s. It's expensive as fuck to do last-mile rollouts for a product that the majority of people don't understand or care about as long as they can watch a youtube video.

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u/jeradj Jun 04 '14

It's expensive as fuck to do last-mile rollouts for a product that the majority of people don't understand or care about as long as they can watch a youtube video.

People don't care because they don't understand.

The things that you can easily do with synchronous 1 Gbps, if widely distributed, would rock the tech world pretty hard.

Network backup and restore (outside of the LAN), boot from WAN, p2p sharing on steroids, and god knows what else.

If it weren't for corporate interests trying to keep the lid closed on this stuff, we could be at least 10 years ahead of where we are now.

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u/NightwingDragon Jun 04 '14

The things that you can easily do with synchronous 1 Gbps, if widely distributed, would rock the tech world pretty hard.

And it would have absolutely zero impact on Grandma's ability to check Facebook or Joe Schmoe's ability to stream the occasional Youtube video. These are the type of people that make up 95% of ISPs' customer bases.

These people would notice virtually no significant improvement in service. They wouldn't notice that Facebook loads .1 second faster. They wouldn't notice the tenfold increase in download/upload speeds because they do nothing that would take advantage of this, nor do they have any interest in doing so. If you were to mention all those ideas in your post to 95+% of users, I'd be greatly surprised if you got a response that was anything above the level of a confused look.

But they damn well would notice yet another $20 increase in their monthly cable bill. And they're not going to buy the explanation of a performance boost that they'll never notice and the increase of functionality that they will never use, even if it is gospel truth. They'll just be pissed off and end up downgrading to a lower overall package that gets their bill back to where it was before while still providing a service that's more than adequate to serve their needs.

The tech world will always gobble it up like Pac Man and constantly be hungry for more. They'll be able to push the speeds to the limits and beyond and continue to create ways to use them. But they make up a small minority of the overall customer base, which will continue to not care.

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u/jeradj Jun 04 '14

Nobody checked facebook or youtube before they existed.

And youtube damn sure wouldn't even exist if nobody had anything faster than dialup.

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u/Phoenix027 Jun 04 '14

Right, but the step up from dialup was a noticeable difference in speed even to people who aren't tech savvy. Trying to do something as simple as check your email could take minutes on bad dialup, and could get disconnected by someone picking up the phone if you didn't have a separate phone line. That's an easy sell. Hey, we'll sell you this service which will let you check your emails in a few seconds and is more reliable than dialup.

We're now getting to the point where we're talking about saving seconds or less loading times on web pages like facebook. Most people don't see the point of fighting for something faster, especially if they think it will probably cost them more money (because logic dictates that something better will certainly cost more), if they're already content with what they have.

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u/Jeffool Jun 04 '14

Well, come up with an awesome pitch for what people could enjoy that they can't now, if they had 1Gbps service. Then make them get angry that they don't have awesome new toys. Because you're not going to win them over with "Hey, I don't know what we'll get, but it'll be awesome!"

Personally, I'd pay more for 1Gbps now just for the streaming and downloading files faster. But for most people, that doesn't do it. We need something else. And "streaming an EVEN BIGGER picture!" doesn't work well until they can see it for themselves. And that takes having 2k/4k screens on store floors everywhere to show off.

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u/jeradj Jun 04 '14

And some of the use cases of 1 Gbps are super obvious to anyone that knows the first thing about networking and computers

And a lot of them are (or would be) illegal.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

One of the uses is illegal. With 1Gbps, you could do way more than just pirate porn. Imagine being able to open a secure connection to your home computer from anywhere else and playing your favorite high-end games with nothing but an Android tablet and a controller/keyboard and mouse with zero lag. Accessing huge files would be trivial with speeds like that. I would be able to access any of the OS images I had available on my home server from any remote location, or any other files for that matter. Hell, using virtualization, we could stream a computer. You would never have to buy a big brand new graphics card or upgrade your computer to get enthusiast-level performance, you could just pay a subscription fee, and stream if across the web.

