[AusNOG] Long live the NBN. The NBN is dead?! [personal]

[Karl Auer]

On Fri, 2010-08-13 at 00:19 +0930, Andrew Cox wrote:
> In excess of 100 clients can survive easily on 20Mbps (1:1) with 
> reasonable speeds (5~Mbps) as far as the end user sees.

As it was, so shall it be, now and for ever more. Amen.

I recall the quoted sentence being uttered in 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 -
and only the numbers were different. They were smaller. MUCH smaller.

Allow me to wax poetic for a moment. A bird in a cage flies only so far
as the cage bars allow. The fact that the bird does not spend its days
pressed against the bars does not make them any less a limitation. To
imagine that the bird would continue to fly only so far, were the bars
removed, is obviously silly.

Yet in matters bandwidth (and RAM, and CPU speed, and disk space, and a
whole host of other resources that have hard limits) the IT industry
pundits do exactly that - time and time again. And they are going it
again, now! In this very mailing list!

Sure, I can get along with the bandwidth I have now. If I had double the
bandwidth I'd do more. I even know roughly *what* I'd do with double the
bandwidth. I have no clue what I'd do with a hundred or a thousand times
the bandwidth, but I am as certain as I can be that if the bandwidth was
there, I would be using it.

There are only three meaningful answers to the question "how much
bandwidth do you have?" They are "too little", "enough" and "I don't
know".

The good answer, the answer you want to be able to give, is always and
forever "I don't know".

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer/                   +61-428-957160 (mob)

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