Yup; the Internet is screwed up.

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Sat Jun 11 10:15:18 UTC 2011


On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 02:34:10AM -0700, Jeroen van Aart wrote:

> Though it's nice to have why would one *need* 100 Mbps at home? I  

Residential broadband is asymmetric, so it's typically more like
6/100 MBit/s, though VDSL and FTTH are also making (slow) progress.

Even with that slow upstream telecommuting suddenly becomes
useful. There are virtual environments like OpenQwaq which
will needly plenty of uncongested/good QoS upstream for
video and audio to work. There are plenty of P2P protocols
(Skype, Tor, I2P, Bitcoin, distributed searches like YaCy, 
etc.) which absolutely require bandwidth, especially if you 
run several of them at the same time. You will increasingly 
see anonymizing traffic picking up as geolocation and censorship
increase. 

> understand the necessity of internet access and agree everyone has a  
> right to it. But that necessity can be perfectly fulfilled with a stable  

It definitely reduces need for moving human bodies in metal boxes
back and forth, and reduces road wear and carbon dioxide emissions.

> internet connection of a reasonable speed (say low to mid range DSL  
> speed tops).
>
> I don't regard simultaneously streaming 6 channels of TV and downloading  

Cable providers have an incentive to move to streaming video, as
it saves bandwidth.

> the latest movie torrent in 2 minutes as a basic necessity, let alone  
> essential.

I can think of many constructive uses for symmetric 100 MBit/s and
higher residential. Of course you won't see the demand until you
offer uncrippled upstream.




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