As I type this, a work crew is busy tearing up the nature strip (that’s what we called them in Australia, and I can’t for the life of me think of what it’s called in the States…) between the street and the sidewalk in front of my house. They’re ripping up my grass. They’re digging giant holes. They’re busting out the concrete I poured in one spot with a jackhammer. And I am fine with this. Why?
My town is getting a fibre-optic network.
There has been some controversy in the past few years over UTOPIA, this new network, but our mayor is dead-set on it, and if it lives up to its promises, things could be really awesome over at the Bowers household in the near future.
I had heard about the network, and having worked with fibre-optic networking a few years back, I was well aware that it has some great advantages, but I figured this probably wouldn’t be all that attractive to me… I mean, I do have a 4Mbit per second Cable line. They couldn’t possibly out do that, for me, a regular consumer, could they?
The answer is “Oh my hell, yes.”
UTOPIA claim that low-end, residential users will be able to get a net connection at 100Mbps! Holy Crap! My home network is 100Mbps… this is fast. And for business users? Oh, just the option of 1 Gigabit per second! That is insane!
Now, keep in mind here, folks… I worked on the “Internet 2” for a few months back in 1999-2000 in a research lab at the University of Utah. Back then (5 years now), they were touting transfers of 25Mbps… nothing to shake a stick at, but this is a connection via one of the original hubs of the internet. Now, I could get a connection at my house that is that 75Mbps faster. Insane.
These are speeds fast enough that I could legitimately run my own server and host my sites from my house. I can’t wait…
Some more info on just the internet bit of the deal. Amazing.
i’m sure you could track down the nearest WHALE with this technology.
🙂