Comments on: [reboot08] David Isenberg on the end of bandwidth limitations

By: PJ Brunet

PJ Brunet — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:47:26 +0000

Most hosting companies advertise 5TB for $5/month or whatever they are claiming now, but they will kick you off your shared server before you get anywhere near 1TB, not because you ran out of bandwidth but because the CPU and disk can’t keep up. What you’re paying for these days is time on the CPU and disk, which is why “grid” hosting is so attractive now.

By: David S. Isenberg

David S. Isenberg — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:22:37 +0000

@ Ed V . . . Completely correct. The good Dr. Weinberger left out, “. . . and if all that traffic could magically get to this cable . . .” I was not trying to do network architecture, I was simply doing a thought experiment about how much capacity could be there. It’s like if I said, “If oranges were solar systems, how big would the galaxy be?” I wouldn’t intend this to be a lesson in cartography.

Oh, by the way, the current off-the-shelf equipment does 160 wavelengths times ten gbit. And it is not free. But it is diminishingly inexpensive per bit, and these prices are falling approximately with Moore’s Law.

By: Frank Paynter

Frank Paynter — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:36:31 +0000

ahhh… the voice of reason. the network’s internals are smarter than some of us would prefer.

By: Edward Vielmetti

Edward Vielmetti — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:22:18 +0000

David! I’m surprised you fall for this particular rhetoric.

Three fibers can carry all of the busy hour traffic. But that traffic has to get to those three fibers, which means a nation worth of switching and distribution network, copper warming up with weak currents going through them, coax waving in the wind, fiber and microwave towers (in odd places) and who knows what else.

Transmission capacity is not the issue here. It’s switching and routing (and billing) capacity. I guarantee you that it’s not free to have 3 * 155 * 10G worth of traffic divided up and routed exactly where it needs to go around the globe.