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Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't

sschueller.github.io

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

#461

I have 500 Mbps internet (fiber optic) with 40+ devices on it. I don’t see myself needing even 1 Gbps nor even close to 25 Gbps. At my enterprise, we have 900 simultaneous users to include thousands of CICD jobs, and we don’t even come close to 25 Gbps.

It's more of a "wow how could I have tolerated 500mbps" once you experience 1gbps and 10gbps.

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

#462
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…

I'ts almost certainly shared. 99% of FTTH is (X)G(S)-PON which shares the fibre over a few properties. Usually something like 32 max. The Swiss use point to point fibre (there are a few small pockets of this elsewhere). But in reality it is very hard to saturate. XGSPON has 10G/10G shared between the node. GPON has 2.4gbit down/1.2gbit up shared across the node. In reality point to point is not really a benefit in 99…

Interestingly enough, most providers still run PON, but all their equipment, including splitters, is at the telco's end of the P2P connection. Apparently it is slightly cheaper to build out a PoP like that.

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

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'ts almost certainly shared. 99% of FTTH is (X)G(S)-PON which shares the fibre over a few properties. Usually something like 32 max. The Swiss use point to point fibre (there are a few small pockets of this elsewhere). But in reality it is very hard to saturate. XGSPON has 10G/10G shared between the node. GPON has 2.4gbit down/1.2gbit up shared across the node. In reality point to point is not really a benefit in 99…

Residential 2.5gb equipment is just starting to appear as a “default” and 10gb is still pretty rare, though accessible if you want it. I don’t even have 25gb and I’ve a home lab!

Same, I've wired the house for Cat6 and have a Cat6 prosumer switch, so 25 wired devices pulling at 1Gbps?

I clearly set my ambitions too low and should follow the Swiss model :-)

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

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where the government should step in and say “welp, you took too long, we’re now funding municiple fiber and we’ll give it to everyone cheap Thereby accruing not only a capital expenditure but ongoing operational obligation? How is this better than scaring the cable company into fronting the cash to get the same outcome?

In which way this is a viable strategy that you can repeat more than once?

If the outcome is you need to pay the next time, but not the first time…. Doesn’t it at least save you from having to pay for it the first time?

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

#467
post #326

My sister lives in Switzerland, in a remote place in the mountain from a small town. Even over wifi the bandwidth at her place is so fast it made my BitTorrent client crash repeatedly. The solution was to disconnect my system by deactivating the wifi, relaunch my BitTorrent software, set a rate limit to the download speed at 30MB/s, and then reactivate wifi.

I've had various pains with QBittorrent (nox) which seem to vary based on the version of the client and the version of libtorrent used. Out-of-memory and resume issues, but varying according to the torrent size, number of simultaneous downloads, and version/configuration specifics.

Torrent software (the clients and the libraries) feel a little out-of-sync with prevailing torrent sizes and bandwidth availability.

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

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a gentle rule, which is "if you can do it in one place, it is probably possible to do it in a second". The Swiss are not a separate species.

There are a lot of things you can do in a rich, tiny, homogenous country that you can't do in a enormous, diverse country. If my house were a country, I'd be in the top 0.1% of household internet speeds compared to other countries. Obviously everyone should be just like me!

The enormous, diverse country excuse is a good thought-terminating cliche but doesn't really hold up when the population of such enormous, diverse country is well concentrated along the coasts, with very dense rich pockets.

Sweden, for example, is tiny in population compared to the US but geographically its size covers from north Florida to NYC, with barely 10m people it's able to have great public transportation, fiber coverage to 80-85+% of buildings, cellphone coverage to 98% of the population even in remote locations.

Being enormous like the US might leave a vast area of low density population centres but it doesn't excuse at all that the areas where the vast majority of people live are dense enough to have these services very well covered. That doesn't happen though so the issue isn't being an enormous, diverse country at all.

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

#469

Swiss here. Just a minor clarification on the article: fibre is not available everywhere in Switzerland. Actually the rollout has been quite slow, and chances are that if you live in a rural or suburban area (like me) or in an older building then you might not have fibre, and are limited to (fairly decent) copper.

Indeed rural areas are not as well covered [1], but in cities it doesn't matter if you live in an old building. As long as your street has fiber (most do by now), when you switch to a fiber connection from your ISP, contractors will connect it to your house (even if you only rent an appartment) and install an optical outlet in your appartment, all for free. [1] https://map.geo.admin.ch/#/map?lang=en&center=2634455.81…

Yeah I used to live in Zurich before moving into the boonies. We were the first party in the house of 8 to want fiber, filled out a form, ISP contacted house owner and everything was up and running in a manner of days.

I now own (or rather the bank does) a small house in a more rural canton, and while it’s possible to apply for fiber, you have to pay a significant part of the cost yourself, last I checked it was more than 5K CHF. Not really worth it. I get 400 MBit/s over copper at home from Init7. When fiber is rolled out in the street, they will upgrade it for free.

Edit: added link to https://www.swisscom.ch/de/about/netz/anschluss/ftthondemand...

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

#470

I have 500 Mbps internet (fiber optic) with 40+ devices on it. I don’t see myself needing even 1 Gbps nor even close to 25 Gbps. At my enterprise, we have 900 simultaneous users to include thousands of CICD jobs, and we don’t even come close to 25 Gbps.

It's more of a "wow how could I have tolerated 500mbps" once you experience 1gbps and 10gbps.

realistically the only part at half a gb/s I'd care is latency. Latency is a lot more important than the throughput.
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