100 megabits? That's IT? Seriously, FCC?

[FourScore]

100 megabits? That's IT? Seriously, FCC?
by fractal
Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 05:45:03 AM PDT

The internet revolution changed the whole face of the media, but as Al Gore said in 2000, the Internet needs a major upgrade.

Speed. Upload speed especially = freedom.

The more upload speed each of us has, the more freedom we have to communicate with the rest of the world.

If we each had a fast enough speed, for example, we wouldn't have to worry about counting on somebody like let's say youtube to host our videos, because we would have enough ability all by ourselves, from our own computers, to allow millions to watch anything we made.

A site like DailyKos would be easily able to run on a home server and bandwidth would not be an extra cost at all.

The paltry 100 Megabit per second speed that the FCC says it wants to see the country achieve in TEN YEARS from now, is so slow that there are already other countries with millions of users at those speeds today. We can do so so much better.

How disappointing to see the FCC set such a low low low goal for our internet speeds in 10 years.

Even today, we could already have TERABIT per user speeds using a fiber network with the new 322 Terabit Cisco routers, and the new pcs that manufacturers would immediately develop to take advantage of the new faster speeds. One router per 1000 people or so would be fine, and these things cost less than a traffic light.

We already have much of the fiber necessary.

I'm just sad that they have set the bar so very low. so low, indeed, that the 100mbit speed is already something many other countries have TODAY... and to hope to have that in TEN YEARS? seriously? come on guys. think BIGGER... we should IMMEDIATELY do at least the GIGABIT UP/DOWN that Google wants to offer, and move rapidly faster from there.

Where is the challenge to good old American Ingenuity? When JFK Set a goal of landing on the moon and safely returning by 1969, we had to invent whole entire new technologies, that never existed before that. We had to figure out how to get a computer that was the size of a minivan down to under the size of a basketball. We got the microprocessor out of that by the way...

MORE AT:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/18/847381/-100-megabits-Thats-IT-Seriously,-FCC

[ananda]

1. That IS pretty sad..

.. when we could think in terabits instead.

[hobbit709]

2. There's still large chunks of the US with only dialup available

100mbbs would seem like lightspeed to them.

That would be 40X faster than what I have now.

[snooper2]

3. people writing about crap they no nothing about...

:eyes:

This person has obviously never bought a GIG-E line card for a Cisco router....

"and these things cost less than a traffic light" :rofl:

[hobbit709]

6. double that

:rofl: :rofl:

[snooper2]

7. And that's just for the chassis

not to mention the line cards, maint. contracts each year, licensing, (and we are talking just one router here)

[Statistical]

18. +1000.

Terrabit to the home would not only be expensive it would be stupid.

[htuttle]

31. Depends on what kind of traffic light

Sure, you can get a standalone flashing yellow for under $100 (battery powered, etc...). However, some of the higher tech traffic lights cost upwards of $50K-100K when you include installation.

Here's a few links I just dug up:

AZ DOT on traffic signals (says they cost about $80K-100K)
http://www.azdot.gov/Highways/traffic/Signal.asp

Pedestrian advocacy group says they cost around $40K
http://www.transalt.org/files/campaigns/nsn/trafficcalming.html

City of Palmdale, CA says they can cost about $150K-$120K
http://www.cityofpalmdale.org/departments/traffic/pamp_6.html


I know routers are expensive (having bought a few of them), but a lot of traffic lights are a lot more expensive than people realize.

[eppur_se_muova]

41. Thanks, I was about to say ... nt

[Statistical]

47. Cisco routers are also more expensive than people realize.

Teh CRS-3 starts at $100K with switching fabric of 1.2 Tbps.
The often quoted 322 Tbps model is 16 racks and 1100 slots. It runs about $20 million depending on options, installation, and maintenance contracts.

[htuttle]

52. And if there was hicap fiber available everywhere...

...they could plug the traffic lights INTO the routers, and installation would get a lot cheaper.

[Blue_Tires]

58. i'd set it up in my garage and run a line to my Dell from 2002

the $20 million? just send the bill to the phone company...

lol

[yodoobo]

60. I think terrabit routers and traffic cost more than folks think

The Cisco CRS3 loadeded up with high end line cards will run in the millions.

