its a question i ask because it seems cable and dsl company's always say they will upgrade your access to a faster one but when you actually test it its not at all what they promised all the time .[/list]
Is faster acess to the internet need?
I guess we are referring about ADSL rather than DSL and construct this reply on that basis.
In answer to your question, I think Yes. Faster access to the internet is always needed. More speed gives us more bandwidth which gives us more opportunity to communicate the world over. Can we have too much bandwidth?
I think the problem you state re advertised speed and actual speed is a common one here in the UK. However the broadband providers can quite happily advertise the speeds they do because genuinelly in a best case scenario, that is what you will receive. Distance from your the exchange, line quality, your own internal wiring, contention etc etc can all have an effect on true speed and to be fair these factors are largely outside the control of each individual ISP. I think the crux of the problem lies with our insistence of running 21st century technologies on a 17th century (yes I know we didn't have telephone lines in the 1600's) network, then we will see improvements.
In answer to your question, I think Yes. Faster access to the internet is always needed. More speed gives us more bandwidth which gives us more opportunity to communicate the world over. Can we have too much bandwidth?
I think the problem you state re advertised speed and actual speed is a common one here in the UK. However the broadband providers can quite happily advertise the speeds they do because genuinelly in a best case scenario, that is what you will receive. Distance from your the exchange, line quality, your own internal wiring, contention etc etc can all have an effect on true speed and to be fair these factors are largely outside the control of each individual ISP. I think the crux of the problem lies with our insistence of running 21st century technologies on a 17th century (yes I know we didn't have telephone lines in the 1600's) network, then we will see improvements.
There are many other issues here. It's not just (or even mostly) an infrastructure issue. ISPs very often advertise a particular bandwidth (2meg 8 meg...whatever) knowing full well that the contention rates - ie the number of users on the same link (typically 50) will inevitably mean that those headline rates will never be achieved.
| Bikerman wrote: |
| There are many other issues here. It's not just (or even mostly) an infrastructure issue. ISPs very often advertise a particular bandwidth (2meg 8 meg...whatever) knowing full well that the contention rates - ie the number of users on the same link (typically 50) will inevitably mean that those headline rates will never be achieved. |
I agree, contention is a very apt contributing factor. I lot of broadband customers have no idea what contention is and ISPs could be far more responsibile by raising awareness of this.
More to the point, will The Grid become available to home users?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece
| DoctorBeaver wrote: |
| More to the point, will The Grid become available to home users?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece |
No time soon I fear. It requires completely new infrastructure. You would need optical fibre to the home - something which most users do not currently have. You would also need to replace most of the backbone routers on the internet - a very expensive job. It may gradually evolve, but I doubt we will see 'grid' speed internet access in the next few years.
High speed academic networks have been with us for some time - I used to have access to SuperJanet (the high speed Joint Academic Network) here in the UK - our connection was 10Mbit and that is 10 years ago...
Most of the cases we don't need a very high speed internet conneciton.
It's been a couple of years before I've had anything other than the 10MBit university connection at home, and I think that we always need something faster. Not entirely sure what The Grid is - a new network architecture or something a bit more - a 'neural net' of servers and very high speed connections?
But as mentioned the Internet is build on very old technology and these days has far surpassed the design expectations of when it was originally conceived. Eventually people will demand faster and faster speeds etc. and The Grid seems to be the logical successor (unless the US gets annoyed that a European based system is leading the way).
Eventually (distant future) I can see a situation where we don't have personal computers as now - we just have very high speed terminals that connect to a global network of powerful computers and they store all our data and run all our programs etc. Kinda going full circle.
David.
But as mentioned the Internet is build on very old technology and these days has far surpassed the design expectations of when it was originally conceived. Eventually people will demand faster and faster speeds etc. and The Grid seems to be the logical successor (unless the US gets annoyed that a European based system is leading the way).
Eventually (distant future) I can see a situation where we don't have personal computers as now - we just have very high speed terminals that connect to a global network of powerful computers and they store all our data and run all our programs etc. Kinda going full circle.
David.
| Bikerman wrote: |
|
High speed academic networks have been with us for some time - I used to have access to SuperJanet (the high speed Joint Academic Network) here in the UK - our connection was 10Mbit and that is 10 years ago... |
I remember that from Cambridge.
I must say that it amazes me that in Europe and the USA we're limited to, on average, 8Mb transfer rate; yet in South Korea 100Mb is not at all uncommon. So, who's got the technology these days!
it depends on what we put on the net, so far it looks like we need uber speeds to keep up with video and gaming sites.
so its up to us, if we want it faster we need less crap on the net etc
so its up to us, if we want it faster we need less crap on the net etc
I've got 28 ms lag on WoW as I type. My link is therefore plenty fast enough for my requirements (it's 4Mb/s).
