Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

fiber.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 232 posts

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#211

Post by vel0city »

ghaff wrote: post #201
Retric wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and that’s worth spending how much per month? I mean if I was forced to sit and stare at a download screen then sure it’d be worth it to me. However even at 2+Gigabit I’m not going to sit and stare about the download screen so it’s kind of meaningless how long it takes. I’ve got plenty of other stuff to do for a while.

Download/upload speed seems like a fairly weak argument for more bandwidth past a certain, fairly low, point. These days, it seems like it's more around a large household doing simultaneous 4K streaming where they're running into limits.

What common streaming services even offer 4K streams that are more than say 30Mbit a stream? Most Blu-Rays are what, ~40Mbit?

A 1Gb internet package would let you have a dozen 40Mbit streams (480Mb) and still have another several hundred megabits for gaming, http traffic, etc.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#212

Post by vel0city »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #77
ghaff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't understand what the big deal is with the higher speed tiers. I forget what my house theoretically gets but, in practice, it's less than 100 down from Comcast and that's perfectly fine for what I use it for. I'm a bit under $100/mo and wouldn't pay to upgrade.

it's mostly an artifact of shitty ISPs like Xfinity that haven't figured out that in 2025 non-symmetric download and upload is really dumb. I have 300mbps currently because if I dropped to 100, my upload would go from 30 to 5, and it's nice to be able to upload a file at higher than dial up speeds

> non-symmetric download and upload is really dumb.

IIRC all their asymmetric internet packages are based on their coax deployments. It's not a dumb tradeoff in the coax space even though I don't like their choices of how much in each direction they usually do. There are only so many useful channels they can deploy in a given physical network. They could offer more upload bandwidth at the expense of download bandwidth but generally speaking most customers don't upload much and value download bandwidth over upload.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#213

Post by idontwantthis »

cwalv wrote: post #176
idontwantthis wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATT and Quantum. Those both have fiber in some neighborhoods but don’t seem to be expanding quickly.

I wouldn't hold my breath. At my previous house, CenturyLink/quantum site said it was available. I called half a dozen times to get it installed, each time some contractor would show up and tell me it's not available. I was confused because they spent months very visibility installing it throughout the neighborhood. Talking to some of the contractors, it was interesting to hear stories about why it was available in s…

Can you say what the issue was?

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#214

Post by vel0city »

Schnitz wrote: post #128
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is there any desire for residential 10g service? it's pretty hard to image how 90% of families would use up 200meg

Ever download a 100GB game? The 5x speed increase from 200mbit to 1gbit is significant. Most families have kids that game.

I'm actually downloading one right now off Steam, and I'm limited more by IOPS on the drive I'm installing to than I am my internet speed due to the compression/encryption/unpacking. Not even using much more than 100Mbits consistently here, but I am installing to a microSD on a gaming handheld. But devices like this are getting more popular especially for a multi-kid household.

But even then, it's not something most people are constantly doing. Maybe a couple of times a month.

I'd still probably go with more than 200Mbit for a family, but knowing how many of the families I know use their home internet they're rarely coming even close to routinely maxing out a 500Mbit connection even with several kids.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#215

Post by WorldMaker »

cletus wrote: post #100

Speaking as a former Google Fiber software engineer, I'm honestly surprised this is still around. In 2017, basically all the Google Fiber software teams went on hiatus (mine included). I can't speak to the timing or rationale but my theory is that the Google leadership couldn't decide if the future of Internet was wired or wireless and a huge investment in wired may be invalidated if the future Internet was wired so…

> In 2019, Google Fiber exited Louisville, KY, paying penalties for doing so

Those mistakes in Louisville were huge. Literally street destroying mistakes that city Civil Engineers predicted and fought from happening in the first place, but Google Fiber did them anyway. Left a huge bill to the city taxpayers. It wasn't bigger news and a bigger upset because of NDAs and other contract protection things involved, but as an outsider to those NDAs/contracts, I can say it was an incredibly bad job on too many fronts, and should have left Google Fiber with a much more tarnished reputation than it did.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#216

Post by vel0city »

bb88 wrote: post #181
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is there any desire for residential 10g service? it's pretty hard to image how 90% of families would use up 200meg

That's kinda like saying back in the 1990's that 90% of families wouldn't use more than 56.6k. Well, because that's all they had access to.