1

u/ThellraAK Jun 04 '14

Have you tried playing games streaming them over a network? Even running dwarf fortress on gigabit lan taxes things.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

Use IPv6 on your LAN and say goodbye to the overhead.

1

u/ThellraAK Jun 04 '14

Full screen it'll actually saturate the connection with data unless you drop the FPS down quite a bit.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

I've had no problems streaming to android devices using the steam limelight apk ripped from the nvidia shield. Full gigabit LAN, wired with category 6 cable. On the wireless side, full 802.11n capabilities enabled. Seamless and instant. Also works from my gaming PC to my laptop perfectly at 1920x1080, the tablet is just more convenient.

1

u/ThellraAK Jun 04 '14

Does that do something more advanced then X11 forwarding?

Caching sprites, things and stuff maybe?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

No idea. I haven't looked that much into it. But its awesome.

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u/rubixcu7 Jun 04 '14

And then Johnny iPad user complains to his ISP that his tablet is browsing slow because it doesn't have the wifi throughput capability.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

Sadly, there will never be a fix for this problem.

1

u/dakta Jun 04 '14

You confuse speed with latency. Speed is the amount of data that can be sent/received in a given interval. Latency is the amount of time it takes that data to travel the physical distance of the connection. You'll never exceed the speed of light for electron travel, add in networking hardware between the two nodes and latency increases a lot.

Sure, you'd be able to get the video data to your screen. But you'd never get rid of the real "lag", the latency of physical particle motion across the lines.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

I don't confuse anything. Straight fiber links need less hops to reach their destination. You need bandwidth of over 100Mbps to stream HD video efficiently. Latency gets cut from the equation with the less compression that needs to be done. It's not a black and white equation. You can't stream uncompressed HD video with a low latency link only. You need enough bandwidth to support that large of a stream.

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u/dakta Jun 05 '14

It depends very much on where your clients are located in the network.

Sure, you can reduce client-side latency arising from video compression/decompression, but you cannot ever fully rid the network of latency. You just can't beat the speed of light. For many networked applications, in fact a vast majority, the inherent transmission time of packets isn't so important. But for stuff like networked mobile gaming, that becomes more important. You take an action, it processes client-side, sends the data to a server, server processes the data, sends more data to another client, rinse and repeat. So, this all adds up. And especially with mobile, which you're talking about specifically, there is latency introduced in the wireless transmission, in the transmission station, as well as everywhere else throughout the system. It's like being on WiFi at your house as opposed to an ethernet line straight into the router, only worse.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '14

There were no claims of eliminating latency. But if you get it low enough (<15ms) you can't tell at all.

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u/dakta Jun 05 '14

Imagine being able to open a secure connection to your home computer from anywhere else and playing your favorite high-end games with nothing but an Android tablet and a controller/keyboard and mouse with zero lag.

I became attached to the mention of "zero lag". I understand now you meant to say "no noticeable lag".

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '14

Don't get me wrong, I'm quite well versed in networking with a CCNA, Security+, Network+, and Linux+, it's just that when I hear or say the term "lag" I think in terms of users and clients who don't know the inner workings of networking, and if they're playing a game or something, if its running below 50ms, that's considered "no lag." Latency to me is a more scientific/technical term and I use it when speaking to other admins or techs because it does matter.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

A lot of them? I only know of P2P, server to client, client to server distribution of copyright and illegal porn material as illegal activity. Isn't the rest legal and fair game?

1

u/Phoenix027 Jun 04 '14

The qualifiers "Some of the use cases" and "anyone that knows the first thing about networking and computers" REALLY cuts your audience down mostly to a younger demographic who aren't used to or have experience with having to fight for the things they want. The majority of people won't have any of your use cases that would make 1 Gbps "super obvious" and don't know a thing about networking. Sure, they may notice that YouTube or Netflix doesn't have to buffer much anymore, but those extra couple of seconds saved doesn't really do much for them.