[Renew Deal]

66. I agree

The person that wrote that is clueless

[FarCenter]

4. What would you use a Tbit/s to the home for?

High definition 3-D video would be around 25 to 30 Mbit/s.

[nebenaube]

13. How about more than four concurrent users viewing it...

despite the fact that there are very few consumer level uses for such an application.

[FarCenter]

17. At a Tbit/s, you could watch 30,000 channels simultaneously

At 33 Mb/s per channel, you can get:
3 channels at 100 Megabit/second
30 channels at 1000 Megabit/second (i.e. at 1 Gigabit/second)
30,000 channels at 1,000,000 Megabit/second (i.e. at 1 Terabit/second)

Note that the new Cisco router is intended for use in the core of the Internet Service Provider's network so that it can deliver video channels to many customers individually. This will allow full video-on-demand operation so that customers can watch what they want, when they want, instead of the Cable TV approach of delivering a fixed menu of channel to every home at the same time.

Cable TV uses a very high bit rate to the home, because the set top box selects from among the fixed set of channels.

True video-on-demand only requires enough bit rate to the home to support the channels the customer is actually viewing.

Wireless delivery to the home may actually be much more economical than fiber to the home if wireless develops to the point where about 100 Mb/s can be delivered to each home.

[retread]

23. Just because we can't imagine the apps doesn't mean there won't be a need. Most

of the stuff today was not imagined in the days of 28.8.

[Statistical]

26. Actually they were imagined.

Terrabit is simply a stupid massive wasteful amount of bandwidth to send to every home.
A terrabit is 1,000,000 Mbps.

Flawless HD 1080p is about 25Mbps (roughly 40,000 times the proposed bandwidth of the OP).
Even if you ran a Terrabit connection to a home you couldn't use it. I mean your computer physically couldn't operate fast enough to use it.

[retread]

33. I imagine access to that amount of bandwidth is decades away.

Decades from now quantum computers could be ubiquitous.

[RKP5637]

50. Please see my post #48. Thanks n/t

[EOTE]

35. But once you install 1,000 gigabit Ethernet adapters, just think of the porn you could download!

You could download the complete works of Jenna Haze in a few milliseconds! No more waiting around seconds, or sometimes even minutes to get the porn a healthy man needs. We're talking about truly on demand porn. The future is a very bright place indeed.

[FarCenter]

30. In the late '80s there was a lot of planning around multiple 622 Mb/s channels to the home

At the time, high-definition video was sent using relatively low amounts of signal compression. This was due to the thought that CMOS integrated circuits were not fast enough to do the complex calculations required for higher factors of video compression.

However, as time passed, and Moore's law continued, it became apparent that CMOS at line widths below 135 nanometers would enable the design of programmable video processors that could reconstruct video signals from which both intra and inter frame redundancy had been removed. Thus, the requirement for really high bit rates for video was removed.

[Ignis]

39. Agreed. If you build it, they will stream.

:thumbsup:

[RKP5637]

51. Quite true. In fact we already have 100mb here. Please see my post #48. Thanks. n/t

[yodoobo]

61. We don't need to know right now

That kind of capacity, or even a fraction of it will drive applications and needs that we haven't even thought of yet.

I well remember when 1200bps was incredibly fast compared to my 300bps modem. When it looked like 9600bps might be possible I remember thinking "no way can any individual effectively use 10 kilobits per second"

Heck. The DU home page would take about an hour to load using the speeds I was using in 1980.

[jdlh8894]

5. Oh,yeah

"The need for speed!" :evilgrin:

[FormerDittoHead]

8. Comcast has my uploads capped at ~100*K*

I personally don't think most people get the "upload / download" thing. Downloading is what you did when you clicked on this.

UPLOADING is when YOU *SEND* information. Information like pictures, audio or video.

My Comcast UPLOAD speed is about twice that of DIAL UP.

For example, I have videos of my boys and in order to send them over the 'tubes' I have to break them down into like 3 minute pieces of the quality suitable for a cell phone.

NOTE: Comcast strictly forbids running servers off of home PC's.

