When a computer guy dreams of heaven, this is what it looks like....

[amirm]

http://www.dailytech.com/Google+Fib...ps+Downloads+600Mbps+Uploads/article29195.htm

"Google Fiber Goes Live in Kansas City with 700Mbps Downloads, 600Mbps Uploads

I hate my ISP a lot more today

Google announced back in 2010 it was seeking communities to participate in an experiment involving insanely fast fiber-optic broadband. The plan was called Google Fiber and ultimately Kansas City was chosen. The first homes and businesses with Google Fiber had their 1 Gbps service turned on yesterday.

However, anytime we see internet providers offer theoretical peak speeds, we usually take them with a huge grain of salt. However, it looks like Google Fiber is actually incredibly fast in the real world.

A Google Fiber user named Mike Demarais ran a speed test only minutes after his service went live according to ArsTechnica. He achieved 696.38 Mbps download and an impressive 620.49 Mbps upload.

"The first thing I did was BitTorrent Ubuntu," Demarais said. "I think that took two minutes, let me try it again right now."

The home where Demarais accesses these incredibly fast internet speeds is operated by Homes for Hackers, and is owned by Ben Barreth. Entrepreneurs can live in the house rent and utility free for three months at a time, only needing to pay for their own groceries.

Homes for Hackers is billed as an attempt to kick start high-tech businesses within the city.

Google offers a few different plans for customers. For $120/month you get Gigabit internet (up/down), HDTV service, a Nexus 7 tablet, and 1 TV box. If all you need is gigabit internet, that will only run you $70/month. Google is even offering a "free" internet service (guaranteed for at least 7 years) that provides 5Mb down/1Mb up. However, customers have to pay the $300 "construction fee" that is waived on the two paid packages.

There are no data caps on any of Google's packages (including the "free" one)."

 

[audioguy]

Now THAT'S fast !!

 

[JonFo]

Man, I'm just green, bright green with envy. I barely get 3Mbps down and 0.6 up here in rural GA. People in third-world countries have better connectivity than some of us in the US.

 

[amirm]

"Rural" is the problem. The small the distances, the faster the speeds. Our big country is a major impediment to fast internet speed. That said, our vacation house is somewhat remote and I have DSL at 8 mbit/sec and cable company just arrived which can provide over 50 mbit/sec.

 

[garylkoh]

"Rural" is the problem. The small the distances, the faster the speeds. Our big country is a major impediment to fast internet speed. That said, our vacation house is somewhat remote and I have DSL at 8 mbit/sec and cable company just arrived which can provide over 50 mbit/sec.

The vastness of the country is one thing, but there is no excuse in the large cities. A fiber backbone connects the tier 1 providers in the US - however, because they are all privately run and need to maximize profits, they just barely keep up with utilization.

Speed is not a distance problem with fiber. In 1996, when we launched the first cybercafe in Singapore, we had a T1 line directly into the US. Models, actresses and other celebrities came regularly to surf on the Sun workstations, Macs and PCs that we installed. We let the prettiest ones surf for free.

This picture was taken just before we closed down.

 

[amirm]

I agree Gary. We are incompetent in general. Our showroom is in Bellevue, Washington which is five minutes from Microsoft campus. The fastest Internet service is 384 kbits (0.3 mbi/sec) DSL! Cable company has no wire there and the phone company apparently has ancient ones. To get decent bandwidth we have a Clear wireless link that give us 6 mbit/sec but it doesn't always stay up. The city of Bellevue is so sleep at the helm. If I had know this problem we would not have leased a facility there. When I asked the cable company when they would run a new cable they said it would only happen if the city decided to dig a trench for some other reason!

 

[microstrip]

Do you remember when we just had the Hayes Smartmodem at 1200 bps? And we had to bargain with the family to use the phone line to have access to the net?

 

[amirm]

Do you remember when we just had the Hayes Smartmodem at 1200 bps? And we had to bargain with the family to use the phone line to have access to the net?

I do! It was fun watching the characters download one at a time.

Computing was a different scale though. You could have the whole OS on one 360K floppy with some room left over. Today, Microsoft Surface RT takes 16 gigabytes for the OS alone! HTC's new DNA phone uses up 6 Gigabytes.

Nathan Myhrvold, the ex-CTO of Microsoft once gave a great talk on software. It had a great line in it:"software is like a gas. It grows to fill whatever space you give it!" How true...

 

[garylkoh]

Do you remember when we just had the Hayes Smartmodem at 1200 bps? And we had to bargain with the family to use the phone line to have access to the net?

I was in Singapore - the first modem we had was a 300baud unit, and we connected to FidoNet in 1986. "Baud" - now, that's a word from the past

 

[garylkoh]

Fast forward 30 years.... I'm online in a Hong Kong hotel room, chatting with Amir in the US and microstrip in Portugal like you guys are in the next room.

 

[amirm]

Fast forward 30 years.... I'm online in a Hong Kong hotel room, chatting with Amir in the US and microstrip in Portugal like you guys are in the next room.

We, the technologists , have brought the world closer together.

 

[A.wayne]

And ruined it .....