
How do you use 1Gbps Internet links? Chattanooga residents find out - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/how-chattanooga-uses-1gbps-internet-connections.ars
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ewams
$350 a month for an unmetered 1 gbps connection? That is cheaper than you can
get it at a colo. Anyone want to get an apartment there with me and split the
cost? Contact in profile. Nooga Apartment Colo servers :)

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xiaoma
That's literally 10 times what a similar service costs in Hong Kong. Tokyo
also has a gbps offering for about 60USD/month.

I really don't understand why this keeps getting submitted to HN. Yes, it's a
good connection, but it's nothing amazing and it's ridiculously expensive.

~~~
patrickyeon
In North America it's a big deal. Smaller, denser areas [Japanese cities] make
it easier to afford rolling out networks. Younger infrastructures [the Nordic
countries with 100Mbit to each home, IIRC] took the opportunity to roll out a
more advanced infrastructure when they could. Here in NA, the incumbents are
perfectly happy charging us for slower speeds over cable or ancient twisted
pairs, with no need to invest in new infrastructure.

~~~
yellowbkpk
You can't use the population density argument when places like New York and
Chicago have the same options as rural Iowa.

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muhfuhkuh
You'll find that US broadband/technology/cell-network/healthcare/alt-energy
apologists trot out every excuse and make pretzel-twisting arguments for other
first world countries having arguably superior things than we do. Some of the
arguments are valid (we're a really geographically big country), but some are
specious.

My favorite is "because such-and-such place has a monoculture while we are a
melting pot". Huh? How in God's name would _that_ prevent us from getting high
speed rail or gigE internet? So, because people have different colors and
beliefs, we can't get broadband coast to coast? That just doesn't make any
sense.

Another is the "our government is
corrupt/monopolistic/fascist/corporatist/name-your-own-damning-description".
So, if there's corruption, there must be _somewhere_ we can ram through gigE
speeds through back-alley deals and nepotistic dealings like (supposedly) Hong
Kong.

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ballard
Observation: For coworking and hacker spaces, apparently it reduces latency
but that's about it for a business-class connection. Surprisingly, the issues
of abuse tend to go away as multi-TB hard drives are self-limiting.

Potential Uses:

1\. Adaptive media streaming protocols that minimize frame skipping and
buffering, and instead gradually reduces quality seem obvious.

2\. Outbound streaming to mobile perhaps.

Questions:

1\. What is the oversubscription of the various upstream connection(s)? In
other countries other than the US, this is a required bit of disclosure.

2\. Which port(s) are blocked?

3\. What's the bandwidth, ping and packet-loss like?

~~~
JackZielke
My Internet connection at home and at work comes from EPB Fiber.

1\. oversubscription. I have no idea, honestly, but I do not have any problem
maxing out my connection. I have the slowest they sell (30Mb). That is data
throughput not bits over the wire so my actual connection is closer to 40
according to my network card. I can usually pull down 3.2MB/s.

2\. As far as I can tell only outgoing 25 (to other than their server) is
blocked. Incoming 25 works fine.

3\. I kinda answered that above. I went to Alexa and tracerouted the top 10
Internet sites (that responded) from my Comcast connection before the install
and then EPB right after. Comcast average: 14.5 hops 92.397 ms EPB average:
13.5 hops 37.891 ms

Hope that helps.

~~~
ZoFreX
Could you run tests on speedtest.net and pingtest.net out of curiosity?

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Prisen
Symmetrical downlink and uplink is the really exciting part to me. Imagine
being able to transmit GB-sized files point to point in a matter of minutes.
There are so many opportunities for stuff you can do with that :)

~~~
CoachRufus87
No opportunities while Comcast, et al. impose caps.

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hugh3
Article doesn't really answer the question: how _do_ you use a 1Gb/s internet
link? My crappy Comcast connection can stream full-screen HD video from
Netflix, and what more could a consumer reasonably want?

~~~
Hipchan
Obvious next step is 3D HD.

Also Onlive. Also more than one TV at the same time?

Live streaming HD video cameras from inside the house to outside when you're
at work?

~~~
warfangle
3D video telephony.

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JCB_K
In the Netherlands optic fiber is being rolled out by independent companies,
who then rent it out to internet providers. The way they decide where to do it
is quite smart: you can vote for your own city, and if it gets enough votes,
they'll provide it to the whole city. This way they can make sure they don't
spend their money on a city where nobody wants it (yet).

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corin_
_"Those who have ordered face challenges; if they want to experience the full
1Gbps speed they're paying for, standard WiFi connections aren't fast enough.
Some customers have switched to wired gigabit routers in order to access their
full bandwidth."_

Facing challenges? Really? Of the handful of people to order the service, some
of them didn't realise they would need more than a 10/100 router to use it?
That's idiocy, either on the part of a technical user who didn't think of it,
or on the part of the ISP who didn't explain it to a non-technical customer
purchasing the service. It's not a challenge.

