Fantasy connection

Dream on

[Reno]

...75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg's 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said.

In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer - many thousand times faster than most residential connections...

Yeah, I'm envious! ;-)

Full story @: [apnews.myway.com...]

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[DrDoc]

Hah! That's like 30 minutes from where I grew up ;)

[MatthewHSE]

Wow. That's incredible - but how useful is it really?

1. Can any real-world (e.g., non-testing) servers send data that fast?
2. And if so, can they do it for any more than a couple of concurrent users?
3. And if the answer is "no" to either of the above, how long will it be before servers could meet the demand that widespread use of such connections could cause?
4. Finally, to the average home user, how much speed is really necessary? I mean, <tongue in cheek> I'd gladly wait a full four seconds for that movie to download! ;) </tongue in cheek>

[Reno]

...but how useful is it really?

Right now, it's like giving a 16 year old kid the winning Nascar vehicle for driving to school -- he'd be cool, but there'd be trouble!

But is this a glimpse of the future? I mean, when I started on the web in '95 it was with an excruciatingly slow US Robotics modem (from this rural location, we could never get above 24.4 bps), and yet somehow we tolerated that until the technology improved.

So 10 or 12 years from now, will today's fast DSL seem like yesterday's slow dial-up?

The one thing we can be sure of is that people will want more speed, faster processors, and greater power, and one way or the other, the tech companies will continue to deliver.

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[ronin]

people will want more speed, faster processors, and greater power

Hmmm. Didn't Marshall McLuhan quip that Invention was the Mother of Necessity?

[Reno]

Didn't Marshall McLuhan quip that Invention was the Mother of Necessity?

Or was it Frank Zappa? ;-)

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