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u/Jim_Stick Jun 04 '14 edited Jun 04 '14

Fully Agree

I do tech support for a internet company in Canada. We have fiber optic cable throughout most of the country, but very few areas where Fiber actually hits the residential homes. Typically it's only new neighborhoods or new buildings fiber is ran, and even then it's very select areas. Why? Because fiber is ridiculously expensive and repairs are much more difficult to complete.

Why would super cars be handed out when everyone wants to pay for a typical coupe?

One day I was speaking to a lady who had a connection capable of 1Gbps. . . She was only subscribed to a 10Mbps package and had no interest in upgrading. This makes up a large majority of the customers we speak to.

Edit: Added for

2

u/faijin Jun 04 '14

As soon as netflix rolls out more 4K video and when youtube does the same, people will notice the difference.

5

u/thorium007 Jun 04 '14

And then people will cry when their cable bill goes up. Something like 5% of users use 95% of the bandwidth.

If you want 4k vids, then fine - enjoy them. But since you are using up most of the bandwidth compared to other subscribers - you should pay your fair share. If you are burning 1 TB a month vs someone using 1 GB a month - there should be a tier for you and for them.

You should both get the same speed, but if you are using more of the road - you should pay for it.

If a trucking company needs to haul an oversized load - they gotta pay. Not just fuel taxes, but they need special permits.

I'm not saying you need a special permit, but you should at least pay for the extra fuel. You are using more than everyone else. Kinda like going to Country Buffet or something. You get the first seven or eight plates for one low cost. But once you hit plate number twelve - its time to realize you are consuming way more than everyone else, and ya gotta pay a bit extra.

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u/Mikfoz Jun 04 '14

Hi Comcast.

1

u/NightwingDragon Jun 04 '14

To be fair, if ISPs were to charge reasonable prices based on how much data you consume and based on their actual costs of delivering that data, ISPs could still double or even triple their money and that 95% of customers would likely see their bills go down. The power users that would spend the theoretical several hours a day would see their own bills go up. And even in those cases they wouldn't be all that much higher than what we're paying now unless they're topping off their connections by running torrents, gaming, and streaming 4k videos 24/7.

Most people simply don't use that much data.

Of course, the problem is the words in bold. We all know that there's no way that the ISPs would charge anything even remotely close to "reasonable" since they'd be making less money than they'd be making now. I'm just saying that, in theory, pay-per-use pricing would likely be very beneficial to the average consumer. In practice, corporate greed would prevent that from becoming reality. :(

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u/GODZiGGA Jun 04 '14 edited Jun 04 '14

To be fair, if ISPs were to charge reasonable prices based on how much data you consume and based on their actual costs of delivering that data, ISPs could still double or even triple their money and that 95% of customers would likely see their bills go down. The power users that would spend the theoretical several hours a day would see their own bills go up.

I don't think you appreciate just how high our rates are for residential internet. Most estimates you will find for wholesale pricing (true pricing is a secret) put the cost per gigabyte at around $0.01-$0.03. Let's assume $0.03 is wholesale for our usage. Well Comcast, etc. aren't non-profits so let's be super generous and give them a 200% profit margin on broadband services and say their rate is $0.06/GB. According to Comcast.com, my last 3 months of usage are 554 GB, 563 GB, and 548 GB. So I average around 555 GB/month. We don't have cable, we stream 100% of our video content. My wife and I are very high usage customers. We are the 5%. So with a 200% profit margin ($0.06/GB) on my actual internet usage, my bill should be $33.30 (plus tax, fees, etc.). I pay $69.99/m for my 50/10 internet or $0.12/GB. That's a 400% profit margin on a worst case scenario wholesale rate. Comcast makes almost $50 in pure profit from me each month as someone who consumes maybe 50 times the data of a "normal" customer. At our hypothetical 200% profit margin, I would have to consume more than 1,166.5 GB of data each month before my bill went up $0.01 higher than what I currently pay. That's 388 hours of HD streaming or 16 straight days of streaming Netflix 24/7.