Once I get a new (big) TV I'll be making the switch to Verizon FIOS and look forward :sarcasm: to them screwing up my bill, as that seems to be THEIR problem...

[EOTE]

28. 100K is significantly faster than dialup. More like 15x.

Keep in mind that the K in 100K is capitalized, meaning that it refers to kilobytes, not kilobits. Those old school 56k modems are a 56 kilobit connection. As there are 8 bits in a byte, that 100K upload is around 15 times faster than the fastest dialup.

[FormerDittoHead]

64. I'm sorry - BITS not BYTES - 100k - I capitalized for emphasis.

It takes *HOURS* to upload a 400 meg video of my boy's birthday party to my website.

It takes about 5 minutes to download that much.

[EOTE]

65. Wow, that's pretty crummy of Comcast.

For most internet browsing/downloading, I guess that won't affect you that much. However, I imagine they cap the uploads so restrictively because torrenting software goes by an upload to download ratio, so they're limiting your download speed (in terms of torrenting) by limiting your upload speed. My uploading is capped at not such a low number, but when I visit my folks who have FIOS (uncapped upload, a few megabits I believe), my torrents download insanely fast. Hopefully Comcast will stop restricting bandwidth so much as FIOS becomes more widely available.

[Occulus]

36. They do that so you can't violate copyrights by sharing files.

THAT is what the slow speeds are all about. With superfast speeds, they would not be able to exert any control over content from an intellectual property standpoint.

[RKP5637]

9. Apparently none want to see the US approach being a real world leader again, so sad. In

10 years maybe we can be where some others are today in speeds. When I was a kid we had JFK leading the vision for the future.

[DCBob]

10. Why such huge bandwidth? Most people dont need it.

Email, chatting, and standard posting on forums and facebook requires minimal bandwidth. Video, music and fancy online adverts require a big tube. I can do without that.

[nebenaube]

15. How about?

How about real two-way web cam use over long distances with out the audio latency issues?

[Statistical]

19. You can do that with 2-3 Mbps. 1,000,000 Mbps would be stupid overkill. n/t

[Occulus]

37. Server-side video rendering for gaming

so you don't need two video cards and a quad-core processor to play Crysis online with everything maxed out.

Dedicated game servers running in parallel with the client software so you can run your own 64-player map and still play it, on the same PC, without lag.

MMOs that are client-hosted rather than server-hosted (ex.: running your own WoW server with thousands of people connected).

[Statistical]

42. There is no free lunch.

If you need dual video cards + quad-core CPU locally then you will need it remotely to render on server.

Those seem very silly and trivial uses for a massive increase in broadband throughput.

I am all for faster broadband I would love to get a 100mpbs symmetrical connection for <$50 a month.

However what is more important is penetration not throughput.

Only 60% of Americans have broadband access. Getting that up to 80%-90% first is more important.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. WOW! I just can't wait for another 200 million servers...

out there with every video ever made of cute babies, slobbering frat boys, and hilarious Uncle Max falling on a garden rake at the 4th of July barbecue.

And all those cats! An hour of more and better videos before I can order a $20 gadget online!

And downloading every movie ever made just because I can.

We are desperate for this! We need this!

[Tsiyu]

16. More! Better! Faster!

Before the Russians get 'em!

Er...the Chinese...!!!!

or whomever we're supposed to be "better than" this week!!!!!!!!

:freak:

[NashVegas]

25. + 85

Don't forget to mention how necessary it is to send and receive propaganda all day long.

[matt819]

12. Well said

Up here in New England, a small NC company, Fairpoint, purchased Verizon's residential service last year with the commitment that within 5 years they would provide DSL service to 85% of New Hampshire. Think about that. The commitment was to provide an antiquated technology to less than the entire population of one of smallest populated states in the nation, and to do this by 2014. What a joke.

Granted, despite the small population, NH has appalling terrain for wireless services and sparsely populated areas that make expansion of even the pathetic DSL service costly. Here's my experience:

-- DSL not available.
-- Satellite available at roughly $100 per month but throttles back due to its antiquated fair use policy.
-- Wireless ISP was available at $50 per month, but they eventually pulled out due to technical and financial issues.
-- Cable not available, which is an entirely separate issue (towns in NH sign individual contracts with cable providers but don't require them to provide ubiquitous service, ruling out rural users).

