HDTV Almanac - Cisco to Turbocharge the Internet

[alfredpoor]

Ah, the Law of Unintended Consequences is always hiding around the corner, waiting to bite you in the butt.
I’ve been writing a lot about watching movies and video content over the Internet, and this has prompted some readers to question whether or not the Internet can stand up to the load of all this increased [...]

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[videograbber]

> ...Look at the experiments that Google and others are making for 1 Gbps Internet connections. (I just upgraded to 25/25 Mbps service, so I’m already a quarter of the way there!) <

I'm not following the math. How is 25Mbps 25% of 1000 MBps?

> Cisco says it’s so fast that “every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.” <

So how many movies have "ever been created"? When I see numbers like these, I like to verify them. Looking just at the ones on IMDB with MPAA ratings, that's under 50,000 films. And when you say the movie can be streamed, it's really meaningless without specifying the format. I.e., MPEG1 at <1 Mbps is radically different than Blu-ray at 30Mbps.

They're saying that all the movies require a total of 9600 TB. But that just seems way too high to me. At a full 50GB per film on Blu-ray (exorbitant), that would be >190,000 movies.

- Tim

[alfredpoor]

> ...Look at the experiments that Google and others are making for 1 Gbps Internet connections. (I just upgraded to 25/25 Mbps service, so I’m already a quarter of the way there!) <

I'm not following the math. How is 25Mbps 25% of 1000 MBps?

Um... if I'm optimistically adding an order of magnitude to my miscalculation? Well, it feels fast anyway.

Thanks for catching my mistake, and for the back-of-the-envelope checking of Cisco's math on the movie downloads. They didn't "show their work" in their press release, so I don't know the assumptions that they made in their calculations.

Alfred

[gtyler]

25M x 25M - sounds like you have Verizon FiOS
You are 25% of the way to 100Mbps which is the limit your router can handle at the moment.

Most computers today have a 1Gbps Ethernet port and you can certainly buy routers and switches that will support that speed - as long as don't have crappy Ethernet cabling.

I think what would be interesting to see in the video world is for some new types of company to start providing content. What if NetFlix bought a studio and then made all of it's content available on demand?

That would be just the shake up these content providers would need to work on new distributions methods.

I hate when the hold the service providers hostage while they negotiate a per subscriber increase. Consumers are paying for all the channels they don't watch. We won't be willing to do that for much longer - especially if we have other choices.

[jordanm]

Here at home, we wired the house with Cat 6, hooked all the PCs except for two, and a color laser printer, and a 2 TB 1GB NAS drive into an 8-port 1GB switch, and that feeds into 1 port of a GB router, which connects to the cable modem. According to our cable provider we're at 21 Mbps, but the network is so much faster than that, I can copy big files across it in seconds unless we're talking about the HDTV, the AVR, or the BD player. which is hooked into a second switch with a HTPC. The latter runs at 1GB, but the TV, the AVR, and the BD player's Ethernet is 10/100, so their file access seems slow compared to the PCs.

The four 1 GB ports on the router have another 1GB speed NAS drive, a test PC I play with, the first 8 port GB switch, and a 10/100 N repeat transmitter (there's a receiver on the other side of the house), so we have N wireless (encrypted) across the house for Wii, iPhones, laptop, and a few other Wifi items.

N range would otherwise stink in my all masonry block construction, U-shaped home.

[alfredpoor]

That's an impressive configuration, Jordan. I created my setup back when 100BaseT was new, so I've got that everywhere but it would take a bit of an investment to replace it all with 1Gb. And I believe that my Internet connection is 100Mb so the only point would be for internal transfers, which doesn't happen a lot. But I still envy your setup. More power is almost always better than less.

Alfred

[gtyler]

I created my setup back when 100BaseT was new, so I've got that everywhere but it would take a bit of an investment to replace it all with 1Gb.

You don't need CAT6 cable for 1GB if your runs are short enough and not near AC wiring in the wall.

I was able to use my CAT5E wiring and swap in a 24 port 1GB switch. My wireless N access port covers the whole house because I have it on the top floor. All the other equipment is in the basement on a battery backup at the home run point.

The faster internal network is handy for sharing media files and faster backups of the 4 Macs.

[alfredpoor]

It's not just a question of running new wires; I've got a bunch of routers and switches here, plus I'd have to get 1 Gb adapters for all the computers (I can think of six right off the bat). Not enough return on investment for me... yet.

Alfred

[gtyler]

The tipping point for me was when more of my LAN devices were 1GB than 100MB and I bought a Time Capsule for shared backup.
My PS3 is still 100MB and although it's probably dominating the WAN traffic side, it doesn't need the higher LAN speed.
Figuring out ROI would be difficult unless you sit there waiting for LAN file transfers.
The 1GB switches used to be a LOT more expensive.
Soon all the switches and routers will be 1GB.

Now that my LAN is 1GB, I'm looking for my ISP to break that 100MB barrier :)

That sounds silly when I say it out loud.

[jordanm]

That's an impressive configuration, Jordan. I created my setup back when 100BaseT was new, so I've got that everywhere but it would take a bit of an investment to replace it all with 1Gb. And I believe that my Internet connection is 100Mb so the only point would be for internal transfers, which doesn't happen a lot. But I still envy your setup. More power is almost always better than less.

Alfred

Alfred,

Everyone here knows about the "wife acceptance factor", no? If your wife approves of the tech, buy it!

A $167 box of 1000 feet of CAT6 from Fry's Electronics, and a $69 switch did it (I had the router already). That was several years ago.

Since then, a router and two switches failed (all NetGear), so we now have a new NetGear router, but the switches are LinkSys/Cisco. Fry's also has $9.99 10/100/1GB PCI cards for those desktop PCs that need that to replace a 10/100 setup,

If you run mostly wireless, don't bother, but the wired stuff not only works, it works consistently well, and its is fast. My wife can open the Internet on any PC in the house and be pleased (no white screens).

The last factor alone made this viable. We replaced a 9" kitchen TV with a PC/tv tuner and a 23" monitor, It has a 1GB connection via a 3' LAN cable plus channels 1-99, plus all the OA HD signnals via a cable wire and Win 7 WMC (Hauppauge provided the remote control). That PC has the new free MS Betty Crocker cookbook on it, and the wife signed in with her Betty Crocker log-in. Oh, does she love that kitchen PC!