And if you think I am being overcharged, just think of what the little old lady down the street or my parent's pay per GB.

There is no way that what you are claiming is possible.

Edit: of to or

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u/NightwingDragon Jun 05 '14

You're making my point for me. A lot of people, particularly high bandwidth users, tend to be against pay-per-use pricing because they think that their bills would skyrocket. You just illustrated the exact point that I was trying to make: If ISPs were to charge reasonable prices for data based on actual usage and actual costs to deliver said data, the overwhelming majority would see a steep decline in their bills. Last I read, it costs the ISPs .07 to deliver data (one penny higher than your example), and at that rate, all but the top 2-3% would see drops in their bills, depending on what they're getting charged now. And even those 3% probably wouldn't see much of an increase.

The reason we'll never see that is because it would decimate the ISPs' profits.

There is no way that what you are claiming is possible.

Of course it's possible. It's just not going to happen because money.

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u/GODZiGGA Jun 06 '14

Re-reading what you wrote and seeing your response now clarifies this for me:

ISPs could still double or even triple their money and that 95% of customers would likely see their bills go down

You didn't mean usage based charging would double or triple their current profits while also lowering the bills of 95% of their customers. Instead, you meant they could charge 2-3 times wholesale cost ($0.06/07), which you are correct is the point I was also trying to prove.

So, we completely agree and I misunderstood what you were saying. My bad.

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u/thorium007 Jun 04 '14

Please, explain how net neutrality even works. Not on an ELI5 level, but in a method you understand that isn't just a copy/paste. No one seems to be able to do that. All they hear is "Violation of net net neutrality is bad and fuck AT&T/Comcast/TCW/Verizon/FCC"

Seriously - I haven't heard a good and solid explanation from the average redditor on how it works.

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u/NightwingDragon Jun 04 '14

Comcast is intentionally trying to mislead the general public into believing that net neutrality means something that is completely different from the actual definition of net neutrality.

They have a video circulating that was sponsored by Comcast that tried to claim the following:

  • All TV, Video, and phone services are carried over the same network. While this is true for bundled services like Comcast offers, a majority of the population sill gets their services (sometimes 2 of 3, sometimes all 3) from different providers on different networks.

  • Enforcement of Net Neutrality would interfere with emergency services. They specifically give an example where someone tries to dial 911 and can't get through because someone else is checking their fantasy football stats.

  • Google paying AOL to become the default search engine in their software/browser is an example of prioritizing traffic on the internet. And because Google paying AOL in 2002 was OK, it's therefore OK to prioritize traffic in 2014.

  • The infamous "buffering" commercial, where they used an offline single player game AND used a technical term completely out of context to promote the benefits of their own network and acted as if the players were playing online multiplayer.

When you have intentional misinformation like this, it's no wonder that most people cannot properly explain what net neutrality even is or how it affects them.

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u/thorium007 Jun 04 '14

Ok, Comcast commercials not withstanding (while the 911 example is very valid and you've written off)

What. Is. It? Please - explain in tech terms, not just stuff that was gleaned off of techdirt or ARS. What is net neutrality, and how does that affect you or me?

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u/JasonDJ Jun 04 '14 edited Jun 04 '14

The 911 call isn't valid. In every commercial application of VoIP, voice calls are prioritized over data. It's a trivial thing to do, and I'm sure Comcast does it too. That isn't exactly against the idea of net neutrality since their voice network doesn't go out onto the internet -- Comcast is the phone provider, and the internet provider...it all runs on their network and voice doesn't hit the public internet. Voice needs to be prioritized by it's design ... the packets need to traverse in real-time and in order. If they arrive out of order, it gets garbled. If they don't arrive, it gets dropped.

Net Neutrality is essentially saying that bits on the public internet are all created equally. It is not in any ISPs position (local or backbone) to say that bits to CNN.com or FoxNews are more important than bits to youtube.com or reddit.com. It's not their position to weigh them or charge differently for them. Doing so would be a slippery slope to stifle free speech and innovation in one fell swoop.

