You think your internet is slow?

[oggbashan]

A German decided to test his upload speed against delivery of pictures by horse.

The horse won easily.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...s-quicker-broadband-internet-three-hours.html

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...s-between-villages-faster-than-wifi-gqjrjbx9n

 

[Handley_Page]

A German decided to test his upload speed against delivery of pictures by horse.

The horse won easily.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...s-quicker-broadband-internet-three-hours.html

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...s-between-villages-faster-than-wifi-gqjrjbx9n

Sad, innit ?

 

[oggbashan]

Sad, innit ?

Sometimes I know how he feels. I am supposed to have fibre, but only to the nearest junction box about four hundred yards away.

In that four hundred yards are about fifty children home-schooling. During the day the speed can slow to a crawl.

 

[Emberto]

Sometimes I know how he feels. I am supposed to have fibre, but only to the nearest junction box about four hundred yards away.

Fiber Optic (400 yds.)>> Dixie Cup and waxed dental floss (miles)>> Fiber Optic (400 yds.).

In that four hundred yards are about fifty children home-schooling. During the day the speed can slow to a crawl.

Our neighborhood website says that the local schools are negating what is a primary benefit of online anything. They are requiring all students in a particular class to log on at the same time (the same arbitrary time as every other student at that school) and instead of individualizing instruction they require attendance at conference calls to watch lectures. Both are causing periodic failures and disruptions with sender, infrastructure and recipient systems.

The school system, ironic and tragic.

 

[NotWise]

The school system, ironic and tragic.

The school down the street from me has its own fiber optic feed, which runs right past my house. I can't connect to it, so I use the cable company.

 

[Hypoxia]

The local telco-cable-net monopoly put firer-optic lines under our gravel road just before we moved in 18 years ago. Doesn't matter -- the monopoly's DNS servers constantly fail. I think their IT staff totals three guys from out of town. Sometimes I think a mail dog would provide faster communications.

 

[Emberto]

I think their IT staff totals three guys from out of town ...

The IT department:

"Hey Bob, you're IT!"

"Steve, you're IT!"

"Aaw.. Hey, Barry, you're IT!"

"Gotcha, Steve!"

"No tag backs, Barry."

 

[oggbashan]

Years ago when I joined local government, the department's IT was - me.

 

[Bramblethorn]

A German decided to test his upload speed against delivery of pictures by horse.

The horse won easily.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...s-quicker-broadband-internet-three-hours.html

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...s-between-villages-faster-than-wifi-gqjrjbx9n

Journalists discover something the tech world has known for decades...

There's an old saying "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway". The Internet has become much faster since then, but data storage technology has improved too; if you have a large amount of data to move, physical transport is still a very efficient way to do it.

Both Google and Amazon have a service where they send customers a gigantic hard drive, customers load data onto it, and then it goes back to Google/Amazon data centres to upload that data to the cloud, because a truck-mounted hard drive is more efficient than sending that data over the internet. It's not just a "slow rural wi-fi" thing.

XKCD did a thing about this: https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/

 

[Emberto]

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway"

In the days before anyone outside the military had heard of UseNet Larry started a business while in college. He collected commercial paper at law offices, put it in a carry-on bag and flew coach class from one city in California to another every evening and back again after the businesses he delivered them to opened.

He stayed overnight at his friends Bob and Adrian's house and the two of them started taking turns running the route in reverse staying overnight at Larry's place. The three brought Max and Blanche on board, they lived in Hawai'i. Soon six people were flying coach with carry-on bags full of documents from three cities to three destinations each night.

They diversified, bought a van, then three, hired an airplane, accepted other freight. They bought a few airplanes, a few more, leased warehouse space, and last year their business' net earnings were just a little bit shy of US$ 5,000,000,000.00.

 

[oggbashan]

In the days before anyone outside the military had heard of UseNet Larry started a business while in college. He collected commercial paper at law offices, put it in a carry-on bag and flew coach class from one city in California to another every evening and back again after the businesses he delivered them to opened.

He stayed overnight at his friends Bob and Adrian's house and the two of them started taking turns running the route in reverse staying overnight at Larry's place. The three brought Max and Blanche on board, they lived in Hawai'i. Soon six people were flying coach with carry-on bags full of documents from three cities to three destinations each night.

They diversified, bought a van, then three, hired an airplane, accepted other freight. They bought a few airplanes, a few more, leased warehouse space, and last year their business' net earnings were just a little bit shy of US$ 5,000,000,000.00.

Back in 1979, we were moving from one house to a much larger one. The owner of one property in the chain had been affected by a collapse of a previous chain. He insisted everything had to be done by 6pm.

The person buying from me rode his moped from Maidstone to Sevenoaks. My solicitor climbed into his vintage 4.5 litre Bentley and drove from Sevenoaks to Canterbury. (He was an expensive solicitor!) The solicitors in Canterbury sent an office boy on his Vincent Rapide motorcycle from Canterbury to Gravesend.

Mission accomplished by 3 pm.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Gee, I feel lucky now. I work with a multiband wifi router, 2.4/5 G. The 5g is the fastest I have ever had and I started out way back when 300baud was the top speed. And that was with an acoustic coupler.

Now I get 5 megabyte speeds via the phone lines AT&T uses. I have had faster with the cable company, but as I get my Internet for free, I'm not complaining.