File sizes out-pacing download speeds...again.

[RedTiger]

So I'm downloading this free trial of Age of Conan. I've heard its finally been patched up to a "not suck" level, so I want to give it a try. The damn thing is 11.8 GIGABYTES...and has a 6 gig patch. I looked at that and I felt like Doc Brown in Back to the Future:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnqtXOi1iaY

 

So, its 1999 all over again. I'm back on dial-up trying to download a 500 MB file and I'm in disbelief that it will take 6 hours to finish. The size of things you are expected to download is getting ludicrous again. :mad:

 

What's next, gentlemen? How is technology going to catch up again and make downloading stuff as fast as it was a few years ago?

[EtherealN]

How is technology going to catch up again and make downloading stuff as fast as it was a few years ago?

 

I recently got a mail from my mobile provider informing me that during the year my mobile broadband will be upgraded to 100mbps downstream during the next 12month timeframe. If running at capacity (and if my maths work 5 minutes after getting out of bed, which I doubt), that would do the file in 16 minutes. (Obviously, they never run "at capacity".) Hell, a connection I signed years ago when I lived in an actual town (still small tho - 3000 people) and not the outback would do that file in around an hour on standard ADSL technology.

 

(Though, many apartment complexes in most cities over here have had 10/100 and 100/100 fiber connections offered for several years already at flatrates around 30-40 euro.)

 

Technology is already there and easily cheap enough, it's just a question of creating enough demand for the companies to care for the expense of expanding the infrastructure.

[Panzertard]

Not only the size, man. Size matters but there's soo many poor strategies adding to the pool of "horribly poor presentation" of their product and services.

 

Too many vendors have a poor patch release-strategy regarding either "no pacthing, download full version of 500mb/1gb instead of 11 mb patch" or "download this 1 year old release, patch 5 times, reboot, patch another 11 times" before you have a working product.

 

I wish there was a bit more thought behind the release management at these vendors (*coughvmwareadobeandtherestofyoucough*).

[joey45]

I have a 10 gig cap on what im using...damn

[RedTiger]

I recently got a mail from my mobile provider informing me that during the year my mobile broadband will be upgraded to 100mbps downstream during the next 12month timeframe. If running at capacity (and if my maths work 5 minutes after getting out of bed, which I doubt), that would do the file in 16 minutes. (Obviously, they never run "at capacity".) Hell, a connection I signed years ago when I lived in an actual town (still small tho - 3000 people) and not the outback would do that file in around an hour on standard ADSL technology.

 

(Though, many apartment complexes in most cities over here have had 10/100 and 100/100 fiber connections offered for several years already at flatrates around 30-40 euro.)

 

Technology is already there and easily cheap enough, it's just a question of creating enough demand for the companies to care for the expense of expanding the infrastructure.

 

I'm using a cable modem through Time Warner Road Runner in a populated are in an apartment complex where most are probably also using the same provider I am. I'm not really too savvy when it comes to classifying things in terms of upstream/downstream etc. What I CAN tell you is that if I get a 650k per second download rate, I'm doing pretty good since this is about as fast as it will get. So you can do the math, simplify this to 500k a second and you get 30 MB a minute. Downloading a Gig would take about a half hour.

 

My connection reads as "1Mbps"...you have 100mbps? LOL...wow, looks like Europe is eating America's lunch when it comes to internet access these days. My Cable modem package isn't even the most basic one!

[GGTharos]

Your connection is close to 8Mbps if you're getting 650k down.

The problem is that the head-end bandwidth is shared, so if everyone in your apartment is downloading too ... you get the idea.

[RedTiger]

Your connection is close to 8Mbps if you're getting 650k down.

The problem is that the head-end bandwidth is shared, so if everyone in your apartment is downloading too ... you get the idea.

 

Hmm...I'm going to do more research on this, interesting. Just a quick google revealed what I suspected, the rest of the world is indeed eating the US's lunch when it comes to broadband speed vs. price. How the times have changed! :O

 

EDIT: To be more specific...they seem to be doing much better on the maximum end of things. The basic packages are comparable, but everyone seems to have much faster max speeds than what is readily available and affordable in the US.

Edited June 26, 2009 by RedTiger

[RedTiger]

Correction:

 

Win XP task manager says 100 Mbps speed for me. Hmm....

[GGTharos]

That's pretty meaningless for this discussion ;)

It only means your ethernet connection to the router is 100mbps.

[EtherealN]

To clarify for RedTiger:

 

Win XP task manager saying 100mbps means your network card has a maximum capacity of those 100mbps. Your actual internet connnection is an entirely different matter. I have two cards each showing 1gbps. Needless to say, I don't have 2x1gbps connection to the net in either up or downstream.

 

The whole point I was making though is that it's not technology that is lagging. Companies like Bredbandsbolaget, Telenor, Telia, ComHem, Tele2 and so on have proven that it is viable to offer connections of 24 to 100mbps at rates of 30-40 euro per month flatrate (with no traffic cap) with current technology. Indeed - with the tech of 3 years back, when the 100/100 fibers were being introduced here as well as 8/24 ADSL connections.

 

Technology is not the problem. Market is.

 

Ninjaedit: And to accentuate that the technology itself is not the problem, Telenor (my mobile provider) is not going to ask me for any extra money when they upgrade my mobile to 100mbps downstream. (They're doing it to keep me from switching provider.) And there's no traffic/month cap. The tech is just there and you need a critical mass of user/population percentage to make it pay to expand the hubs.

Edited June 26, 2009 by EtherealN

[EtherealN]

One other point - ADSL tech is asynchronous. Aside from the minutiae of which frequency bands and so on it works on, it also has the effect that in certain circumstances upstream and downstream (that is - upload and download) may conflict. So if you have provider X on the infrastructure of net provider Y (which often has nothing to do with who you signed your subscription with, in our case the only way to be sure that your provider is the people actually laying the connections is Bredbandsbolaget (now owned by Telenor), and this is because they work with fiber, not ADSL) and a sufficient amount of other people on thet same network (again - irrespespective of actual company you are subscribed to) uploading can hinder your downstream.

 

Ofc, usually this isn't a problem. And most of the time, it doesn't matter if everyone's on Time Warner or not. Most providers will be hooked onto the same station hub and the thing to bother with is what connections they in turn have to the backbones.

 

(Note: this is me judging from my local euro experience. I have worked in the US but only for short times, so there might be differences.)