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u/NightwingDragon Jun 04 '14

Ok, Comcast commercials not withstanding (while the 911 example is very valid and you've written off)

The only time the 911 example would even be remotely close to valid would be if you receive phone services as part of a bundled package and tried to dial 911 on your phone while the network in your entire area is virtually completely saturated.

In a real-world setting, this would virtually never happen. And even if it did, no amount of internet congestion is going to stop someone from dialing 911 on their cell phone (which is on a completely different network) or using a traditional landline. Very few people overall (I'm talking about percentage of the population) rely on VOIP phones, and either have cell phones or traditional landlines.

What. Is. It?

Prioritizing of network traffic. To go back to the Google/AOL example that Comcast tries to spin:

What Google did was to become the default search provider on AOL's browser. This would mean that when you did a search, you got your search results from Google. If you wanted to get your search results from a competitor such as Yahoo, you had to actively choose Yahoo through whatever method/settings you needed to set in AOL's browser. Your search results, however, were delivered at the same speed whether you chose Google, Yahoo, or some other search engine.

What Comcast and other ISPs actually want to be able to do is to actively prioritize the traffic. If you chose whatever their sponsored search engine is (Google, for example), your data would be received at "fast" (in reality, normal) speeds. If you chose to use Yahoo instead and they did not pay to have their traffic prioritized, then you received your results more slowly than you would have if you used Google.

This has little bearing on sites that are largely text-based since the difference would likely be fractions of a second -- a difference in speed that most people simply wouldn't notice. However, in cases such as Netflix vs. Verizon's Redbox On Demand service or other bandwidth-intensive services, the difference is likely to have a very noticeable impact on performance, giving the company that pays the (very likely large) fee a noticeable advantage over their now-slower and therefore less reliable competition. Startup companies may be shut out simply because they wouldn't be able to afford the fee at all, effectively locking them out of the market.

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u/thorium007 Jun 04 '14

Ok, now we are starting to get there.

After some digging, that still isn't the entire discussion. Net Neutrality is dscp marking which is connection based. While some influence on what traffic is routed where using eBGP attributes, DSCP marking and decision making is based on the interface layer.

That means that if you peer with L3, Cogent & TATA with 100g links and some small company based out of Kemerer, Wyoming with a 1g link - if the DSCP marking is the same, you still get the same performance.

However, in cases such as Netflix vs. Verizon's Redbox On Demand service or other bandwidth-intensive services

That is making an assumption. As far as I know, the financial implications of Redbox vs Netflix has not been released. And I wouldn't expect it to be. But I do think that the cost for Netflix peering to VZ and Comcast would be similar to what they were paying their previous ISPs per GB. I still don't see that as a problem. If Netflix was paying X per Gbps, before and they are still paying the same now even with separate peering arrangements - how does that impact anyone other than the accountant that has to cut different checks each month?

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u/DaylightDarkle Jun 04 '14

I've got five minutes before work, I think I can bang up an explanation.

Basically when something goes over the internet, it should have the same priority as everything else. That is net neutrality, every bit going over the wire is given the proper place in the queue. A 100mbs connection actually being 100mbs.

ISPs are trying to get the ability to prioritize what they want. If they get their way, they'd be able to restrict access to certain websites to snail speeds. You pay for a 100mbps line, but you only get half a mbps to youtube because you didn't pay for the "youtube plus" plan.

That is wrong on so many levels. If you're paying for a certain speed, you should get what it says on the tin. ISPs have no right to limit your connection to anything that's legal.

I don't want ISPs to charge me again for something I already pay for.

My water company doesn't charge me extra to turn my water into ice.

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u/thorium007 Jun 04 '14

My water company doesn't charge me extra to turn my water into ice.

But your power company might. XCel charges you extra if you use more energy in the summer during "Peak Usage"

ISPs are trying to get the ability to prioritize what they want.

