Inexhaustible
Jul 02, 2004
I'm in the fortunate position of having a really nice broadband connection to my apartment. By "really nice" I mean that it's a fantastic ISP with amazing uptime, competent and friendly support, and, last but not least, one which supplies me with a 10Mbit/s Full Duplex Ethernet connection. Either they're the best broadband provider in the world, or it just seems that way.
As I came home from work today, I was welcomed by a single piece of mail; one from my internet provider, offering me to upgrade my already speedy 10Mb/s internet connection to a whopping 100Mb/s. What the hell am I going to do with a connection like that? It's not like I'm a hosting business or anything, I'm just a guy with a computer in his home. Granted I download my fair share of files, and then some more, but I cannot imagine ever needing one hundred megabits per second, all to myself.
When they launched this "super broadband service", as they call it, they charged something like 950 SEK ($127) per month, I think, but now they've apparently reduced the price to 530 SEK ($70), and that's only 235 SEK ($31) more than I pay for my current connection. Also, if I sign up within two weeks, there is no setup-fee. A tempting offer indeed.
Just to be clear, this ain't no lower class ISP which buys its bandwidth from suck-ass providers, which in reality only means that the customers get super fast connections within their ISP's network, uh-uh, I'm talking super fast connections to super fast backbones.
But what am I going to do with one hundred megabits per second? I won't be able to use it, no way, I only very rarely max out with my current connection, and that's when I'm downloading dozens of files simultaneously. On the other hand, the Geek Score for having such a killer connection is not to be underestimated.
My girlfriend says that we don't need it, and she's right. She says we could go see a movie for that money instead. She's right, every month we could go see a movie on the big screen instead of indulging ourselves in more bandwidth than we'll ever use.
What would you do?
Update:
As the image above shows, I decided to give it a try and upgrade to 100Mbit/s. On this particular download, which is Debian Linux from the Swedish University Network (FTP), I'm reaching 12453KB/s, which is roughly 97.3 Mbit/s.
I figured that, since there is no set-up fee, no cancellation fee, and only a months cancellation notice, I don't really have anything to lose.
Update 2:
Well, that was fun. Except, I only reach that kind of speed when I download from the Swedish University Network, and perhaps a handful of other servers on the internet, because their connections, or networks between us, just aren't good enough.
I tried downloading a whole lot of TV series from p2p networks and reached about 60Mbit/s or so, while downloading files from about 15-20 people simultaneously. Great, but I don't do that very often, and since it still isn't particularly common for people to have 100Mbit/s connections to the Internet, I cancelled the upgrade.
I'd like to be able to upgrade to 20-30 Mbit/s or something like that, but unfortunately there is no such upgrade right now, so I guess I'll be back to 10Mbit/s once the cancellation period is up, one month from now.
Comments
Set aside SEK 235 into a special cinema account or else you probably won't spend that money at movies anyway.
Comment by David Pettersson at 17:24, 02 Jul, 2004 #
I'm all for the Geek. My broadband connection is about 6Mb/s with through put often around 4Mb/s. This is good for most things, but I often want a faster connection.
But I do have a habit of watching most of my television via digital downloads. I have/had a few shows that I watched religiously at their stated broadcast times, like Buffy, Joan of Arcadia, L-Word, and after Buffy ended, the Gilmore Girls.
Otherwise, I tend to download shows like Alias, 24, Jake 2.0, Dead Like Me, Dead Zone, Angel, Cold Case, Law & Order SVU, Tru Calling, Touching Evil etc., etc. weekly, then watch them cumulatively. Like two weekends ago, I sat down and finished off the second half of the season for the O.C., about eight episodes of two days. I find it a better way to watch TV (when I feel like it), as opposed to being on a schedule. So I could definitely use your offered connection.
Obviously this one isn't about immediate need. But what I keep finding out with broadband, is the more speed they give you, the more creative ways you come up to use it. For example downloading moves on a 1.5Mb/s was horrid, though far better than those poor chaps still using their 56k trying to get a 768MB copy of Season 3 Episode 5 of Alias or some other show, but horrid still.
I use to occasionally use the T3 at one of my clients site to download a show, but I put a lot of effort into not getting attached to shows that were okay but not great, because I didn't want to be tethered to my TV. Now if a show catches my interest, I download it. If it loses my interest I stop. I watch them, when I have nothing better to do, or if I have a craving for a particular show.
I'd doubt I'd max out 100Mb/s, but 10-20Mb/s would be great.
Comment by allgood2 at 18:05, 02 Jul, 2004 #
trust me this is hard to say, being a geek in the most extreme of ways, but save yourself the money and listen to your girlfriend... the savings and rewards reaped from that alone will be multiple times greater than anything that money spent on a faster connection could get you...
Comment by toufic at 18:34, 02 Jul, 2004 #
*GASP* A 2 Mb ADSL home connection is EUR150/month in Spain. And that's the max speed you can get nowadays. I think I'll go out now and organize a revolution.
