[IP] comments? Does faster broadband really matter?
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From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 27, 2005 11:28:55 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Does faster broadband really matter?
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Does faster broadband really matter?
12/26/2005 5:17:49 PM, by Jeremy Reimer
<http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051226-5846.html>
Internet blogger Om Malik has written an interesting piece on the
new, faster broadband connections that are now becoming available to
US consumers. His premise is that the faster speeds are not that
important, because they don't translate into a significantly better
experience for the end user.
The gist of his argument is that most online activities, like
standard websurfing, are not significantly sped up by high-bandwidth
connections, and the few that are, such as downloading, are not
typically time-sensitive anyway:
Websurfing runs at only about a megabit per second, and nearly
everything else except downloading is effectively throttled down at
the source. Downloading turns out to have some natural limits as
well; at 100 Mbps, you can download enough music for 24 hours of
listening in only four minutes per day. The practical result,
confirmed by high speed leaders like Masayoshi Son of Yahoo BB in
Japan, is that the faster speeds yield only a extremely modest
increase in real traffic demand.
[snip]
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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