High Speed Broadband

[geon106]

I've noticed that many countries are speeding up their net speed for future demand.

In the UK, BT wishes to get up to 50Mbps down the copper wire phone lines whilst Virgin Media are looking to push their cable network up to 200Mbps, not bad tbh.

In Japan however they have speeds of 1Gbps <- Good, but how on earth would you use that? I mean Wireless would bottleneck it to 300Mbps on 802.11n and most websites only offer 100Mbps connections, only a selection go above that.

Just seems a waste.

I'm on 20Mbps connection at £30.50 a month(thats tv and phone too) so how expensive must 1Gbps be?


Just seems an unnessary waste of money

What do you all think? Would you pay for such a fast speed and do we really need it?

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

I think BT should of put in fibre optics instead of copper wire...
that's what I think. can't wait to move on again...

 

[ioxles]

Well, just recently here in Gibraltar (the giant organic robot of the Mediterranean) the company which has a monopoly over the phone lines has just recently decided to upgrade all our connections from 512 to 1MBPS, for free mind but still thats 24 pounds per month, just for internet.

FFS WTF.

 

[Low Key]

Bottlenecks might happen at 300Mbps with wireless, but technology is advancing so much in such a short amount of time, I can only imagine there will be a breakthrough at some point in time in the near future. I wish I had 1Gbps hardwired.

 

[Rednog]

With games requiring higher and higher speeds because of the increased amount of information being sent speeds need to always be high enough to meet demand. I personally would pay for it because I'm stuck in a country where people's average speed is 1-3 mbps and at night it drops to 56kbps. It is really rough considering I'm from the US where I'm used to 30mbps.

 

[TimeLord]

I think BT should of put in fibre optics instead of copper wire...

This is correct, Fibre Optic cables use glass instead of copper so less resistance traveling through, which is the problem with copper cables.

 

[kiteboy]

i get 75mbps... oh the wonders of uni internet connection. the dicks block torrents though.

 

[Dragonearl]

I think it hovers around the 2Mbps but I am not sure. Damn it though, Japan has awesome internet.

 

[similar.squirrel]

At the moment out in the sticks in rural Ireland the most we can get is 1Mb. It will hopefully be speeding up soon though.

I've heard vague rumours of fibre-optics being introduced here and there.
I also think somebody is hacking the Eircom servers or something. They've been shitting themselves with a monotonous regularity these past few weeks.

OT: What would we need a 1Gps connection for?One word [or a composite of two]. Onlive.

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

Australia lags so far behind....

I personally would like to see the bandwidth upgrade to match Japan. Then we could create games that require massive amounts of data transfer, as even now games tend to be using the same dimensions involving data flow that came into play during dial up. Most of the information is client side with only key points being filled in. All designed to keep the flow of data at a minimal, due to bandwidth limits that are no longer as restrictive as they where when such a system was put into place.

If we get faster connections we can start expanding the amount of data being transmitted to match. One day high physical elements, like collapsible terrain, in online games will become common place, flawless and follow physics better then the real world does. We need the bandwidth to transmit so complexly large flows of data in the gaming world alone.

 

[TheBarefootBandit]

My connection is alright but I'd prefer it if it was better. Just a little bit though. I'm not greedy.

 

[Jonatron]

I'm happy with my 10mbps. Virgin very kindly sent me a letter saying if I wasn't happy with my 2mbps, then I should go onto their site, fill out a form, then they'll bump it up to 10 for no extra charge.
The restricting factor is my computer, as far as video and speeds of web pages go.

 

[Lord George]

Theres a point where an internet speed becomes pointless, now I have a 2mb wireless connection and I function fine with that, I'd love (and hope soon) to have a faster connection but I don't think there's any reason I'd want a connection over 500mb.

 

[evilgenius134]

Fibre is required since it's not got the limitation of Copper, e.g one connection per wire. A fibe cable can support 1000s of connection and lines through something thinner than your hair.

Japan and Korea have 1GB internet but many people use 200MB to 500MB due to it being a waste. But they main thing for 1GB is that if you get SDSL you cna upload in seconds and it also allows you to download many concurrent connections. Imagine downloading 10s of games at the same time. If you plug ethernet on a dual link line you can get 2GB LAN connection to put it across rather than live with wireless.

A plugin for Firefox called downthemall can help use all your remaining bandwidth by downloading the file several times in different palces similar to a torrent.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

Hooray, I've got Virgin. Perhaps now my internet will actually make a concerted effort to work.

 

[evilgenius134]

Virgin.

Even on the 50MB fibre line assuming you have it prepare to get throttled from 6pm to 12pm to about 2MB to 8MB since Virgin make money selling massive speeds you only get at 5am to 8am.

 

[cjcool10]

Lol theres no point in saying they can send so much to people cos they need to upgrade a lot of the phone lines so they are able to get it,like atm all i can get is freaking 240kbps which is completely pants.

 

[Jamash]

I think BT should of put in fibre optics instead of copper wire...
that's what I think. can't wait to move on again...

Apparently in the 80's that was going to happen, the entire communications infrastructure of the UK was going to be upgraded to high speed fibre optics, but unfortunately all the money that had been put aside for it was spent on the Falklands War instead.

Yet another reason to hate Thatcher.

 

[Uncompetative]

Didn't they make Aspen Colorado have ridiculously fast free WiFi access and found that no one could max it out? Above a certain speed there wasn't any appreciable benefit? The "pipe" was as fat as it needed to be. This included video-streaming applications.

 

[evilgenius134]

That is one great use of multiple gigabit Internet speeds. It can allows entire cities to be connected wirelessly. Backbone lines that connect each region of the world up are 40GB each and these aren't maxed out at all. Cost isn't all that much. BE provide the UK with 24MB at 17 a month and they are regarded as one of the best high speed ISPs. The more companies that can offer it the faster the price drops.