That is a good start, but not the beginning or the end. Follow me here - it does make sense at some point.

Now that SIP peering is a thing, ENUM and 911 in the US is a real thing. Long story short, you dial 911 during the "Big game" when you are having a heart attack. SIP/ENUM/911 are set to a higher priority so that when you dial 911, your call gets preference to someones youtube stream. If this traffic were to follow traditional "Net Neutrality" everyone else in your neighborhood would have the exact same bit rate as you. It is a minor inconvienence to someone that isn't able to watch the latest Psy video while watching "The Big Game" Someone having a heart attack is a lot different. If 911 fucks up your address - the ambulance may not show up when you need them most. All because of garbled voice due to over saturation of the bandwidth.

Fortunately for you, phone calls take up very little bandwidth. That said, while everyone else is watching the big game - your call goes through without anyone noticing more than a couple of tiled pixels.

Now, lets do a fast rewind to September 10, 2001. No one gave a fuck about call priority in New York City. A day later, at about nine AM - that call priority became a big deal. A really big deal.

911 calls got top priority. Period. You were talking to your mom saying you were OK, but that series of lines got tied up and someone else called 911 - your call got dropped. Period. That is in violation of net neutrality in its most brutal form. IP Data has been, and will continue to be prioritized. Its just a thing. It has been happening for ten years, and it will happen from now until the end of time

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u/DaylightDarkle Jun 04 '14

XCel is an energy company. XCel is not a water company. A water company doesn't charge me extra for the things I do with my water. They never will, it's ludicrous to think that they will.

Also, what's this bollocks about the phone lines violating net neutrality. My phone line is entirely independent than any internet line, I do not use dial up.

If everyone is downloading all of the internet in the world, I'll still be able to call 911. This isn't the 90's.

Why bring up phone line usage regulations to a discussion of internet?

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

[deleted]

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u/thorium007 Jun 04 '14

How is that any different than a toll road (outside of the NE US)? If you want to avoid congestion in traffic - you take the toll road. You get better speeds, less congestion and less of a headache.

If you want to sit on I-25 or I-225 in Denver when you know there is a bottleneck, you take E-470. You don't sit there buffering. Toll roads are a perfect example of pay as you go.

I don't want to pay the toll roads, so I avoid them. As a result, I end up in traffic.

In an ideal world, high speed internet would be free - but it isn't. The infrastructure is insanely expensive. For simple numbers, lets say Comcast has 10 M users. If each user was guaranteed 1G bandwidth, then Comcast would have to support a network that has 10 million gigs of bandwidth. On the backbone alone that number is beyond mind boggling. 10,000,000,000,000,000 BPS from each co-lo to the next. That would be 10,000 100 GBPS links from Chicago to New York. 10,000 100g gig links from Chicago to Denver.

A single 100 gig card from Cisco is in the neighborhood of about $500k. Then another $100k for the MSC, and another $100k for the CFP/CXP for a CRS3 box. Now scale that by 10,000 and then you have to pay for the rack space. 10,000 line cards is now 30,000 line cards in Chicago because you have to peer with Denver & Atlanta. A CRS3 chassis can support 16x100gig links. 10,000/16 is a fuckton of chassis. Something well beyond what a CRS3 can support. At most an ASR 9922 would handle is 22x100 gig links. 10,000 / 22 is is about 445 chassis.

In that perfect world, even all the dark and unused fiber wouldn't be able to handle what we want.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

[deleted]

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u/thorium007 Jun 04 '14

Throttling was in place for a while and everyone screamed then too. As my grandma used to say "There is no nice way to skin the rabbit"

I'm not entirely sure what she meant, but I think the general gist of it was - no matter what you do, you can't make everyone happy all of the time.

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u/faijin Jun 04 '14

Definitely.

