Can someone tell me what's so great about broadband? I have asked this before and got the blunt answer 'it's faster than normal internet'. Now, the internet is pretty fast by any standard. Does it make a difference if we get it to go much faster? I know there's an efficiency argument (which I don't buy), but to me it sounds like speed for speed's sake.

I can think of several things.

1. It is faster. Currently around 1-2 Mbit/s compared to 50-100Kbit/second for dial up.

2. It is always on, so no waiting for dialling and logging in to ISP everytime you want to use it.

3. You can use the house phone at the same time (baseband) because the internet data is multiplexed at higher frequencies.

4. You get billed per month, rather than per call. Good if you use it quite a lot.

5. You can access stuff in your house if you have a home network using dynamic DNS, which is sort of cool.

I might think of more later.

905 wrote:

Now, the internet is pretty fast by any standard.

Have you ever used a dial-up connection on a carrier-enabled copper
line, which is what most people who live outside urban areas have, if
they even have a connection?

Well presumably you mean super fast broadband as against the broadband we currently have, as opposed to broadband versus dialup.

Dialup, is an incredibly difficult medium to work down these days on the basis of how slow it is. It is very difficult to do business down dialup internet.

Then you move onto broadband versus broadband. Though it often seems, in a domestic situation, that you are merely talking about speed for speed's sake [ie it is nice to have a page open a millisecond faster] there is great advantages for businesses and universities to have faster broadband.

Coupled with the speed of an internet connection is its capacity. Universities in particular are grouping across continents in order to carry out research. As a result of this there are vast quantities of virtual information swinging across internet connections. Aside from the fact that if speeds are not fast this connectivity is unworkable, it is also unworkable if there is not the capacity in the connection to handle the incoming and outgoing information. The same is true of multinational businesses.

There is also a point as regards capacity in a domestic context. This has been highlighted recently in the UK in the issue of the recently launched BBC iPlayer, which allows people to watch most BBC programmes over the net. This has created such a strain on the resources of providers in the UK that they are calling for the BBC to part fund a redevelopment of the UK's domestic broadband infrastructue [see here. The iPlayer software has also been banned in many university residences in the UK based on the strain that it is putting on their resources.

I would however agree with you, that like most things that RTE Prime Time gets involved in, there is a waive of unnecessary hysteria crossing parts of the economy about broadband. There is no need, in my opinion, for it to be a State priority to have super fast broadband across the entire country. There should however be a priority to give broadband across the county, owing to the fact that dialup is just incredibly poor, as highlighted above. It is also expensive. However, there should be a Governmental priority to have super fast broadband supplied to academic institutions and to regions of the country where there are large multinational and technology intensive companies - industrial estates etc. Of course that would require forward planning, something which is not the forté of the current party of Government.

seinfeld wrote:

Have you ever used a dial-up connection on a carrier-enabled copper
line, which is what most people who live outside urban areas have, if
they even have a connection?

Try a single dialup connection shared by 37 computers running a combination of Windows 95 and Windows 98 in Kampala. Now THAT is an experience.

Sorry I should have clarified EvotingMachine, in English? 50 bits and IPS and DSM all sound great but what does it all mean? Points 1 and 2 mean faster I take it, 3 sounds vaguely handy like the calculator on my mobile sounds handy (why do the ads always use a teenage daughter to illustate this? They use mobiles for the most part). 4 was a good point. 5 made no sense at all.

And yes Seinfeld I have used dial-up connection. At least I used to press a connect button and lots of funny noises ensued for thirty seconds. Then it was business as usual. Compared to walking or sending a letter it was still pretty fast.

905 wrote:

Compared to walking or sending a letter it was still pretty fast.

It is about competitiveness as well. Whilst it might be quicker to send an e-mail over dialup than walk down to post a letter, it will also be alot quicker to send that e-mail in another country which better technology infrastructure. Coupled with that, alot of really big companies have their own internet connections entirely, completely separate from Irish providers. That presents the situation that if the Irish infrastructure doesn't at least to an extent keep up, domestic Irish firms find it harder to develop and compete. There is not a chance, for example, that Microsoft out in Sandyford, or Google, or Intel are running on an Eircom Broadband, Business plus account, or whatever. They have their own global networks, that is why they don't really complain about the state of technology infrastructure, despite what Prime Time may think - because it is fairly irrelevant to them.

Well, I admit I only regard it from a domestic point of view. The closest I've got to the business side of it would be those ads that show business-types waiting for their downloads and looking glum, whereas they could be out there making deals and networking or whatever nonsense they like to think they'd get up to if they only had the time.

Those ads remind me of all those great labour/time saving devices that were supposed to change our lives in earlier, more innocent times. I can't help but worry that future generations will look back on our obsession broadband with knowing smirks.

905 if you try sending a drawing or other image via email which I have to and a lot of other businesses have to you would be waiting for Christmas to come before it arrived, and quite likely your system would crash.

well the was article in yesterdays times about how broadband doesn't worry business coming here

but its about business sending big files to each other.

i guess most business have broadband here, it only small ones in outlying places that would have trouble.

Yep - it is crucial for photos, pictures, scanned documents and long documents. Email with broadband allows for much more efficient collaboration and discussion of docuemnts of this type.
You need it for any type of remote desktopping whether for your own use or support.
It is crucial for getting large software patches to keep your networks secure.
It is needed for downloading new software.
It is needed for VOIP.
It is needed for donloading many government forms.
It is needed when using websites assume the viewer has broadband and so pack in huge amounts of content.

