[HN Gopher] What's the Point of Gigabit Broadband?
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What's the Point of Gigabit Broadband?
Author : edent
Score : 18 points
Date : 2020-12-10 13:27 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shkspr.mobi)
(TXT) w3m dump (shkspr.mobi)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| In Canada, it's an excuse for incumbents to drop the speed tiers
| that they're still required to let 3rd party providers re-sell.
| ehmmmmmmmm wrote:
| That's why I prefer to use the term "incompetents". Incumbents
| are always incompetent. We need to merge these two words.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I have gigabit up/down and it's honestly amazing to be able to
| push files into YouTube so quickly. I _mainly_ use it for
| download, but I'm considering hosting some services locally given
| how much extra bandwidth I have kicking around.
| jraph wrote:
| Host a PeerTube instance on this connection to be able to own
| your content :-)
|
| (unless your content is watched by too many people at the same
| time for this, of course)
| Kliment wrote:
| Backups that complete in minutes rather than tens of minutes.
| Zandikar wrote:
| Simple: to make your ISP money off of easier to hit bandwidth cap
| overage charges.
| pjs_ wrote:
| OneDrive shares + tons of image-heavy PowerPoint decks sometimes
| exceeding 500MB -> gratitude for fast internet :)
| nouveaux wrote:
| I think the game changer will come with IPv6 and faster upload
| speeds. This would make p2p sharing much more realistic without
| going through a big company.
|
| Currently, pictures and videos of my daughter are locked away on
| my devices. To share it with my mom, we have to go through a
| service. My mom should be able to browse these photos any time
| without Facebook and Google getting a copy of the data.
| dekhn wrote:
| I have AT&T gigabit fiber and it's been fantastic. 4 people in a
| house, streaming and doing other work at the same time, SSH
| sessions are still completely interactive. Nothing seems to
| interfere with anything else.
|
| I write large backups to S3 using hundreds of simultaneous
| threads, getting close to the theoretical limit of the link.
|
| Ive noticed that sometimes on Friday evenings, streaming from my
| friend's server (a few states away on a different ISP) can get
| slow, not clear where the congestion is.
| qz2 wrote:
| Torrents!
| [deleted]
| locusofself wrote:
| I pay $38/mo for 50mbps in Redmond, WA. I've never felt like I
| needed more, wife and I stream netflix, I download stuff
| occasionally. it's reliability and latency that matter more to me
| for sure.
| pre wrote:
| My band haven't really been able to get into a room together
| since about March, mostly it's not even been legal but even
| during the time when it was legal we figured it was probably
| inadvisable.
|
| So we've been trying to do it online.
|
| And then decided it might be worth trying to perform online, with
| each of us in different rooms around the city.
|
| I'm taking a video-feed from four different people, and audio
| feeds from six different audio-sources, mixing them and then
| pushing that out as a member of a video-chat with dozens of other
| people.
|
| So I was kinda glad of my half gig symmetric.
|
| I think I'd have needed the full gig if we were a twelve-piece
| band, say.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Theory: each internet user should be able to host their own
| content and be an equal citizen of the web, so to speak. Our own
| web, media, email (though blocked by ISPs) etc.
|
| More real: Cloud backups of data in quick time (uploading),
| realtime video streaming, and quick file downloads for things
| like games and whatnot.
| voltagex_ wrote:
| Hah, one of the fastest residential connections in Australia is
| 1000/50. Certainly faster than the 8/1 I used for years, but
| upload is the bottleneck.
| nopeNopeNooope wrote:
| More than one person and one 4K TV in the same house?
| bytematic wrote:
| I just do it for the low latency. It's incredible how quick
| requests are made and answered.
| virtuallynathan wrote:
| Only Gigabit? I'm holding out for 10G!
|
| I've got 47 devices on my network and 2 roommates.
| Mo3 wrote:
| How are you owning 15+ active devices per person?
| ketralnis wrote:
| I live with one other person but I'll exclude their stuff:
|
| * work laptop * desktop * phone * alexa * tv * nintendo
| switch * roomba * raspberry pi I use for retro games * an
| ancient android tablet I use to play spotify * a more modern
| android tablet I use for web browsing in bed * a e-ink reader
| * 3 wemo plugs
|
| That's 14
|
| * support wifi that I don't use: tv, instant pot, washing
| machine, garage door opener, a gopro-type camera, thermostat
| * I don't have wifi security cameras but lots of people in my
| area do
|
| I'm probably forgetting things, especially things that
| support wifi if I wanted them to
| bluedino wrote:
| Do roombas and thermostats use much bandwidth?
| beastman82 wrote:
| No
| Mo3 wrote:
| That's insane, but does make sense. I can't relate, I live
| with my girlfriend and all we have is:
|
| My laptop
|
| Her laptop
|
| My phone
|
| Her phone
|
| TV/Chromecast
|
| Never felt the need for dedicated devices just for
| music/browsing
| coddle-hark wrote:
| I'd love 10G just for nerd points but even if they built it out
| where I live the equipment is still too loud (!) and expensive.
