Archived Like water, bandwidth is also not an unlimited resource. Do you agree? (technology)
submitted ago by rms_returns
Posted by: rms_returns
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Archived on: 2/12/2017 1:51:00 AM
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Archived Like water, bandwidth is also not an unlimited resource. Do you agree? (technology)
submitted ago by rms_returns
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[–] fricknmaniac 0 points 28 points 28 points (+28|-0) ago
I'd say it's in the category of technically limited, but effectively unlimited.
Technically because there's only so much bandwidth that exists at a single moment, so that's not unlimited.
However it's unlikely that we'll ever be able to use enough bandwidth to reach the overall limit at any given moment. Even as we create new things which use up more bandwidth, we're expanding how much bandwidth we have. Bandwidth only even becomes a problem at the very end of the chain and because of aging infrastructure that ISPs have no interest or reason to upgrade short of Google Fiber or city run fiber forcing competition.
[–] ElspethTirel 1 point 8 points 9 points (+9|-1) ago
A+ comment.
Only thing I want to add is that we are very likely already in a world where bandwidth is not an issue as it stands. It's perception of an issue caused by companies like Comcast and Verizon who want to use "data caps" and their excuses as a way to pry money out of people.
[–] TripleA 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Well Played Mate!
[–] rudditrenbyfascists 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I call bullshit.
Bandwidth can easily b overwhelmed with new kinds data.
For instance mp3's saturated dial up.
Video initially saturated typical early 'broadband'. In fact, netflix acknowledges this by creating local mirrored servers to dish video up geographically.
As 3D modelling becomes more and more true to reality the information density will spike again.
What will the next choke be?
Maybe massively realistic vr environs, maybe we start copying consciousness to files... who knows. But we can probably saturate whatever we create.
[–] Hektik ago
Most data is really bottled necked by switches and receivers aka infrastructure, not data rate/bandwidth, bandwidth has no theoretical limit in the EM spectrum. The limiters for data would be power required to send the signal and sensitivity of the equipment picking up the transmission at least for EM. Money/materials/falloff radius distance would be the only limiting issues with regard to EM but not the bandwidth itself.
[–] rwbj 1 point 10 points 11 points (+11|-1) ago
No, that's simply not true.
Imagine you and I have a personal network and we're transferring files as fast as we possible can on the medium connecting our machines. Is that the end of it? Resource exhausted? No, we can simply install an additional medium, comparable to the first, and double our transmission rates. There is no end to this.
Bandwidth is more like straws. There may be a theoretical limit to how much stuff you can send through a straw at one time, but there's no limit to the number of straws you can use. And once the infrastructure is setup it's incredibly cheap to maintain which makes the price gouging currently going on the US, after taxpayers heavily subsidized the construction of the infrastructure, completely ridiculous. It's nothing but corruption.
[–] MinorLeakage 1 point 6 points 7 points (+7|-1) ago
Water is unlimited. Unless you're literally firing into outer space. Then we're gonna run out eventually.
In your question though, are you referring to computing, eg. data transfer rate or "throughput". Or are you referring to signal processing, eg. "the difference between the upper and lower frequencies in a continuous set of frequencies".
Both of them are theoretically limited (and limited by technology), but for different reasons and in different ways.
Computing
Signal Processing
[–] Hektik 0 points 4 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago
The only limit would be the potential infrastructure investment. At this current moment the US atleast still has 90's level infrastructure as the Monopoly telecoms are double downing on being next to useless while ranking in more profits. Also there isn't really any limit to the EM spectrum on information. While water does have a limit on volume per person (1gal a day personal + other needs like shower/toliet/laundry). Bandwidth doesn't have size limitations other than power and sensitivity.
[–] vuke69 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
Bad analogy. Water has no time component, and is not comparable to bandwidth.
(Water flow rate):(Water)::(bandwidth):(data transferred)
[–] vuke69 1 point 1 point 2 points (+2|-1) ago
There is a finite global capacity at any given moment, there is a maximum aggregate bandwidth between two given points, and there is also maximum bandwidth on a given link. All these things are constantly changing (except for last mile links).
Transit providers are constantly increasing capacity, but usage is increasing exponentially. If every transit provider stopped adding links, within weeks every pop would be saturated during peak periods, and within months continuously saturated. That would be bad. Latency and packet loss would shoot up, and effective bandwidth would drop further, making the problem cascade.
Currently transit providers are running 10G & 40G on their fastest links, and adding more as fast as they can light them up. Within a pop some of the single links are as fast as 100G, but you have a pretty limited distance on that. There's still quite a bit of dark fiber out there, but I'm not sure how much of it will certify at 10G. Most is from the dot-com boom and only good up to 1G. They are constantly pulling new fiber as well. There are things like DWDM that can increase the capacity of individual fibers, but that's not heavily leveraged due to cost. At most they might use four wavelengths (so 4x10G) on a fiber that is just too expensive to add to, but that's out of a maximum of 72. There's also some new multicore glass that's promising.
[–] wylan 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
Here is an example of the gross amounts of Dark Fiber that is available in a city near me . My friend worked for the school district when they put in the fiber:
The school district (I worked at) owns a shitload of dark fiber that is already spread out across the city in a 50 mile radius. Problem is that, because it was taxpayer funded, it cannot be used for commercial purposes. So there are thousands of gigabits worth of fiber sitting in the ground, but they aren't allowed to let the public use it unless it was free to the taxpayers (since they already paid for the fiber in the first place)
Nobody will want to pony up the dough to light the fiber up if they can't charge for it so the spine is there collecting dust, with no nerves connected to anything to give you an idea of how much potential it has: we core-drilled and installed TWO fiber conduits to every school in the district, and in the conduit installed 144-strand cables. To provide a whopping redundant 20-gigabit pair of connections to each school, we only needed 4 strands. so every part of city, including two adjacent towns, have 142 dark strands running through town. 710 gigabit capacity, collecting dust, or 1420 gig if you take away the redundant pair
[–] vuke69 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
And the crazy thing is, that's probably not even an extreme example.
That sounds like a decent metro loop though, it's a shame they can't lease some of it out. That could bring some serious cash flow into the district.