
Bringing ultra high-speed broadband to Stanford homes - processing
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/bringing-ultra-high-speed-broadband-to.html
======
xtacy
These homes are just for staff/professors. It would be lovely if the student
residencies have access to high speed broadband as well. :-)

~~~
sqs
Yeah, I think they have been focusing on installing wireless access points in
the residences instead of upgrading the wired speeds, which have probably been
at 100 Mbps for over a decade. Still, hard to complain, as I haven't ever seen
any non-datacenter computer get more than 100 Mbps on the Internet.

~~~
jedberg
I used to work in the ResHalls as Berkeley, and I can tell you a couple of
reasons they haven't done a Gig-E upgrade. The first is that the upgrade from
10Mbps to 100Mbps was easy, because they just had to change out the switches
and router blades, which require upgrades every few years anyway.

Going from 100 to 1000 is a lot harder, because the physical cables in the
wall are on the cheap side (it is a University after all) and can't support
Gig-E. So it would require a complete rewiring of the res Halls.

That, coupled with that fact that generally speaking there is little
difference in speed when talking to the internet at 100 vs. 1000, it just
isn't worth the upgrade. Most students don't notice/care, and also most of
them just want to be able to move their laptops around without dealing with
cables. They just want the internet to work wherever they happen to be on
campus.

------
hugh3
That's nice, but what on Earth would any reasonable mortal do with one gigabit
per second internet access?

My standard Comcast cable can download high-def video faster than I can play
it. What more could one reasonably want?

~~~
corysama
Answering that question is exactly why Google is performing this experiment.

------
diegob
Won't staff and professors have different usage patterns than the average
college student? It might not show realistic usage ...

~~~
jedberg
Presumably this is a good test of high end usage. It seems like they are using
this is a stress test, not so much a "regular usage" test.

Although, not all of those professors are Computer Science, and they have
famillies that live with them, with kids and husbands and wives that have
normal jobs.

Most of them probably use the Internet the same way as any well to do
professional and their family would.

------
atomical
Universities have great connections. How about serving some of the under
served communities first?

~~~
Kliment
That's what they're planning to do. This is a test, not a deployment.

------
guyjin
I am so hard right now.

------
bretthellman
Nice for Stanford. Not so nice for all the communities that applied only to
watch Google pick Stanford some ~7 miles away.

~~~
txxxxd
"To be clear, this trial is completely separate from our community selection
process for Google Fiber, which is still ongoing"