But for a computer 28ms is a very long time - just think what else it could be doing while waiting a few million processor cycles? As I said eventually the data transfer networks will catch up with the internal processing speeds... but even then people will always want faster lol.
One of my businesses is putting music soundtracks on people's home videos. Most of the time my PC is downloading or uploading videos. Give me all the speed you can muster! 
I've learned in life that no matter how much power you have, you always need more.
No matter how much money you have, you always need more.
No matter how fast you can go, you need to go faster.
No matter how far you've explored, you need to go farther.
And no matter how hard you hit that cowbell, you always need more cowbell.
I faintly remember Bill Gates saying about three decades ago, "Why would anyone ever need more than 48K of memory?"
Respectfully,
M
No matter how much money you have, you always need more.
No matter how fast you can go, you need to go faster.
No matter how far you've explored, you need to go farther.
And no matter how hard you hit that cowbell, you always need more cowbell.
I faintly remember Bill Gates saying about three decades ago, "Why would anyone ever need more than 48K of memory?"
Respectfully,
M
| Moonspider wrote: |
| I've learned in life that no matter how much power you have, you always need more.
No matter how much money you have, you always need more. No matter how fast you can go, you need to go faster. No matter how far you've explored, you need to go farther. And no matter how hard you hit that cowbell, you always need more cowbell. I faintly remember Bill Gates saying about three decades ago, "Why would anyone ever need more than 48K of memory?" Respectfully, M |
not really, if you look at the current speeds like mine 4mbit, its small but at the same time if i only visit websites that use little or no resources i.e frihost (simple and effective) then i will never need faster speeds so its up to us, if we want more websites like youtube, more java etc then we will need faster speeds, but if we stick to simple then we don't.
also remember the net was not built for high end movie downloading, thats our fault as well.
Yes, we need a faster one. In fact, the situation would be better if the companies can provide at least the speed claimed in the ads and brochures. They will say you will get 512 kbps and when you test, its only around 300 kbps and most of the time below this mark. You can do nothing with this as they already got you signed in the service agreement which states that actual speeds may vary. But I have never seen it went higher than stated speed! Does variation occurs to the lower end only??
| vineeth wrote: |
| Yes, we need a faster one. In fact, the situation would be better if the companies can provide at least the speed claimed in the ads and brochures. They will say you will get 512 kbps and when you test, its only around 300 kbps and most of the time below this mark. You can do nothing with this as they already got you signed in the service agreement which states that actual speeds may vary. But I have never seen it went higher than stated speed! Does variation occurs to the lower end only?? |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP
| Bannik wrote: |
| also remember the net was not built for high end movie downloading, thats our fault as well. |
Is it not natural progression that we evolve the internet so that it becomes a ever more helpful tool?
| Bannik wrote: |
|
also remember the net was not built for high end movie downloading, thats our fault as well. |
It wasn't built for websites, images, audio, or nearly anything else we use today either. When it was first made, the main purposes were to 1) remotely control remote computers, 2) access (small) remote files, and 3) send text-only e-mail messages.
I would say that it is a very good thing that the system was able to grow past that, and continues to grow today. I just saw an ad for 15mbps home internet, which is 1.5 times faster than some LANs still running today!
Personally I would be perfectly happy with the 200 kbps down that I used to get when I first got my DSL. Since then the service has really gone to crap. Its almost as if the company decided to let their service get worse when broadband came out.
I used to be able to play online shooters with zero lag. Now I can't even play anymore because I get horrible lag spikes every fifteen seconds. My service also likes to stall a few times an hour but at least disconnects aren't as common as they were. There was a period where I would get disconnected at least every ten minutes.
Everyone, stay away from Bellsouth DSL. They're garbage and couldn't care less about customer satisfaction.
I used to be able to play online shooters with zero lag. Now I can't even play anymore because I get horrible lag spikes every fifteen seconds. My service also likes to stall a few times an hour but at least disconnects aren't as common as they were. There was a period where I would get disconnected at least every ten minutes.
Everyone, stay away from Bellsouth DSL. They're garbage and couldn't care less about customer satisfaction.
I'd say faster download speeds is more needed nowadays since every video on the net, except for youtube ones. are sd, enhanced or hd content.
Come to think of it though, there is currently a limit to how fast of an internet connection we need. The limit would be 1Gbps for each individual, because that would be the most bandwidth that their computers could (in the vast majority of cases) input. Faster speeds would still be needed for shared connections though.
The situation isn't helped, of course, by people using signatures which require 32,492 bytes just to transmit in terms of information - to which we add the TCP/IP overhead which brings it to about 50 kilobytes of data.
I believe firmly in the saying "when is too much enough?"
More speed?..................Hell yes !
More speed?..................Hell yes !
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