Cable Modems to be 1000x faster in 2008
 

Sounds good... bring it on. I have Comcast internet and it's generally been very good. But yesterday we had about a 6 hour outage. I finally gave up trying to contact customer service after getting a busy signal 7 or 8 times... it was obvious that I wasn't the only one having a problem...

We know they have the means, but where is the will? They are going to give us as little as they can. I would switch to Verizon FIOS if it were locally available.

same here: shame it's only in florida and california (or something like that).

I'm doubting that they hit a %1000 percent. Maybe 500 percent but I'd take either.

Even 100% increase would be unbelieveable! I get 3.5 megs downloads sometimes....7 megs would be awesome and just about enough to stream DVD movies.

Introducing Internet 2 - the next generation internet
 

There is a technology currently being used by colleges called Internet 2. Apparently it was developed by Georgia Tech in Atlanta but is used across universities to move huge amounts of data. I just saw a local news story on Tech students being in trouble for apparently using it to download media, songs, etc., illegally. It was said that this technology allows the ability to download a DVD movie at DVD quality in about 30 seconds. Uhhh, that changes everything.

<<<-- Originally posted by Christopher C. Murphy : ... just about enough to stream DVD movies. -->>>

At that time you'll need to stream HD-DVD movies, so it's still gonna take same or more time :)

RE FIOS: Check their user agreement. It bars the hosting of "servers" of any kind. That means no web servers, rtsp servers, VNC servers..... What good is the uplink bandwidh if you can't use it?

But then they give you a free website on their servers. A whopping 10 Mbyte. How many seconds of video is that?

<<<-- Originally posted by A. J. deLange : What good is the uplink bandwidh if you can't use it? -->>>

Seems like a better question would be "What good is the uplink bandwidth if it's being hogged by a bunch of streaming video servers" ;-)

That certainly would be their point of view: "We must protect our resources". Mine is that if they are going to take your money based on an offer of 2 mbps uplink then your use of 2 mbps up isn't hogging - it's using what you have paid for. Dangling 2 mbps in front of the consumer - most of whom are scarcely sophisticated enough about networking to understand - and then disallowing use of it is, IMO, deceptive advertizing.

The cable suppliers generally have the same language in their user agreements, BTW. The means that they use to prevent hosting of servers are easily and widely surmounted so it's really a question of whether or not they decide to enforce this provision of the agreement. Problem is that they can pull the rug out from under you at will at any time they want and you have agreed to it. Remember that "servers" do lots of things. If you use Fugu or FTP to get a file off your machine at home onto your machine at work you are using a server. If you have a web cam or security cam at home that you check from time to time while away you are using a server. If you VNC or Telnet or SSH into you machine for any purpose at any time you are using servers on your machine.

It is not entirely deceptive...all ISPs have a "reasonable use" clause, meaning you are entitled to transfer a certain (not necessarily fixed) amount of traffic. Beyond that, your connection may be cut or throttled. This is done so the small fraction of users who use the most bandwidth do not effectively steal the bandwidth (which is a pooled resource, after all) from the other users.

If it said that the uplink bandwidth was 2mbps and that for my $39.95 a month I could transfer so many gbit after which I would be charged so much more per gbit I would be fine with that but it doesn't. It says no servers of any kind.

Just thought of another kind of server: rtp - the basis for VOIP. How do we suppose Verizon feels about VOIP?

Just an update to this thread...I've been getting over 6 megs a second on Comcast for a while now.

I'm able to stream Apple's HD trailers in real time!

And an update from northern Va.: Verizon installed FIOS in my neighborhood. The response of the cable company (Cox) was to mail everyone a new cable modem and upgrade service to 5 mbps down, 2 mbps up for the same price. And they deliver these rates. So despite my all my whining FIOS did turn out to be a great benefit to me!

A.J. Where do you live? I live in FairLakes and I haven't heard of this. So there is a faster modem that cox is giving out for free to it's customers??

A.J. - yes, it was a benefit...you got upgraded for free!! It's about time the 1996 Telecom act pays off!

Yes, we have used Internet 2 (I2) for several years doing things like
'distance collaboration', where we've piped live video and audio to
remote locations. For example: Dancers in my studio appear hundreds lof miles away as giant projections behind another dance company at
Columbia University.

Recently we linked up with The New World Symphony out of Miami, FL.
Using a new technology called DTVS, we are now able to take the
firewire output of a camera, tape deck or CPU, and with a big enough
'pipe', funnel DV (with full res. audio) back an forth with something under
a 250 mil. seconds of latency.

Greg, I live near Fairlakes also (very close to hwy 29 just east of the parkway and West Ox road).
FIOS is not available at this time (Verizon were the first ones I called when I moved in). But I did opt for the speed upgrade from Cox that give me up to 15MB down and 2MB up and it appears to be working great. Don't need FIOS for now. I am currently using my own DLink cable modem to save money each month. Skype and Festoon work great on it too.

