Interesting People mailing list archives
more on comments? Does faster broadband really matter?
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:45:09 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: bob.devine () att net Date: December 29, 2005 1:44:12 PM EST To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] more on comments? Does faster broadband really matter? Dave, expanding on the need for speed.
From: George <inventor () rentaninventor com> Dave -- I'm certain that I'm not the only one who has said: "No matter how fast the computer gets - it will NEVER be fast enough to meet our expectations. George Margolin
In one sense, it is true that everyone wants infinite computing power. But I think that there exists a "good enough" level for most people. Scanning the industry rags shows that sentiment is reflected in sales of CPUs. The sales demand is small except for persons buying a PC for gaming or heavy graphics. Jon Forrest would post his "Forrest Curve" message annually to comp.arch arguing the same premise. However, the "good enough" target moves. People do want more each year; I wonder if there is a law analogous to Moore's Law for computation consumption. (The average PC is always 90+% idle. Donate spare computation power to http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org) But for communication speed, I suspect that most people are not really satisfied with their current network performance. What is the similiar "good enough" network bandwidth for PCs? Well, two-way digitized voice takes a few dozen Kbps. Music with good fidelity takes approximately 100 Kpbs. Video takes a few Mbps. For a typical household with multiple concurrent users, if everyone is sharing the same IP pipe for communications, then perhaps 50Mbps is enough. But, of course, latency matters a lot more than pure bandwidth. And you need more for periodic spikes. And etc. Bob Devine ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- more on comments? Does faster broadband really matter? David Farber (Dec 28)
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- more on comments? Does faster broadband really matter? David Farber (Dec 29)
- more on comments? Does faster broadband really matter? David Farber (Dec 29)