2 GB/S downloads

Discussion in 'Computer Science & Culture' started by leopold, Mar 7, 2006.

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  1. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    how is this for ultra-fast connections?

    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. Users will, for example, be able to download all 32,640 pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in less than seven seconds, managers of the government-funded project said.

    Most commercially-available broadband connections operate at a speed of 2 megabits per second (2Mb/s), but the Shoreditch project can access internet images and content at a speed of up to 2 billions of bits per second (2Gb/s).
    http://www.testmy.net/articles/article-449
     
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  3. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    Sounds flashy and all..
    but there is no use for such speeds at the present moment (for a home user at least).
     
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  5. curioucity Unbelievable and odd Registered Senior Member

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    You.... sure? That sounds too much to be true..... 250MB/s is a crapload indeed...
     
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  7. AntonK Technomage Registered Senior Member

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    First I think I disagree with you Avatar. Until all communications feel instant to the user, there will always be room to grow. The problem is, people don't realize how slow things are til they get something faster. Think about how many people you know that thought dial up was fast enough until the first time they saw broadband. There is no going back. But still this is not fast enough. When I click a movie link, I want it to pop up immediately. when I download a program I'd like it to just pop up to install. When I buy my latest songs on iTunes (actually I avoid iTunes but many do not) I would want it to reach me immediately.

    The problem though is upload. One of the major uses for the Internet now is becoming VOIP and pretty soon VVOIP (video and voice over IP). A 2Gb/s connection is no good
    if you can only upload at 256Kb/s. When we start having connections of 250 Mb/s upload and 2 Gb/s download is when you'll start seeing a whole suite of applications for communication that you never thought possible.

    Still there are some hangups. This would be great but I question how many computers could actually use this. I work with some large scale multiprocessors and clusters and we run them off very fast networks usually on the order of 1Gb/s (in the past) to much faster now. The problem is that unless you offload the processing to a special processor, a normal computer can't handle doing the TCP/IP packet processing on that many packets per second to do over 1Gb/s. I wonder if they include the special TCP/IP offload engine daughter card, or if they just wait til people complain about not getting full 2GB/s.

    -AntonK
     
  8. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    And then there's also the problem on how fast your hard disk can actually store data.
    I download stuff on a 5400rpm drive and my top download speed between the same ISP users is 120KB/s and I frequently get errors which don't happen on slower international transfers @ 60KB/s.

    Of course I'd like to have 200mb/s if someone gives me it as cheap as my current one,
    I'd just buy a faster hd. But would I pay more for it if 60KB/s is sufficient for now? Not sure.
     
  9. AntonK Technomage Registered Senior Member

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    That definitely sounds like a problem with your hardware. I have an 8Mb/s connection here which can get over a 1MB/s download speeds. I have no problem with that. When I do a pure network transfer (no internet, just LAN) I get speeds of between 8 and 9 MB/s. You should definitely look into whether or not you have DMA turned on. Not having DMA can greatly slow down processes like that.

    -AntonK
     
  10. Communist Hamster Cricetulus griseus leninus Valued Senior Member

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    Something that fast is overkill, but it sure is futureproof. It is of course not available to home users.
     
  11. Xerxes asdfghjkl Valued Senior Member

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    That might be nice in 10 years...
     
  12. AntonK Technomage Registered Senior Member

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    I've heard more and more people say that it is overkill, but I think you're all missing the point. For some reason everyone is happy just being able to view simple webpages and small grainy videos and less than high fidelity sound. The internet is not a part of communication, it is becoming ALL communication. Eventually there will be no cable, no phone, just an internet fiber. You will use it for voice and video calls. You will use it to download your television content (instantly -- which will require a very fast connecation like this). And all of this will be most likely at resolutions unheard of today. Streaming a dozen HD television channels in full quality (compressed but not lossy) into your house.

    Theres no way you can say that we don't need it now. I can list hundeds instances just in the last hour that I wish I had a faster connection. Communication is most effective when the participants feel it is instantaneous. We're not there yet.

    -AntonK
     
  13. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    They will never take my pigeon mail away!!

