What is Digg?115 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+70"the Shoreditch project can access internet images and content at a speed of up to 2 billions of bits per second (2Gb/s)."
2 billion bits = 0.232830644 gigabytes
Wikipedia:
A gigabit is a unit of information or computer storage, abbreviated Gbit or sometimes Gb.
A gigabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one billion bytes. It is commonly abbreviated GB in writing. - flinx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Yes...2gb until it hits the first router. ;)
- webdevil, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22Gee, why can't we get these speeds here in the US? Corporate greed anyone?
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14actually, its .25 gigabytes, or 256 megabytes per second. (MB/s)
- gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Your description of Internet 2 is just wrong. It's essentially a secondary network between most research universities (in the US at least) and a few corporations which has a large amount of dedicated bandwidth. FiOS/FTTP have nothing to do with the Internet 2 other than being fast...
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14I'm not trying to indemnify America, because we did ***** up and fumble the Fiber ball, but...
England is a much smaller country. They could run fiber through the whole country and it would cost less than running fiber through all of my home state (Kentucky), not to mention it would be easier because the population is concentrated in one big city.
It would cost America more because more equipment would be needed. Significantly more. That's why congress earmarked over 2 BILLION dollars to do this (in tax breaks and grants), 10 years ago. The problem is, we haven't seen hardly any of that infrastructure being built up. Some companies are trying (hell, most of the fiber neccesary is already in the ground; there's more dark fiber in the ground than their is live fiber), but it's likely we won't see Fiber becoming a residential option across the US for at least 2-5 more years (though Verizon's pilot seems to be doing well, and they're expanding it quickly).
So it's hard to do an Apples-Apples comparison here. - pr0t0, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13"Ministers have earmarked £12 million for the Shoreditch project..."
This is what I find most amazing about the article. That's $21mil U.S.
If we asked for this in the U.S., first we would be told that it was technologically impossible. Then they would tell us it would cost $300-400 million. They would sell that figure to congress, who would believe it. The telcos/cablecos would get billions in tax abatements to build the infrastructure, and there would be no oversight. Finally, we would end up with a service that's 1000 times slower and costs us 5 times as much as it should. We would ask, "Hey, where's our uber high-speed internet access?" and the telcos would say that it was technologically impossible. Rinse and repeat.
That's how it would go.
Oh, wait. That's how it's already happened! - saleens281, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Funny I get modded down for speaking the truth. Where do I get my info?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California#GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Kingdom
1.5 Trillion for California
1.7 Trillion for the UK
Oh, and do some fact checking, the US's GDP is 12 Trillion, far more than "4 times" the UK's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States - esteban, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Agreed, most of the rest of the interweb won't run at this speed. You can only run as fast as the person in front of you in this game. Also most PCs have a 100Mb network card or at best a 1Gb -- who has a 2Gb router/network card? However, it is good to see speed increasing, more fibre I say!
- SecondChild, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16Ah yes... WebTV. Surpassing AOL in the "I don't understand these internets" demographic.
- gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Thank you for pointing that out. When I saw 2GB/sec I nearly crapped myself, but it turns out it's "only" 2Gb/sec. That's still damn fast, and deserving of the front page but it's too bad the description is so misleading.
- docxxvi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12can anyone say DoS?
- noseeme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Even diggers don't understand the difference between Gb/s GB/s ...
- BritOverseas, on 10/12/2007, -8/+15Honestly, where do you guys get your information?
Yes "England" is much smaller but the "U.K" is roughly 1000 miles long and it is utter nonsense to say the "Population is centered in one big city". There are roughly 8 million people in Greater London and at least another 50 million spread out over the rest of England, not to mention the other 7 million in Scotland and Wales. There are really only 5 "Major" population centres in the UK, London, The North West (Manchester and Liverpool), The North East (Newcastle and surrounding towns), Greater Birmingham and Glasgow/Edinburgh. The rest of it is mainly rural or semi rural and suffers the same kind of lack of investment as happens in the States.
