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posted by chromas on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-use-it-purely-for-torrenting-the-latest-Linux-ISOs dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Virgin Media tests 8Gbps broadband

A handful of homes in Cambridgeshire [UK] have tested broadband speeds of 8Gbps, as part of a trial by Virgin Media.

Currently only eight households, in the village of Papworth, are involved in the trial but Virgin Media hopes to extend this to 50 over time.

The technology it uses, ethernet passive optical network, offers the same speeds for downloads and uploads.

One analyst said it was important that fibre operators future-proofed networks and ensured there was enough capacity.

[...] "With the volume of our customers' internet usage almost doubling every year, trials like this will ensure we have the capability to meet the demand of data-hungry services in the future - be that over cable or full fibre," said Richard Sinclair, executive director of connectivity at Virgin Media.

He added that the trial was aiming to look ahead "to the next decade and beyond".

[...] Virgin Media's network in the UK currently passes more than 14 million premises, using a combination of cable and fibre-optic.

The company has been criticised by some for failing to address the digital divide and concentrating its network in more profitable towns and cities, rather than extending it out to more rural areas.

Last year, it teamed up with Need4Speed to roll out ultra-fast services to 4,000 premises in the Test Valley, in Hampshire, but has admitted it is unlikely to reach very rural areas.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:32PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:32PM (#797298)

    What is it good for, unless you are torrenting without vpn or you are bandcamp?
    It won't speed up loading websites, it won't affect you watching newest netflix garbage and spotify plays mp3s.

  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:47PM

    by isostatic (365) on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:47PM (#797309) Journal

    I haven't seen the need to upgrade my home network from 1G yet, and it's been 1G for 2 decades.

    Indeed it's fairly rare to use 10G at work for end devices other than a few specialist devices like hypervisors.

    8G would allow a few uncompressed HD video streams with appropiate timing considerations, but it wouldn't allow 4K uncompressed.

    I can get multi-hunderd meg connectivity at home, but it's just never been needed

  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:49PM (5 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Wednesday February 06 2019, @06:49PM (#797311) Journal

    No, but it would make it much nicer for sharing a connection. While 10gbps is likely overkill even for a four or five person houshold, I would prefer overkill to what I get now. What I'm getting now, is nearly unusable garbage. Would be nice, if there was reasonable service available in my area. Satellite != reasonable service, unless I can get about 20 to 30ms ping or less. Mobile internet with 10GB cap isn't a reasonable service. The only service in my area that ranges from semi-usable to good is point-to-point wireless. Unfortunately, the provider I've been using, didn't have a tower they could get line-of-sight with, so I'm back to internet shopping. Which brings me back to the whole Mobile (Cellphone/Hotspot/Shared) Internet isn't a solution, 'cause of the cap. Though, I'm also barely getting a connection where I'm at with that.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday February 06 2019, @08:54PM (4 children)

      by edIII (791) on Wednesday February 06 2019, @08:54PM (#797394)

      No, but it would make it much nicer for sharing a connection.

      Not really, or it would in the same way the Death Star would give me more space for all my activities compared to my bedroom.

      If you want five people in the house all watching 4K streaming simultaneously, even then, this connection is way fucking overkill for that. That's a 1000 MB/s connection (8 Gigabits = 1 Gigabyte), and last I checked a 4K stream is only around 4 MB/s (32 Mb/s). This connection is what I would need to service a neighborhood of 100 people with enough bandwidth for them to do that, and other surfing and file sharing.

      When you look at a lot of monitoring data, people really aren't saturating their connections when they're 25 mbps and above unless they're all power users downloading TV/Movies at 1GB to 10GB each. I really doubt your average 5 person household is exceeding 25, much less 50, and certainly not 100. With this connection, we're talking 8000, or a full 80 households supported at 100 mbps. That's the definition of fucking nuts.

      There was a movie called Brewster's Millions in the 80's with Richard Pryor where he had to spend millions of dollars in a short time period to retain hundreds of millions of dollars. It turned out it wasn't all that easy. In the same way I would challenge you to keep a 1000 MB/s connection saturated on average 50% of the time with a team of 5 people over 30 days. You have to keep downloaded data for at least 72 hours before deleting it too :)

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:00PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:00PM (#797434)

        "Would you like to watch my 4K camera live feed ? Lossless compression, HDR, and you can rotate it to point at the mountain, the bees in the garden, or the neighbor's wife"

      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:08PM (2 children)

        by Freeman (732) on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:08PM (#797440) Journal

        I'd still pay for it, if it only cost $60/month. It's likely more expensive, but I would like to have my cake and eat it too. Really, as a rural user, I would love an easy choice that didn't involve me spending an exorbitant price for them to run a direct line to me.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:15PM (1 child)

          by edIII (791) on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:15PM (#797445)

          Ohh, if it was $60, I would purchase it too. Keep 1000 Mbps to myself, and dedicate the rest to a TOR exit node :)

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
          • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday February 06 2019, @11:02PM

            by opinionated_science (4031) on Wednesday February 06 2019, @11:02PM (#797472)

            1000Mbps is $90 here - though they tried *really* hard to upsell for DirectTV even sending out a dish and *Everything*.

            I showed the engineer the house - no TV.

            So I have just internet now...

            PS. Squirrels chewed through the fibre - how is this a thing?!!!

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 06 2019, @07:54PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday February 06 2019, @07:54PM (#797341) Journal

    The Vice article has a guy who started out with 1 Gbps and moved to 10 Gbps. He said his family managed to max out the 1 Gbps connection with stuff like 4K streaming on multiple displays while at the same time he would use it to receive and review 3D mammograms (ascended level internet porn) for his job.

    There is probably an unknown factor here. As in if the majority of the country started switching to 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps connections, you would start to see use cases pop up that you hadn't thought of. Or you'll just have a really fast internet connection.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday February 06 2019, @09:00PM (1 child)

      by edIII (791) on Wednesday February 06 2019, @09:00PM (#797397)

      How? Unless I am doing the math wrong here 1 Gbps = 125 MB/s. I see recommendations for 4K streaming between 15-40 Mbps, which should be roughly equivalent to 3-5 MB/s. So that 1 Gbps connection should theoretically support 25 screens at 4K each. This dude was really maxing his connection? I sincerely doubt it.

      I think the unknown factor here was probably him or one of the kids pirating 3D 4K BluRay videos at 50 GBs each or something. I can't see them truly maxing that connection out without an impressive number of devices all doing heavy downloading at the same time.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:06PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:06PM (#797437)

        I maxed out a 500Mb/s fiber connection with a Windows update.
        Granted, it was only for one minute, because Microsoft isn't totally insane.

        Other application: high compression adds lots of latency. The people who want to move your gaming rig into the cloud need low-latency high-bandwidth solutions.