[c-nsp] Internet speed

[Giles Coochey]

On 15/08/2018 07:50, Mark Tinka wrote:
>
> Exactly.
>
> I have a 100Mbps at my house. I know that I can't expect to push files
> to Brazil from South Africa at 100Mbps, mostly because I know nothing
> about the state of the network in Brazil (or anything else in between
> beyond my ISP). Am I going to bang my head against the wall trying to
> figure out why? Probably not.
>
> If I can download my 2GB file in 2 minutes, do I really care whether I
> hit 100Mbps or 50Mbps, or 30Mbps, or that that 2GB file didn't come down
> in 30 seconds?
>
> The Internet is such a complex web (no pun intended), and with
> everything becoming part of the cloud more and more, this issue is going
> to get worse.
>
>
When we get to the point of 1Gbps links I start to think of anything 
higher than that is an increase in capacity and not speed, there are not 
currently any consumer data transfer applications that are going to 
benefit from anything faster, and I would probably propose that for 
users who enjoy the convenience of Wifi and laptops over desktops or 
workstations that the point where speed becomes capacity is probably 
lower than 300Mbps.

Used to work at a small ISP and always avoid the use of the term 
'speed', we spoke about bandwidth and capacity. When a corporate 
customer phoned one day to check whether we were experiencing problems 
(they were also a friend of mine by the way) and complained of slow 
speed Internet, I said "Gosh, let me check.... do you know you're right, 
the electrons are moving slower, and the speed of light seems a lot 
lower than it was yesterdday!!".