In this analogy, the US is much the same. You only really have 5 or 6 "Major" population centres yourself (SE, SW, NE and a couple of other smaller ones) and the problem is the same, linking those together and providing service to the more rural ones.
And where do you get the GDP figures from? Our population is about a fifth of the US but our GDP is a quarter of US. In my eyes that means we are more profitable and would have more money to spend, but, we choose not to waste it because it is not necessary. - webdevil, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"This isn't available to customers, however, because the telephone megagiants that promised to build Fiber-To-The-Premisis have yet to deliver on that promise"
Right corporate greed!
It will take years for America to catch up in terms of speed and pricing that some countries are already at. Most of this has to do with large corporations and agreements that they have together. Don't get me wrong I'm not trashing corporations. Not all are bad, but telecommunication companies in this country are out of line and need to be put back in place. - gusto, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The article is a little light on technical info, isn't it? I had asssumed that this was all about IPTV, which companies such as Sky and BT are already pushing towards in the UK. Digital Bridge, the organisation behind the project ( http://www.digitalbridge.org.uk/ ) says: "All our video streams are delivered in the latest MPEG formats ensuring we can get the most out of the bandwidth we have available. Truly local TV can be delivered through advanced management systems that allow us to tailor individual user's experiences."
The Guardian's blog, by the way, says the story isn't entirely accurate ( http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2006/03/06/shoreditch_to_get_2_gigabit_net_link.html ). Here's an extract:
First off, this might be among the world's fastest commercially available internet connections, but it is dwarfed by projects like Teragrid, for example. That runs up to 40 Gigabits - 20 times faster than Digital Bridge's maximum, used by a network of American universities and companies.
And because each 2 Gigabit connection is shared across 1,000 homes, you'd need to make sure that nobody else was using the net (or watching TV) to get that maximum speed. If everyone else was online, you'd only get a maximum of 2 Megabits per second - already the standard speed for providers like BT (and soon they'll be going much faster. - p1nhead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6You know, I'm still paying 50 dollars for 5Mbps down. This makes no ***** difference to me. The year is 2006 and we haven't made any ***** progress, or so it seems, on a practical level.
"We have the technology ... but we won't let you have it!" - BritOverseas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6No problem, a civilised question always deserves a civilised answer.
As far as I can remember with my economics classes (long time ago) the second figure allows for fluctuations in the exchange rate over the year and also takes into account any market fluctuations that affect the raw data. Notice the difference in the US's figures is nowhere near as much as the UK percentagewise, that is I think because the dollar was relatively stable last year, whilst the Pound fluctuated more. If I remember rightly the second figure is the "truer" of the two but like I said, when it comes to GDP's nowadays (with all of the multinationals), all of these figures are barely relevant anyway. They are just put out by governments to toot their own horn. This of course "might" be wrong but I don't think so (watch some Economics experts flame me now).
Also, please remember that I am a Software Engineer (supposedly the poorest budget minded people on earth, just ask procurements managers when we ask for equipment that works rather than the cheapest available) and not a market economist, the only reason I even bothered to get involved in this conversation was for the "Poor Relative" posting/jibe that preceeded my post. - saleens281, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10No, it's not hard to do an apples to apples comparison. England is much smaller: correct They also have a fraction of our GDP.
There are States in the US that rival England's GDP, there's absolutely no reason this should not be feasible here. - saleens281, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8So... can you actually get any real use out of this connection? From the way they describe it the only way you can use this is with their set-top webTV type box. Can you actually hook a computer up to the connection? It's not exactly difficult to provide "2Gb/sec" speeds when you don't actually allow end users to do anything with it. I can offer 10Gbit to anyone who would like, please note though, you'll only be able to check your email :/
- ziffel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Introduced this month, the system will allow 20,000 households to surf the web and download material at speeds up to 2,000 times faster than present services."