BTW, nice to meet you, I just moved out to Fairfax from Arlington. Maybe we could get together and talk shop? Have you eaten at the Crab House yet?

Whoa James, that's some screaming bandwidth! I've got to find out if any local libraries have that around here!

RE: What is FIOS? Well the F stands for Fiber and that's about as far as I go. It is Verizons home fiber optic service.

Note that 300 MByte in 20 minutes is 2 Mbps. I'm guessing the limitation is in your wireless connection - not the T3.

Upstream Speed
 

I cant really see how, the internet as a whole can be speeded up any further untill ALL the telephone infastructure AROUND the world is replaced with high bangwidth technology. The old copper wires where never intended for that kind of bandwidth. Any telecom engineers lurking in these forums could please shed some light on this matter?

Anhar

James,

Yes, and that's the speed I get from cable in the up direction.

Anhar,

Think of the internet as a big river with tributaries with the tributaries being fed by creeks. The river is the internet backbone using the latest and greatest broad band communications methods with tons of throughput capacity. The tributaries which feed the big river have less capacity and some of the creeks less still. But some of the creeks are larger than others and as long as I have broadband and can reach a tributary with enough bandwidth and my intended recipient has the same at the other end I can communicate with him at broadband rates. None of the backbone runs on copper. Copper is pretty much limited to the "last mile" i.e. the access into peoples homes. If I send a person with copper a 300 Mbyte file I can upload it in minutes and it will be forwarded to that persons ISP within minutes but it will take him hours to download it. If, OTOH, he has 5 Mbps cable or fiber he will be able to download it in 8 minutes and if he has 15 Mbps, 3 minutes.

You are right that ALL the internet cannot be sped up until everyone has a high speed connection. But it can serve all high speed connected users as long as the backbone capacity is there and for the moment it is.

I've been lucky enough to live close enough to a CO switch that was tested to be good up to 5.5mbs on copper wire. Everytime I think we've hit the limit with copper, someone comes up with a way to up the ante.

-gb-

Thanks AJ ! I wonder how the intenet will now start to evovle as wireless technology expands, who knnows in 20 years time the way data may travel around the world might become even more complicated.

Anhar

If I remember it correctly a T1 is 24 VGCs at 8 ksps with a depth of 8 bits. That's 1.536 Mbps payload. Again, if I remember correctly, a T2 is 24 T1's or 36.86 Mbps and a T3 24 of those for 847.3 Mbps. Thus at 2 Mbps you are only using 0.2% of a T3. That's why I commented that the limitation was bound to be your WiFi connection - not the T3. I have noted many times that the incoming rate when I transfer files from home to work is very close to 2Mbps. That's what my cable company and Verizon both advertize. Note again that my upload was about 200 kbps from Cox until Verizon moved into the area and started offering 2 Mbps.

First off let's be sure there isn't confusion between Mbps which is millions of bits per second and MBps which is millions of bytes per second. 1 MBps = 8 Mbps. Lets also check the math: 300 MByte = 2.4 Gigabits. 2.4 gigabits in 20 minutes is .12 gigabits or 120 megabits per minute which, given 60 seconds in a minute is 2 megabits per second. This is the upload rate which Cox gives to its cable customers in parts of its service area where FIOS is available. This is also the uplink rate that FIOS makes available. Cox does not charge extra for this in areas where they are threatened by competition from FIOS.

I have not looked at ETA's when uploading from home - only the rate. The indicated rate I have observed is usually over 200 MBps and frequently close to 250 MBps which is 2Mbps. This is my reason for saying that Cox is equal to its promise. If I have a 300 MB file and a rate of 2Mbps the time required is going to be 20 minutes. I will do a transfer tomorrow and note the ETA as well as the rate.

The reason I mentioned the limitation on your machine is because a T3 is capable of going much much faster than 300 MB in 20 minutes. A full T3 could transfer 300 MByte in 2.7 seconds. The fact that you are seeing a rate this slow is from some other cause. The server is limiting how fast it will accept data or the link from your machine may be the bottle neck. While a 802.11g wireless link can handle 54 Mbps (27 times greater than 2 Mbps) that rate only pertains when the signal strength is good. I understood that you were accessing the WiFi net of the public library from the parking lot - i.e. outside the building where the signal strength will be low. When this is the case the link slows down appreciably. That MAY be what is "limiting" your transfer to 2 Mbps.

I hope this doesn't read as more techie jargon. If it's in the blood there isn't much you can do about it.

Today I uploaded a 174 MB file from my home system over the Cox furnished Scientific Atlanta cable modem. Fugu (the transfer application) indicated that the ETA would be 14 minutes for this file and that the transfer rate was 208 KBps which is 1.664 Mbps.