On the fun side, it is needed for collaborative gaming, watching oireachtas live and getting music.

Why

roads
water
sewerage
electricity
phone
radio/tv signals?

What these were at their own beginning, Broadband is now. Think of where these things are now ... You could end up being very rich predicting where Broadband will take us in five to ten years but the best things about it may never concern money at all.

We are told that selling services is all we have left now Waterford Glass and IT production is folding.

International services means a hundred people in a shed in Leitrim doing the accounts for the whole of Marks and Spencers. If they don't have substantial, fast, reliable broadband they can't do it.

Exactly cactus - the recent esri report stated that 47% of our exports go out through wires - I wonder how our voices get to compete at all..

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

I can think of several things.

1. It is faster. Currently around 1-2 Mbit/s compared to 50-100Kbit/second for dial up.

2. It is always on, so no waiting for dialling and logging in to ISP everytime you want to use it.

3. You can use the house phone at the same time (baseband) because the internet data is multiplexed at higher frequencies.

4. You get billed per month, rather than per call. Good if you use it quite a lot.

5. You can access stuff in your house if you have a home network using dynamic DNS, which is sort of cool.

I might think of more later.

You must have forgot.

Any more on the last point about accessing stuff in your house? Can I, like, put a CCTV camera outside my house and log in to watch the cat while I'm traipsing around the world next year ?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Any more on the last point about accessing stuff in your house? Can I, like, put a CCTV camera outside my house and log in to watch the cat while I'm traipsing around the world next year ?

That does exist. I know someone who can watch their holiday house in Spain over the net.

johnfás wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Any more on the last point about accessing stuff in your house? Can I, like, put a CCTV camera outside my house and log in to watch the cat while I'm traipsing around the world next year ?

That does exist. I know someone who can watch their holiday house in Spain over the net.

yeh this is quite easy to do. You just need to get yourself an IP camera, connect it to your home LAN, and then you can browse into it using Dynamic DNS. DynDNS allows you to get over the problem that your home IP addresses are not real addresses.

Whwn you get it set up let us know so we can all watch the cat.

DynDNS is IPv6 or something? I don't know anything about LANS yet but I hope to melt your head about them over the winter.

I guess I could also rig up an electric tin-opener to the LAN too so I can feed her. Also, an electric cattle-prod so I can electrocute the cute hoor cuts who shouldn't be there.

the 192.168 IP addresses are fake addressesissued to you by your ISP using a protocol called DHCP. You are allocated a dummy address. Your DSL bok in turn issues a dummy address to your PC.

So if you are outside your house trying to browse in- you can't because the addresses are dummy. Not visible from web.

Your ISP uses a system called NAT, network address translation, to keep tabs of dummy addresses and real addresses.

905 wrote:

Can someone tell me what's so great about broadband? I have asked this before and got the blunt answer 'it's faster than normal internet'. Now, the internet is pretty fast by any standard. Does it make a difference if we get it to go much faster? I know there's an efficiency argument (which I don't buy), but to me it sounds like speed for speed's sake.

I would never have expected such a question.

arnaudherve wrote:

I would never have expected such a question.

That makes two of us.

johnfás wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Any more on the last point about accessing stuff in your house? Can I, like, put a CCTV camera outside my house and log in to watch the cat while I'm traipsing around the world next year ?

That does exist. I know someone who can watch their holiday house in Spain over the net.

I work I could log into out security system and watch people in other offices. Thet didn't know this so often my very well informed phone calls to them were matter of great curiosity.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

the 192.168 IP addresses are fake addressesissued to you by your ISP using a protocol called DHCP. You are allocated a dummy address. Your DSL bok in turn issues a dummy address to your PC.

So if you are outside your house trying to browse in- you can't because the addresses are dummy. Not visible from web.

Your ISP uses a system called NAT, network address translation, to keep tabs of dummy addresses and real addresses.

That's a good explanation - thank you. By dummy addresses do you mean the dynamic ones? In your picture, the PC is 192.168.1.2 today but tomorrow it might be 192.168.1.3 and the following day something similar but different etc. ? The network address translation business must relate the dynamically allocated IP number to a computer name or other number? So how can I know the IP address of my camera when I'm abroad if it's going to be different tomorrow? Do I leave my computer on all the time or can my device(s) get a static IP number somehow? Or does the application you are talking about access that NAT information because it can't go directly to your computer's IP can it? A computer must have another ID on the internet and that number gets associated with the computer's temporary IP - is it the serial number or something?

Usually it happens like this:

Your problem is to access one of your home devices (computer or else) from the internet.

First, the name of the computer that you see is not an Internet feature. It is provided by your Windows operating system, and you should pay attention to it only for sharing files or sharing a printer in your home. It is not understood by the Internet.

Then, for proper IP addresses, there are in fact two networks.

192.168.X.X addresses are local addresses, ie addresses provided by your router, for the home network that it creates. It is a subsidiary network, not understood by the Internet.

Your DSL router, because it is the interface between the Internet and your local network, has in fact two addresses. For the devices of your home network it is seen as 192.168.1.1, which means it's the gateway to the wider network, ie the world wide web. For the Internet it is seen as a real IP address. Mine is 82.245.183.127 presently.

In fact when you do anything on the Internet, the Internet talks with your router, and doesn't understand there are several devices behind in your home.

Hence because there are two networks, one global and one local, there are two occasions in which IP addresses are given, 1 by your provider to your router, 2 by your router to your home device.

If you have understood that, I can proceed.