| You're basically running a small data enter at that point.
| coddle-hark wrote:
| There's no "killer app" for a gigabit connection but it does
| speed up some things you already do:
|
| - Backups
|
| - System updates
|
| - Game patches
|
| - Torrents
|
| Having all those things be 10x faster than a 100mbit connection
| is nice. It's a luxury, but it's a nice luxury.
|
| For me it had the secondary effect of making me buy a decent home
| router and access point since my old Time Capsule couldn't handle
| more than ~500mbit/s. As a result my connection is much better
| overall now.
| wnevets wrote:
| Downloading video games legally on steam, ps5, gog, etc. For
| example Cyberpunk 2077 was released today at ~100GB and this
| trend of triple A titles having massive file sizes isn't going
| away anytime soon.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Say you wanted to publish/livestream video and decent cd-quality
| audio, like live-streaming your band rehearsals. Does that even
| get you close to needing gigabit? I can't think of a setup that
| wouldn't mix it down to one stereo stream before hitting the net.
|
| Although that'd be pretty cool to be able to publish/livestream
| your stems and multiple video angles.
| bluedino wrote:
| CD-quality audio is only 1.411Kbps
| Xamayon wrote:
| It's incredibly beneficial to not be limited, even if downloading
| from multiple fast servers simultaneously. At the moment it's not
| something most users 'need', sure, but increased speed can also
| help with things like load times, latency, and congestion as long
| as the rest of the path can keep up. Additionally, as a power
| user, it sure is nice to be able to go 'oh, hey, a local copy of
| the latest common crawl sure would be useful for that project...'
| and actually be able to accomplish such insanity in a reasonable
| period of time. With gigabit, you can even stream like normal
| while downloading at 80-90 megabytes a second! Biggest problem
| becomes where to put it all...
| kobalsky wrote:
| the simple reality is that the real uses for gigabit, beyond
| speeding up downloads or servicing many tenants, won't be seen
| until there's higher adoption.
|
| youtube couldn't have existed in a pre-broadband era, even if a
| few were rocking T3 connections.
|
| the question is what doesn't exist now? we gotta build it.
| nodesocket wrote:
| I have Google Fiber at my house which when hardwired can get
| around 930Mbps up and down (server rack). Wifi on the other hand,
| while my setup is highly tuned and multiple Ubiquiti UniFi nanoHD
| access points, clients max out around 350-500Mbps on WiFi. My
| biggest use is downloading xBox games, steam games, and Microsoft
| Flight Simulator (a massive 127 GB).
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Our house has two adults and three kids working/schooling from
| home. Lots of videoconferencing, plus streaming Netflix, Disney+
| etc. to entertain the goobers when the adults are still trying to
| get some work done. Very thankful for gigabit FIOS!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I know many people where grandparents live with the kids and
| grandkids, and each person may be streaming HD video, and each
| person has their laptop and mobile devices being synced and
| backed up constantly.
|
| There could easily be 10 to 20 concurrent HD video and data
| backup streams happening. Plus the security cameras are
| uploading.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I've been asking the same questions for a long time. 100mbps was
| fine for me, and I upgraded to 200mbps last week (speed tests at
| 240/240 or so). I occasionally download games, and I run a
| webserver in my basement. My computing hasn't gotten meaningfully
| better, and I doubt it would with gigabit.
| svaha1728 wrote:
| The last place I lived at had Google Fiber. Now I live in an area
| where I am stuck on 200 Mbps.
|
| Telecommuting, it's a whole different animal. Upload speeds are
| more like 6 Mbps, which bottlenecks when my wife and I have
| meetings at the same time.
|
| It's a first world problem for sure, but coaxial cable is a
| 'deprecated technology' imo. Glass fiber cable is the way to go.
| I understand why a typical consumer might not care.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's unbelievable that upload bandwidth isn't even communicated
| in marketing these days.
|
| People have been uploading video and photos for a decade now.
| merb wrote:
| actually copper is at least not dead, since in short ranges it
| might have a better latency.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I also moved from near gigabit to ~200 Mbps. Can't tell any
| difference at all for download.
|
| But going to 20 Mpbs upload is somewhat annoying. I think
| something like 50/50 or 100/100 Mbps is much more important
| than gigabit.
|
| Especially since, what, 2% of households are probably networked
| to actually use gigabit.
| olyjohn wrote:
| It's not the medium that's the problem. DOCSIS 3.1 and 4 are
| capable of 10 gigs down. DOCSIS 3.1 is good for 2 gigs up and
| DOCSIS4 capable of 6 gigs up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS#Comparison
|
| The reason you're getting 6 megs up is because of your ISP. And
| that's the reason your connection sucks, not the 200 down. For
| anything but large downloads, the difference between 200 down
| and 1000 down would probably not even be noticeable.
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(page generated 2020-12-10 23:00 UTC)