Proving Gig Speed

Wed Jul 18 21:56:47 UTC 2018

At least in the US, Jane also doesn’t really have a choice of her electricity provider, so she’s not getting bombarded with advertising from vendors selling “Faster WiFi” than the next guy. I don’t get to choose my method of power generation and therefore cost per kWh. I’d love to buy $.04 from the Pacific NW when I’m in the Southern US.

I’m not a betting guy, but my money says when self power generation hits some point and multiple vendors are trying to get people to buy their system, we’ll get “More amps per X hours of sunlight with our system” and she will care.

On Jul 18, 2018, at 7:01 AM, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu<mailto:mark.tinka at seacom.mu>> wrote:

On 17/Jul/18 18:12, Andy Ringsmuth wrote:

I suppose in reality it’s no different than any other utility. My home has 200 amp electrical service. Will I ever use 200 amps at one time? Highly highly unlikely. But if my electrical utility wanted to advertise “200 amp service in all homes we supply!” they sure could. Would an electrician be able to test it? I’m sure there is a way somehow.

If me and everyone on my street tried to use 200 amps all at the same time, could the infrastructure handle it? Doubtful. But do I on occasion saturate my home fiber 300 mbit synchronous connection? Every now and then yes, but rarely. Although if I’m paying for 300 and not getting it, my ISP will be hearing from me.

If my electrical utility told me “hey, you can upgrade to 500 amp service for no additional charge” would I do it? Sure, what the heck. If my water utility said “guess what? You can upgrade to a 2-inch water line at no additional charge!” would I do it? Probably yeah, why not?

Would I ever use all that capacity on $random_utility at one time? Of course not. But nice to know it’s there if I ever need it.

The difference, of course, between electricity and the Internet is that
there is a lot more information and tools freely available online that
Average Jane can arm herself with to run amok with figuring out whether
she is getting 300Mbps of her 300Mbps from her ISP.

Average Jane could care less about measuring whether she's getting 200
amps of her 200 amps from the power company; likely because there is a
lot more structure with how power is produced and delivered, or more to
the point, a lot less freely available tools and information with which
she can arm herself to run amok with. To her, the power company sucks if
the lights go out. In the worst case, if her power starts a fire, she's
calling the fire department.

Mark.

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Keith Stokes
Neill Technologies