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Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

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Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#241

Post by ronsor »

Aurornis wrote: post #234
dlenski wrote: post #223

I don't understand the desire (fetish?) for high speed home Internet connections at home. I have 25 Mbps up. 10 Mbps down. Have had it for years. It's fine. It's fine when both my wife and I are working from home and doing calls. It's fine for software development. It's fine for email and web browsing, and everything other than downloading maddeningly large files, 99% of which shouldn't be that large anyway. It's fin…

Pulling or pushing Docker images, downloading LLM models, installing AAA games from Steam. There are so many use cases that you won't see if you're just doing email and web browsing with a little bit of video streaming. It's also helpful for off-site backup. I believe off-site backup is very important, and having gigabit upload is very helpful for this. > I don't understand the desire (fetish?) If you don't need it t…

It's Stockholm syndrome from what I can tell.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#243

Post by kulahan »

WalterBright wrote: post #190
kulahan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if a simple unsubstantiated rumor is enough to get your competitors to spend potentially millions of dollars to fight you, that's a competition. Literally what else could it be? It can be two things, anyways. You can utilize fraud to manage your competitors expectations. CEOs lie constantly about the state their products are in, in order to drum up more sales. It has absolutely zero requirement to be beneficial…

> They're also competing to make as much profit as possible, which has effectively zero benefit for the public. The end result is plenty of cheap stuff for people to buy. It's why free markets have full supermarkets and socialist markets have long lines. Take the free market in software, for example. My entire software stack on my linux box cost me $0.

"Companies optimize to make as much money as possible, which is why there is cheap stuff" does not logically follow. I get what you're saying, but it's not related to the concept of companies trying to make as much profit as possible. Some will simply chase higher profit margins.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#244

Post by CyberDildonics »

neonstatic wrote: post #231
dlenski wrote: post #223

I don't understand the desire (fetish?) for high speed home Internet connections at home. I have 25 Mbps up. 10 Mbps down. Have had it for years. It's fine. It's fine when both my wife and I are working from home and doing calls. It's fine for software development. It's fine for email and web browsing, and everything other than downloading maddeningly large files, 99% of which shouldn't be that large anyway. It's fin…

An example from someone who has lived at a condo in Asia. Around 8 PM the internet becomes unusable. Everyone's back home and they want to watch their favorite series. If you need to work at that time, e.g. if you work US hours, you are screwed. P.S. I experienced this at different condos in different countries in South East Asia.

Are you sure that isn't wifi interference?

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#245

Post by ozgrakkurt »

dlenski wrote: post #223

I don't understand the desire (fetish?) for high speed home Internet connections at home. I have 25 Mbps up. 10 Mbps down. Have had it for years. It's fine. It's fine when both my wife and I are working from home and doing calls. It's fine for software development. It's fine for email and web browsing, and everything other than downloading maddeningly large files, 99% of which shouldn't be that large anyway. It's fin…

- Downloading local LLM models

- Downloading games, movies etc.

- Updating software.

- Doing remote data backups or restoring from them.

- Browsing the internet. Fiber still makes a noticeable difference especially in badly optimized websites.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#246

Post by aix1 »

exidy wrote: post #240
mft_ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one would think. And yet, living in Switzerland after the UK involved one after another discovery of how well-ordered and -run a country could be. And then moving to Germany was like stepping back even further behind my memories of the UK. I'm sure you could find examples of countries that do specific things as well as Switzerland; but I'm not aware of many places that do almost everything so excellently. (Maybe J…

> I'm not aware of many places that do almost everything so excellently Probably Singapore, which is sometimes described as the Switzerland of Asia anyway. 10 Gb symmetric fibre is broadly available at around SGD $50/month (about 35 EUR).

This is not to say that it isn't well run, but I think it would be fair to mention that Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries on Earth (#3 overall; #1 among countries with population >1 million.)

Separately, I am not totally sure just how widely deployed FTTH is in Switzerland. Here in Zürich it's everywhere, but zooming in on some rural place on init7's map tells quite a different story (perhaps not surprisingly).

https://ftth.init7.net

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#247

Post by eqvinox »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #244
neonstatic wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example from someone who has lived at a condo in Asia. Around 8 PM the internet becomes unusable. Everyone's back home and they want to watch their favorite series. If you need to work at that time, e.g. if you work US hours, you are screwed. P.S. I experienced this at different condos in different countries in South East Asia.

Are you sure that isn't wifi interference?

Most places in Asia, this is due to massive oversubscription. No relation at all to wireless spectrum.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#248

Post by eqvinox »

harrall wrote: post #74

This article gets ahead of itself. The issue isn’t the splitting. There is no fiber to even split in most places. A lot of places in America had their “network” infra built 50-100 years ago on copper and no one wants to pay to basically rebuild all of it. I happen to live in an area where there are still above ground utilities. We got >5 gig fiber fast. We have 700Mbps 5G. I literally watched them string the fiber on…

> A lot of places in America had their “network” infra built 50-100 years ago on copper

That's no different to Switzerland so far…

> and no one wants to pay to basically rebuild all of it.

…but the Swiss seem to have decided it's worth the investment.

> I happen to live in an area where there are still above ground utilities.

If anything, that can make things cheaper. You don't need to bury everything, and in some places (e.g. earthquake prone Japan) it's really counterproductive. But even if it isn't, it's certainly more expensive.

Sent from a 25G internet connection. My laptop only has 10G via TB though.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#249

Post by tibbon »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #245
dlenski wrote: post #223

I don't understand the desire (fetish?) for high speed home Internet connections at home. I have 25 Mbps up. 10 Mbps down. Have had it for years. It's fine. It's fine when both my wife and I are working from home and doing calls. It's fine for software development. It's fine for email and web browsing, and everything other than downloading maddeningly large files, 99% of which shouldn't be that large anyway. It's fin…

- Downloading local LLM models - Downloading games, movies etc. - Updating software. - Doing remote data backups or restoring from them. - Browsing the internet. Fiber still makes a noticeable difference especially in badly optimized websites.

Maybe I've just got deep scars from the 90's, where I'd wait 15-25 minutes sometimes to download a single mp3.

I have a FIOS connection here at home, and it seems entirely sufficient. Even AAA steam games, I hit 'download' and go grab a snack in the kitchen and it's done. My server does incremental backups to s3 every night, but its not like i'm sitting there watching it.

I download a new large model maybe once every other week. It takes a few seconds, maybe minutes. I don't really notice either way? 25x faster doesn't seem like it would make any difference.

Re: Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

#250

Post by ksec »

Even in Wireless / Mobile Carrier they have company like American Tower / China Tower that shares infrastructure cost. So none of this is new, I always thought the reason it is not done is because of company interest and politics. Internet should be treated just like Electricity and Water.

There are other things we could do without completely changing the dynamics or policy. We could mandate all home leasing and selling to have Internet Speed labeled. Giving consumer the knowledge and choice. And all future new home to have at least 1Gbps Internet and upgradable to 10Gbps or higher as standard. The market will sort itself out. And give government some space and room to further negotiate terms with companies.

Now the technical question, why no sharing? why point to point? why 4 fibre and not 2 or 8? And the no sharing is a little bit of gimmick, because at the end of the day everything is shared. The backbone has 100Gbps and you cant have 10 labours all using 25Gbps. I also dont think P2P make sense in a metropolitan city like Tokyo, New York or Hong Kong, especially in high rise, ultra high density buildings with limited space. When 50G-PON barely meet demands we are looking at 100G or 200G-PON. Individual fibre is simple not feasible in those settings.

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