Meanwhile, half of the U.S. is still stuck on dialup. The other half are being overcharged for inferior service. - *Ica*, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes of course the UK is quite small in size but dont forget we have nearly 60 million people on this island, part of the UK are quite rural (mid-Wales for instance, or northern Scotland). So our towns and cities are densely populated so running fibre to everyone here would cost billions and billions.
Increasingly though there is becoming a speed gap here, a lot of the large towns and cities have access to 24mbit internet, the ones that dont can get 10mbit cable. If you live in a smaller town/in the countryside connections are only up to 2mbit currently, but from the end of March up to 8mbit.
So really, a lot of us are just crawling along at 2mbit like you guys in the States, it aint all good here. One good thing is that we do have close to 99% ADSL coverage. - Azlen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Nicknamed “CTU”, after the high-tech counter-terrorist headquarters in the American television series, 24, the Telehouse centre is said to be one of the most secure locations in Britain."
Ironic considering CTU is one of the least secure locations on television. - jafojsharp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4And yet the only open port you can use is port 80!!!!
- KAMI_no_kodomo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"2 gigabits = 256 mega*bytes*
2 gigabits = 2 048 mega*bits*
ehh...whats the difference between the two?"
There is a diference between BITS and BYTES in the second part ;) - NOFXY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've got a question. I'm not trying to flame or anything here. I checked out the numbers and there seems to be 2 different ones. One that says,
UK
GDP (purchasing power parity): $1.867 trillion (2005 est.)
GDP (official exchange rate): $2.275 trillion (2005 est.)
USA
GDP (purchasing power parity): $12.37 trillion (2005 est.)
GDP (official exchange rate): $12.77 trillion (2005 est.)
I'd like to know why you took the higher number and not the lower one. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm' just wondering :) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Jezus, we could really REALLY use this in America! We barely have 2Mbps here and now the Telco's are lobbying congress to make the internet not open, and even Tiered!
- jtravis, on 10/12/2007, -3/+62 megabits = 0.25 megabytes
2 gigabits = 256 megabytes
2 gigabits = 2 048 megabits
...its faster no matter how you look at it... - Jams, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Doesn't the poster mean: Worlds fastest home Internet connection?
"Have you got the Internet?"
"Yes (holds up AOL CD)"
^-- Witnessed this conversation in a local PC store. - irrision, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This isn't actually an accurate description of the internet service. According to the Britain times (Summary link below) the 2gbps is shared bandwidth which provides up to 24mbps to each home. In other words it isn't the words fastest internet connection or even close. In fact I'm sure Comcast has way more bandwidth than this delivered to the distribution hub in most cities they service. Nevermind FTTH projects like FIOS which already deliver 24mbps dedicated connections that aren't shared bandwidth connections.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/72561 - Pepper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Haha. That reminds me of the old days, like with RAM (go go 3mb!)
- jk_baller23, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Yeah, damn overseas gets the best internet. I don't think people in the US can get 10/10 yet, or 100/100, let alone 2Gb/s. I'll be crying myself to sleep tonight :-P
- g30ph, on 10/12/2007, -1/+41.21 JIGGAWATTS! GREAT SCOTT!!!!!!
- pr0t0, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Apologies for replying to my own post, but I wanted to be clear. I was saying that the same job...servicing 20,000 people would cost $300-400 million in the U.S. This figure is of course, completely fabricated.
I certainly didn't think that the discussion would degenerate into a discussion of GDP/Population comparisons. I was making a simple point. That in the U.S., budgets seem to get insanely bloated, while service and capability don't really scale.
England has managed to deliver a small-scale solution that delivers the service and capability for a seemingly small budget. This looks like a real "win" for those consumers lucky enough to get it.
In the U.S., I rarely feel like any service I buy is a "win". It's more like the best I can get right now, it doesn't compare in capability compared to what is available in other countries, and it looks like I'll be paying considerably more.
I guess I feel like every penny I pay for things is more like a win for a company's CEO and executive board. - joshpape, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@pr0t0
But shoreditch is only a tiny area compared to the US. So £12 would end up being in the hundreds of millions for the whole of the UK. And we are only a small country compared to the US. - JSolo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm running a gig fiber line to my home right now and while it's pretty fast (downloading songs from the iTunes store are nearly just a blink), finding fast servers is few and far between.
