more on comments? Does faster broadband really matter?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian Sniffen <bts () alum mit edu>
Date: December 27, 2005 6:53:18 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: dewayne () warpspeed com
Subject: Re: [IP] comments? Does faster broadband really matter?

> The gist of his argument is that most online activities, like
> standard websurfing, are not significantly sped up by high-bandwidth
> connections, and the few that are, such as downloading, are not
> typically time-sensitive anyway:

Sure.  The introduction of Single Side Band hasn't done much to
increase Morse transmission, either---and the Interstate Highway
System hasn't made the pony express any faster or any cheaper.  In
fact, it seems to have caused a counterintuitive decrease in buggy
whip purchases!

Just so, increasing the commonly available symmetric crosscut
bandwidth won't make web browsing more popular---just like commonly
available T1s didn't make UUCP more popular and Fast Ethernet didn't
make Gopher any more popular.  But AOL usage---"what everyone wants"
in 1994---was under 20 kbps, for use on phone lines.  Mr. Malik says
the web currently works at about 1 Mbps.  Of course 100 Mbps symmetric
connections to the home won't make a difference in 1 Mbps web
surfing---just like they don't make a difference in 20 kbps AOL usage.

But what else will they enable?  Multiple simultaneous video streams?
Immersive applications?  Real-time collaborative software?  Cheap,
easy reuse of spare cycles, a sort of NeighborsExcel@Home?

This seems intuitively obvious: As long as I'm regularly being limited
by the bandwidth I have, I don't have enough!

It's a little harder to dispose of the server-side-throttling
argument.  Again, if the use is quite different from the current day,
why should we expect it to use central servers?

We really are AOL users, or perhaps telegraph operators, trying to
predict the Web.

-Brian

--
Brian Sniffen                                       bts () alum mit edu


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