What I ended up doing was getting a home-based cell service at $200/month. The service is fine enough for me, sometimes hitting T1 speeds on download. But, again, this is pitiful compared to what's available in urban areas and in other parts of the US, to say nothing of overseas. And I'm paying probably 3-5 times more than my fellow citizens in those places.

Yes, there is a digital divide, and the so-called ambitious plan from the FCC will not resolve this problem and will create additional speed lags behind other countries in the coming decades.

[FarCenter]

20. Wireless will be your best bet long term

Running wires and coax and fiber in the climate and terrain of northern New England to serve sparsely populated areas was a losing proposition. Which is why Verizon pulled out, but Verizon Wireless did not.

[retread]

27. What are VZW's plans for building out LTE in sparsely populated areas? 3G is easy

when the infrastructure is already in place.

[FarCenter]

32. "Verizon will take 4G LTE to rural areas"

I don't know how reliable this source is. I'd think that at least some areas of New Hampshire would be good places to deploy, given that people are unhappy with Fairpoint and cable.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/02/verizon-will-take-4g-lte-to-rural-areas

Verizon will take 4G LTE to rural areas

By Brad Sams, 02 April 2009 - 14:03 20 comments

Verizon has plans to deploy 4G on a scale that has never been seen or experienced. Currently Verizon is known for its outstanding coverage and large 3G service areas and they have no plans to give up that reputation anytime soon.

"The licenses we bought in the 700MHz auction cover the whole U.S.," Melone said. "And we plan to roll out LTE throughout the entire country, including places where we don't offer our CDMA cell phone service today."

The upcoming LTE service may be the best chance for high speed internet access to those who live out in rural places that do not have the option for cable or DSL services. Verizons target for LTE is to hit 20-30 markets by the end of 2010 and expect a faster adoption rate in the years following.

[snooper2]

38. Ethernet over serial is another option...

:)

[Statistical]

24. "Satellite available ... but throttles back due to its antiquated fair use policy"

Nothing antiquated about FUP.

People forget the sat needs to be put into space and has finite amount of bandwidth.

Sat will remain slower and more expensive than landline forever. As time goes forward landlines and cellular wireless will continue to double in terms of bits/$$$ however sat won't.

If you can figure out how to cut launch costs by 90% (while still having 90%+ reliability) then sat will be reduced in cost.

Without FAP a 1 Mbps sat link (true 1 Mbps down/1Mbps up) costs about $10,000 per month.

[sea four]

14. Baby steps...

That's a lot better than most people have now, at least.

My internet is only 1.5. Some people have even slower connections than that.

[Romulox]

21. People sleep in the streets in this country; nobody wants to subsidize your bit torrent.

[Greyhound]

56. But don't you think that it's the same influence behind this and the other?

Both are about progress denied to enrich the very few beyond any measure of reason.

Like so many other fields, we invented and developed it for everybody, and it was taken away and given to the few.

Raygun took the social safety net (inadequate to begin with), our industry, and our independent farmers, and gave it all to Wall Street/MIC.

Clinton took the new economy/IT industry that was re-creating the middle class, locked it up, and gave it to the parasites, effectively killing our last hope at any remotely egalitarian society.

It's the constant deprivation of all for over 30 years to benefit the few that creates both of these problems, isn't it?

[msongs]

22. take interent out of corporate hands and make it a PUBLIC utility asap nt

[hex29a]

29. Yeah, let the Post Office run it

:scared:

[Romulox]

34. Nonsense. Just mandate that everybody buy super-duper fast internet from private corps.

:shrug:

[jtrockville]

45. I like your solution, msongs. nt

[daggahead]

40. I've heard that people in Europe ...

Have access to fiber-optic networks in their homes, instead of the crap that AT&T gives us.

[Statistical]

43. I heard that in the United States we have fiber optic to the home. n/t

[jtrockville]

44. Those of us lucky enough to have Verizon's FiOS do, but that's it.

From what I've read, Verizon isn't building out FiOS beyond what they're already contractually committed to via Tee Vee Franchise Agreements.