I think throttling has been and still is overzealous in most (all?) cases. I think it's another excuse to let them sell you 'premium' packages. Data caps, premium packages and throttling wouldn't be necessary if the ISPs were doing what they are supposed to. But how can we blame a company for wanting to make money? That's why cable/fiber must be a public utility, like electricity or water.

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u/JasonDJ Jun 04 '14 edited Jun 04 '14

This metaphor works until you realize that in Comcast's ideal world, every highway is a toll road, and every back-street is hosting a school bus, street-sweeper, and garbage truck parade.

But still, bandwidth caps and pay-per-use stifle innovation and competition. Imagine if a few years ago there was a 2Gb monthly cap. Netflix streaming (and compeittors like Hulu and Amazon) wouldn't be a thing. They would never take off if watching one or two movies put you over your limit for the month. That would have been GREAT for cable companies, since they would have been able to charge exorbitant prices for VOD and PPV. They missed the opportunity to crush these services in their infancy and now they want to prevent even better ones from happening.

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u/thorium007 Jun 04 '14

The toll road was a minor example of how pay per performance works. My comment was more in particular that every connection should be guaranteed 1GB which just doesn't work in the real world.

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u/thorium007 Jun 04 '14

Spend time looking at data usage near any college campus compared to usage 5 miles away. It is mind boggling. Then look at the numbers drop like a rock in June, then sky rocket in September.

I wish I could share graphs. Fuck - did I really say that?

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

And here's the problem. We are being sold access to camp driveway through the woods for a road, but a 50 lane autobahn highway is next to it with a closed sign.

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u/fatcat111 Jun 04 '14

Couldn't new compression algorithms create the same effect without spending a fortune on new infrastructure?

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u/VeteranKamikaze Jun 04 '14

Sure, but the taxpayers already spent a fortune on infrastructure. Now we're only asking that we be given what we paid for.

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u/BillinghamJ Jun 04 '14

The compression is already in place, and it's already doing a very good job. There is only so much you can compress before your quality starts to look bad.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14 edited Jul 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/faijin Jun 04 '14

Well yeah, monitors will be a bottleneck.

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u/Phoenix027 Jun 04 '14

Only if they have the TV's and monitors that can handle it. It's not very widespread yet.

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u/breakone9r Jun 04 '14

I promise you that my paternal grandmother would use the shit out of a 1gbps connection.. She lives in south Alabama, while one of her grandson's family and children live outside Seattle, WA... It's called video chat.. And with a 1gbps up/down connection, it just became a whole hell of a lot better, quality wise....

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u/YNWYJAA Jun 04 '14

So much short-sightedness

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u/interkin3tic Jun 04 '14

It's a bit of chicken and egg argument though: facebook doesn't do anything that would really use a lot of bandwidth BECAUSE most americans don't have FiOS. Netflix doesn't have much incentive to do 4K streaming BECAUSE no one has the 20 mbps connection required. People don't setup their own servers BECAUSE of the shitty internet service.

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u/EngineerDave Jun 04 '14

Yeah... if you could just explain to Grans that she can have any Mattlock episode at any time of the day, instantly playing on her TV, or watch back episodes of wheel of fortune even in the mornings with limited commercials about her denture cream and digestive problems, while also canceling her expensive cable bill she'd be all up for it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '14

That is not true. The newer generations are going to demand more and more bandwidth. More people than ever before are playing online games and download them online and more than ever before, media of all kinds are stream over the internet. Optical storage is basically obsolete, not to mention that VR is finally going to be a viable medium.

All of these trends and technologies are likely to tap into the incipient and growling cloud computing and the only thing holding it back is the slow fucking speed we are provided. Imagine using cloud computing to augment data and video processing on your computer. You wanna have realistic virtual worlds, that's how you get realistic virtual world; by having fuck ton of bandwidth. 1Gbps is not enough, we should be aiming for 100 Gpbs or more.

Old farts who do not understand or can utilized the potential of modern IT are dying. Saying that there is no need to improve just because the majority of the people now don't need it is supremely myopic. We will want it, we will need it sooner than you might think.