The Relativity Of Bandwidth
September 10th, 2007When I first arrived in the US, I was quite overwhelmed by the broadband access available at my University on the Internet-2 network, and also the connection my roommates and I shared at our apartment. This was already light years ahead of the dial-up connection my brother and I sparingly used back home in Mumbai. That said, the United States is nowhere in the league of nations with screaming-fast broadband speeds. Here’s a chart of the average (downstream) speeds available for consumers by country, in megabits per second. Japan and Korea are an order of magnitude ahead, with the US trailing off at 14th place with around 5.0-6.0 Mbps average speeds.
It’s amazing, how a geek’s lifestyle can seamlessly expand or contract according to the resources presented. While dial-up seemed quite adequate at the time, even in its most frustrating hour (like those last-minute submissions for the IEEE-VESIT online contests), to the point where even a mobile phone today that’s ‘turned off‘, needs 24/7 broadband connectivity to stay fully functional (no, I don’t have nor plan to get an iPhone). When it comes to bandwidth, can one ever have enough?
September 11th, 2007 at 6:58 am
Not even if it comes with an 8 MP SLR?
(BTW, is your OpenID login working, yet? I don’t know if the previous comment was accepted or not, because “Submit” just took me to your front page and didn’t display my comment.)
September 19th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I empathize with the dial-up frustrations; using the internet in Rishi Valley was like watching a plant grow and I remember one particularly agonizing occasion when the internet ‘died’ right as I was finishing up an essay for a college app. Good times.