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    Sorry, just felt like saying that

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  14. AntonK Technomage Registered Senior Member

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    If calculated you'll find that pigeons can actually have a pretty large bandwidth... just very loooooong latency

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    In terms of pure bandwidth, as the old joke goes: Nothing beats a Volkswagen Beetle with a backseat full of tape backups.

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    But then again the latency on that is going to kill you again

    -AntonK
     
  15. Zephyr Humans are ONE Registered Senior Member

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    Futureproof for a limited value of future

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    "64k is enough for anyone, I tell ya!"

    Wouldn't a Volkswagen Beetle with a backseat full of HVDs beat that quite easily?
     
  16. AntonK Technomage Registered Senior Member

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    Well considering that all they've built so far is a 300GB model. I'd say no, since I've known high density tape backups to store much more. Remember the surface area of a tape is HUGE. Now once they come out with the full Multi-terabyte discs, then yes. I would say that would be hard to beat due to the Holographic nature. Actually using somewhat of the 3D substrate rather than only surface area.

    -AntonK
     
  17. Pi-Sudoku Slightly extreme Registered Senior Member

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    Although you could download at 2 GB/s your computer couldn't manage that data unless it was some kind of supercomputer. To download the encyclopedia brittanica in the 7 seconds specified by leopold your computer would need sooooooooo much RAM
     
  18. AntonK Technomage Registered Senior Member

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    Not really. With DMA most of that data will be piped directly to your storage medium, such as your harddrive, without ever having gone through your CPU. Large bandwidth like that doesn't become a problem until its larger than your bus bandwidth, which won't happen anytime soon.

    As I said above, the problem isn't the large amount of data its the overhead from TCP/IP. The code that runs in your operating system has to do computates such as CRC checks and process matching, etc on EVERY TCPIP packet that comes in from your network card. It can THEN DMA the data straight to the disk. The solutions to this problem are 1 of 2. #1 is to use very large packet sizes. Much larger than are typically used today. This makes sense. For instance we can bring 100 megs in at a time, process only 1 packet header, then DMA the 100 megs to the harddrive to the appropriate place. The problem is that TCP/IP usually makes mistakes and in the event that a packet is lost or miunderstood, the TCP/IP protocol stipulates that you need to resend. So now instead of resending a small 8K or 16K packet, you're sending a large multi megabyte packet all over again. Suddenly that 2Gb/s isn't really so fast anymore because we're using all the bandwidth to fix things.

    The second solution is better and that is a dedicated TCP/IP offloading chip on your computer. Most likely on the network card or motheroard if its built in. This chip takes the data that comes in, reads and decodes the TCP/IP packet header and decides where to put the data MUCH faster and with no CPU intervention. This means that your CPU won't even notice its doing it, it will simply get a small notification whenever all the data has arrived. Things are moving this way in largescale severs, which usually means soon enough it will move this way for desktops.

    -AntonK
     
  19. AntonK Technomage Registered Senior Member

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    Oh and one more thing. Lets not confuse 2Gb/s with 2GB/s. The article states 2Gb/s. That means 2G gigbits, not gigbytes. There is almost a factor of 10 difference (actually a factor of 8 as there are 8 bits per byte). This internet is only twice as fast as a current Gigabit ethernet connection.

    -AntonK
     
  20. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    believe it or not i miss my little 6809E microprocessor with its 64k memory
    its tiny 8k basic and 360k floppy was what i cut my teeth on

    64k seemed like a monstrous amount of memory, the only way i could even aproach its limits was when i was doing fourier synthesis with it
     
  21. Communist Hamster Cricetulus griseus leninus Valued Senior Member

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  22. Zephyr Humans are ONE Registered Senior Member

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    That's quite amazing. I thought tapes were obsolete technology these days, but from what you say they're better than harddrives - except for that darn linear access constraint

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  23. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    As far as I am aware of all big companies backup their data on tapes.
    They're cheap and can hold a lot of GB (160-320GB I think).
    And if your only need is backup, then linear access is not a handicap.

    edit: Here, found this - link
    £245.99 ex VAT for a pack of 10. If including VAT it's about 29 quid for 320GB of backup, not bad.
     
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