~~~
eli
Honestly, my guess is they will be disappointed by how little difference there
is between a 100mbit internet connection and a 1gbit connection in practice.

And, yes, setting up a gigabit wireless network counts as a challenge, even
for non-idiots.

~~~
corin_
Wireless, sure, wired, not so much.

Disappointed because they would be thinking "wow facebook will load so much
faster now"? Presumably they wouldn't be disappointed if their reason for
upgrading is, say, for torrents or another type of filesharing, etc.

~~~
jonknee
Maybe you missed it, but that's what the article mentioned. Wireless wasn't
fast enough ("standard WiFi connections aren't fast enough"), so they switched
to wired networks. It wasn't that they didn't know they would need a gigabit
router, it's that they saturated the wireless network and upgraded to a faster
wired network.

~~~
corin_
That's still the same issue. The router I have here at home isn't capable of
handling a gig of traffic, wired or wireless. If my ISP sold me a gig
connection, I would expect them to realise that, most likely my router won't
support it, and to explain that to me (and, more likely than not, try to sell
me a new router themselves).

It doesn't matter that they went from wireless to wired - even when moving to
wired, the issue was still that they hadn't realised they would need a new
router.

~~~
jonknee
I guess we're reading it differently. I read it as "before getting gigabit
internet I had a wireless router that worked fine, but after I had to use a
wired router to get the new faster speed I'm paying for." I don't think they
went through multiple wired routers because they were unable to realize that
100 != 1000 (regardless, many new wireless routers are also gigabit ethernet
routers).

~~~
corin_
I read it same as you, but to me needing a new router isn't "a challenge",
it's an obvious requirement that you know about before deciding to upgrade
your connection. Same as needing to own some sort of networked device such as
a computer in order to use any internet connection.

~~~
jonknee
It might not be a new router. My wireless routers at home and work both
support gigabit ethernet. But it could be a challenge to have to run wire and
what not. I think it makes complete sense.

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BrainScraps
Some applications that might be able to make use of that kind of bandwidth...
You could do a lot of high-fidelity virtualization with HD Video editing,
image editing, even 3D modeling.

Telepresence is an obvious application.

Oh gosh, if you combined this kind of bandwidth with a bunch of Kinect
sensors, things could get REAL. :-D

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trout
The hidden cost is having a switch/router/both to handle the rates, as well as
using Gig-rated cabling which is surprisingly not the same as 100Mb. When I
hand crimped a number of cables and tested they weren't suitable for Gig.

Full Disclosure: I'm a shitty crimper.

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filipiak
Can anyone point me to a howto? I'd love to spearhead something like this for
my small community.

~~~
patrickyeon
AFAICT, from a number of attempts I've read about in many communities:

1\. Get the tech people together

2\. Have a sensible plan to roll it out, backed by a utility or municipal
government (so that they can levy a charge on all residents for initial
costs), supported by your community, and with all due diligence done and paid
for

3\. Get your pants sued off by whoever is currently providing high-speed

[edit: formatting]

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RyanKearney
Meanwhile, Comcast has no plans to run fiber to homes.

<https://twitter.com/#!/ComcastBill/status/45843247490273280>

~~~
eli
It kinda seems like they've slowed deployment of high-bandwidth cable
connections. I've got a 50mbit comcast business account now, but I've been
promised that 100mbit will be available "soon" for quite a while now.

~~~
RyanKearney
But by the time 100Mbit rolls out Google will have continued to roll out their
1Gbps fiber connections to rural areas. Not to mention Comcast's 100Mbit
connection only has 10Mbps of upload speed. Comcast is slipping more and more
behind every day.

~~~
nitrogen
The 100Mbit connection has only 10Mbit uplink? My 50Mbit Comcast connection
has 15Mbit up. How disappointing that they would _reduce_ the more important
half of the service on the "higher" tier.

~~~
eli
Really? Mine is definitely 50mbit/10mbit. Maybe it varies by location?

~~~
nitrogen
Unless they changed it and I wasn't paying attention, it's 15Mbit/s uplink in
the Salt Lake City area. The only reason I'm paying for 50Mbit/s down is so I
can get 15 up.