Comment by Fonso at 19:42, 02 Jul, 2004 #
I also have the same great internet provider you have, and was very excited when I got the letter. But if you read on you soon come to realize you only get a certain amount to download on a monthly basis. When exceeding this limit, you have to pay. So I'm staying at 10mb/sec until they remove that stupidity.
Comment by Jacken at 19:47, 02 Jul, 2004 #
Jacken: You're right, there's a bandwidth quota of 300GB per month, somehow I don't think I'll be breaking that though.
Comment by Tomas at 20:08, 02 Jul, 2004 #
For $31 extra, you could probably catch 4 movies a month with your girlfriend. Unless movies are that expensive in Sweden, which would be a little ridiculous. I think the extra 90Mb/s would be excessive and would just go to waste. By the way I had no idea bandwith quotas existed. Do all ISPs have them?
Comment by Pam at 20:26, 02 Jul, 2004 #
Pam: I'm afraid $31 only buys two tickets over here, and bucket of popcorn, and a soda, perhaps.
The bandwidth quota is only for the 100Mb/s connection. As far as I know, no Swedish ISP has a bandwidth quota for connections up to 10Mb/s (I don't know of any other ISP with any quota, but I guess it makes sense to put a quota on the 100Mb/s connections, especially since it's a very high quota (10GB per day)).
Comment by Tomas at 20:37, 02 Jul, 2004 #
Bandwidth will always win ;)
Comment by Ian McFarlan at 21:07, 02 Jul, 2004 #
>>By the way I had no idea bandwith quotas existed. Do all ISPs have them?
If your in America, read your terms of service (TOS), most ISP have bandwidth quotas, even on the quote-unquote "unlimited" accounts. In fact, some cable broadband vendors are known to send out notices to people who exceed the average monthly bandwidth. You'd think they'd understand that average means some higher some lower, but I've known people who have received cease orders. Basically, a if you don't cut down your use will terminate your service.
Comment by allgood2 at 21:37, 02 Jul, 2004 #
You can save on other things, such as food >_>; or just by not upgrading to the next version of OS X (I won't anyway).
Comment by Neko at 23:56, 02 Jul, 2004 #
It's a tough one, but I'd say go with the girlfriend on this one. Still... 100 mbits.. hmm.. no the girlfriend, definitely.. but.. well.. erh.. Sorry man, I don't know ;)
Comment by swimp at 11:45, 03 Jul, 2004 #
What?! You can never have enough bandwith.
On a related note, how are the immigration laws in Sweden?
Comment by Sunny at 01:51, 05 Jul, 2004 #
buy it dued. down here in india, we get only a damn 2KB/sec speed of 'broadband'. can u believe the crap we r in...
Comment by abhi at 15:58, 05 Jul, 2004 #
I got the same offer. Thought about it for a while, but I've decided against it for now. The problem is the 300Gb/month traffic quota. 300 gigs per month sounds like a hilariously high limit that you'll never get close to, but the fact of the matter is that I do. 300 gigs per month is 10 gigs per day, and just leaving my ftp server that I let my friends use running will probably use up a good portion of that. So an "upgrade" would probably force me to cancel all my friends' accounts. And running any kind of file sharing software would be out of the question. Just staying on Direct Connect for a couple of hours will use up well over 10 gigs.
So the question is: do you, or do you not, download and upload enough data to hit the 300 gig limit? If you do, then this upgrade is not for you. And if you don't... well, then what do you need the bandwidth for anyway?
Using a traffic quota is just a way of ripping off the customers by selling them bandwidth and then making it impossible for them to use it. Don't let them do that to you.
Comment by Magnus at 18:14, 05 Jul, 2004 #
It really sounds like you've made up your mind on this one already: that is, don't upgrade. But still it'd be enough to almost tempt me, purely for the geek factor of 'mine is better than yours'.
As a side note, I'm purely envious of your ISP, here in Australia the main provider is still relying on copper networks and we frequently have many outages. That your DSL provider is better than mine hits a really good geek note with me.
Comment by Scott at 09:29, 06 Jul, 2004 #
Scott: Oh, it's not DSL, it's not dial-up of any kind. I have an ethernet socket in my wall, my apartment building has a fiber connection.
Comment by Tomas at 13:03, 06 Jul, 2004 #
Umm, oops. Sorry! I must learn to read thoroughly before I comment!
Your ISP does sound profoundly better though.
Comment by Scott at 10:42, 07 Jul, 2004 #
WOW....I guess some people on this planet are way too lucky!
In Greece everybody struggles @ home to break into the ADSL era , with little success. Speed varies from 12kbit/s to 40kbit/sec for a 384kbps connection...
And I read about people who complain about the speed of 4+6mbit lines... :|
Only unis and companies have the luxury of such broadband connections; But most of them use 1~2 mbit leased lines...
Ahhh, the wonders I could have with such a connection!
This is a message sent from the stone-age ;)
Cheers
Comment by Giorgos at 16:48, 22 Sep, 2004 #
The discussion has been closed on this entry. Thanks to everybody who participated.