Why is our broadband policy tied to television delivery anyway? It's a very bizzare setup.

[Statistical]

46. $$$. Why sell a $50 product when you can sell 3 products (TV, internet, phone) for $100?

Sad but that is the reality.

Still my point was the statement "Europe has fiber optic" has no more validity than the United States has fiber optic. Plus coax is good for gigabit internet anyways. Right now about 500mps is wasted on analog cable. As analog cable goes away cable companies will have more capacity for higher speed bandwidth. Fiber is nice but it isn't required for last mile.

[jtrockville]

59. That makes sense for providers, but regulations shouldn't be based on TV

As it is now, there isn't really any framework in place for "dumb pipe" providers. The only way to build through a Tee Vee franchise.

[Statistical]

62. I agree 100%. The reality is TV and phone is simply a form of data.

In 30-40 years there will be no distinction (at least no meaningful one) between Cox Cable and Verizon Communications. They will both be in the digital pipe business.

Regulators have been very slow at accepting this change.

In a perfect world the company who sells the pipe would be prohibited from selling anything else. Essentially you would pay Verizon, or AT&T, or xyz communications for a pipe to the house (wireless, fiber optic, coax, or Ethernet). They would simply provide a pipe (like water pipe). Then you would purchase services (phone, internet, TV, movies, alarm system monitoring, etc) from 3rd parties.

In an even more perfect world the company providing the pipe is actually a public utility.

It likely will never happen but it would eliminate most problems with digital services.

[RKP5637]

49. Please see my post #48. We have it here. Thanks. n/t

[Renew Deal]

67. It's available in the US mostly from Verizon.

In fact, I think it's their standard in wired areas.

[RKP5637]

48. We already can get 100mb lines into the homes here. SureWest has deployed Cisco Catalyst 4510 ...

So I don't find the article too outrageous. And in 10 years the load on the net could well be far greater.

SureWest has deployed Cisco Catalyst 4510 and 6509 switches to enable delivery of these advanced video services. The Catalyst 4510 switches (providing 1550/1310 bi-directional single-fiber connectivity) deliver 100MB bi-directional Ethernet to SureWest's residential customers. The Catalyst 4510 switches are located in remote cabinets in residential neighborhoods and are connected to a primary hub housing Catalyst 6509 switches. The uplink connection is currently Gigabit Ethernet, but as deployment densities increase, both the Catalyst 4510 and Catalyst 6509 switches will be upgraded to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The primary hubs are connected upstream to the primary core locations, which also house Catalyst 6509 switches.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2005/prod_090905c.html

[Statistical]

54. 100Mbps is one thing, 1 Tbps is another.

The OP is indicating the 100mps is a bad goal because we "should" have terrabit.

1 Tbps = 1000 Gbps = 1,000,000 Mbps (roughly 10,000x faster than your already fast connection).

Rather than stupidly trying to deploy terrabit to the home it would make more sense to make sure MORE Americans (penetration) have access to reliable highspeed internet (20mpbs- 100mbps). At the same time ensuring the internet backbone is upgraded to be able to handle that level of "last mile" speeds.

[RKP5637]

57. I agree, when you look at the country as a whole, so many areas are so woefully

inadequate, that "...it would make more sense to make sure MORE Americans (penetration) have access to reliable highspeed internet (20mpbs- 100mbps). At the same time ensuring the internet backbone is upgraded to be able to handle that level of "last mile" speeds."

[boston bean]

53. I laughed when I read that too. nt

[Greyhound]

55. Well, you wouldn't want to upset the system, would you?

I mean, that'd be disruptive to COMMERCE, don'tcha know.

[jmowreader]

63. I'm going to take issue with this

Not everyone needs his or her own personal video server. 99.999 percent of the people on the Internet are not creative enough to make the kind of videos that would draw people to it. And even if people did make this content, how would you find it?

[Renew Deal]

68. The person that wrote that is clueless.

100mb is a huge pipe, especially for a home. It's much bigger than what most people have now.

[high density]

69. 100mbps seems like a sane, doable target

Other countries likely have a much smaller geographical footprint to deploy under with a higher population density.

What the OP is proposing is like planning a mission to Saturn instead of the moon.