No, a single user would routinely max out their dial-up connection just doing normal browsing things. Even just pulling a lot of email from a pop endpoint could max out that connection. Browsing web pages with graphics would absolutely crush a dial up connection. Some places tried to do things like handle video over such a connection, but it was pretty painful and pretty much useless. Streaming a song was pretty pointless.

These days a 200Mbit connection would handle five or so users doom scrolling social media with videos and images while a few TVs play 4K streaming media while smart home devices chirp home all the secrets in the house and the door bell cam uploads a few clips every hour and the Sonos is playing a few different songs in a few different zones throughout the house for ambiance.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#217

Post by rconti »

ipdashc wrote: post #124
rconti wrote: post #7

> GFiber service will be available in parts of the metro area later this year. Nevada residents and business owners will be able to choose between Google Fiber’s plans with prices that haven’t changed since 2012 and speeds up to 8 gig. The author of the press release is under the mistaken belief that unchanged broadband pricing is a good thing. From the linked price page: 1gig: $70/mo 2gig: $100/mo 5gig: $125/mo 8 gi…

I feel silly asking, but what do you use 10gig for? That speed sounds insane; I get maybe 800mbps and I've basically never felt like the speed is too slow. Most consumer devices are still on gigabit Ethernet at the fastest, no - or am I just badly out of date? Heck, anywhere above a few gigs, I feel like you'd start getting bottlenecked by whatever's on the other end of the connection. Still, pretty cool to hear that…

> what do you use 10gig for?

Nothing, really! It's cheaper than 1gig, and my ISP doesn't even give me the option of paying for less. I could save about $10 a month to downgrade to AT&T 300Mbps fiber though (which would have data caps, bad privacy policy).

I'd be happy down to say 250/250. Gigabit feels like "all I could ever need" (for now), and 10gig is fantasyland.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#218

Post by Dylan16807 »

kotaKat wrote: post #209
Dylan16807 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually look at the video/transcript? They were specifically talking about the internet service in the rooms being bad, and how it used to be good in specific hotels.

That's not a source. That's just an objective statement with no evidence to back it up. It's LTT talking uninformed shit as he always does.

I'm not saying it's "a source" to the collusion, I'm saying the reasons you gave to entirely reject the LTT clip were invalid. He wasn't talking about the show floor, and he personally experienced a better connection in certain hotels so we know they can manage it.

It might or might not be connected to the show floor issues, but it's relevant information for a bunch of the in-room internet experience to get significantly worse over time. It suggests that they are not even trying, so the fact that convention wireless is hard is not an excuse.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#219

Post by astrange »

inejge wrote: post #164
astrange wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably needs you to tear up the street and that's hard to get approved. (And while all Anglo countries are NIMBY, Ireland is the most NIMBY, which is why its population is lower now than in the 1800s.)

Ireland is the most NIMBY, which is why its population is lower now than in the 1800s Uh, are you sure that you haven't disregarded the Great Libertarian Sociological Experiment of 1847 in your reasoning?

That was a long time ago. Also, it only recently recovered to the level from 1851.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#220

Post by dgfitz »

KerrAvon wrote: post #119
dgfitz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t France have a lot of installation incentives and a large govt push towards 100% fiber? Amazing what an administration with a goal can achieve…

I mean, be careful what you wish for; the current US administration has a goal (white power).

I think you’re blind if you include the “white” part. It’s just power. Megalomaniacs.

You’re buying into the narrative if you truly think race has anything to do with it. Race is a tool, and it was made a tool, which sucks.

Post reply on HN