- dbuttry, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Digg...Just because they call it "CTU" after the show 24!
Nicknamed “CTU”, after the high-tech counter-terrorist headquarters in the American television series, 24, the Telehouse centre is said to be one of the most secure locations in Britain. - Ermenwyr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Finally, this artical gives me the data I need to convert between Gb/s and the ever-popular network metric of Encyclopedia Britanicas per second (EB/s):
1 EB per 7 sec = 2 Gb/s
1 EB/s = 14 Gb/s - leodavinci, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6"Residents will receive an infra-red wireless keyboard and remote control that will turn their television into a computer desktop-style environment. Microsoft, Homechoice and ITN are providing software and television channels for the project."
Sounds like something that Microsoft did a few years back. I remember my Grandma bought this little box that you put on top of the TV and hooked the phoneline into, and then you had a infrared keyboard that you could use to do Email, Weather and News. I wish I could remember the name of it.. I'm pretty sure it had the MSN logo on it. - griz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2People need to learn the difference between "B" (Bytes) and "b" (bits). There is a big difference. About 8x different.
Still 2Gb/S is nothing to sneeze at. That's 1000x my current speed. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And I'm lucky if i reach 500KB/Sec...
- tylerni7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They have OC96 internet connections. (Optical Connection) I think they go about 9gb/s (that's gigabits, not bytes). Of course connections that fast are ridiculously expensive, and it is hard to find a server able to deliver that speed.
- MightyGiant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Sounds like the second coming of WebTV.
- phraud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, if their pipe to the actual internet is large, then they can use this bandwidth - but yes, they won't get 250MB/s from any one host. Most PCs have a 100Mbit card, but many are now coming standard with 1Gbit cards. The 2Gbit is marketing speak - a Cisco-like comment. A 1Gbit card can send at 1Gbit, and receive at 1Gbit (full duplex), so it can transfer 2Gbit worth of information per second. Its like your 100Mbit card can actually handle 200Mbit/s.
If this ISP has a lot of media content, and a lot of subscribers, they will be able to share media, play games, etc at very fast speeds, but yes, they will probably have a very limited amount of bandwidth to the rest of us. - Googled, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I hope Birmingham starts getting this then, that would be AWSOME!
- bobbob1016, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4LOL and I JUST got my DSL up to 6 megabits today, that is what I call irony, lol.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2And, like other internet trends, driven by the increased deemands of the online porn business... :)
http://www.presenternet.com - *Ica*, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"England is a much smaller country. They could run fiber through the whole country and it would cost less than running fiber through all of my home state (Kentucky), not to mention it would be easier because the population is concentrated in one big city."
Thats just so wrong mate, think of it like this: I bet Kentucky isnt anywhere close to having the same population density as this country, just have a look at England on Google Earth. You have to think of all the individual little streets, sending fiber down each one....expensive *****. - Bluezdood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I understand where stubby is coming from, but still, how is it that they have piplines that can provide 10Mb/s DSL, internet access provided through power lines, and we in the United States are STILL running DSL at 768kb/s?
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Broadband in the US is an embarassment. Several countries have surpassed us and the gap is getting worse. In general, English-speaking countries are not doing very well compared to Asia and some parts of the non-English EU.
You can see how pathetic the situation is with UK and US providers toting asymmetric 10Mbps as if it is the next major leap to come, while countries like China, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, UAE (yeah, the ones trying to buy our ports!) have already begun rolling out 10Mbps *symmetric* as standard home service for $16-40 a month. Not just faster speeds, but for less than what US, UK companies are charging for current 5-8Mbps asymmetric speeds.
By next year, customers in China are going to be watching streaming HDTV over their internet, while Americans will still be watching DRM'd WMVs of Kevin Federline singing the Peanut Butter Jelly song. -
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