The linked article states 100 Gb/s, i.e. gigabits per second. But the post title says "100GB/s" which suggests gigabytes per second. Worth correcting, because getting 100GB/s between two machines in the same rack would be quite an achievement today.
And also, this being a tech oriented start up targeted discussion site, it would be important to get the basic units of internet service correct in the titles.
I think in this case the issue isn't binary prefixes vs decimal which in this case would amount to a ~7% error, but rather bits vs bytes which is an error of ~800%
As others have pointed out it's the difference between bits and bytes. But "among bytes" units, I prefer the base-2 SI units (KiB/MiB/GiB) because as written, they're unambiguous.
I live in Troy, MI (A suburb outside of Detroit) and pay $75 for a 300 Meg Down / 20 Meg Up connection from http://www.wowway.com/. I have lived in silicon valley, but now work in Detroit, the high tech scene in Detroit is one of the best.
I live in France and I pay 50€ for 3GB of 4G per month (then bw limited) _and_ 200Mb/s down 50Mb/s up fixed Internet (official speeds but I speedtest them at something like 270 / 70 Mb/s)
There are other operators which are even less expensive (but 4G coverage and upstream fixed network peering changes a bit).
I live in St. Pete, FL and pay $104 for 150 Meg Down / 10 Meg Up connection from BrightHouse Networks. Even though VZ FiOS services the surrounding area BrightHouse locked my community in.
Yep. Don't take ANY equipment from Comcast. I bought a DOCSIS 3.0 Cisco modem and a Cisco 802.11ac Wi-Fi router off eBay and everything has been working very smoothly. Seriously, if you want solid network performance, stay away from household brands and just get Cisco everything.
I pay $70 for AT&T's UVerse GigaPower fiber (300/300 right now) in Austin. The only reason we have that option though is due to Google Fiber making everyone up their game. Even Time Warner offers reasonably priced 300/20
> I pay $70 for AT&T's UVerse GigaPower fiber (300/300 right now) in Austin
Does that include the opt-out from tracking fee?
I don't live in Austin and don't have GigaPower, but I remember there was a kerfuffle around AT&T offering the service at two price points, cheaper if you allow them to track your web activities and something like $30 more if you opt-out.
The fastest affordable option in South Africa is still ADSL. Line rental from Telkom (they have the telecom monopoly) costs me ~ZAR500 p/m and then I pay another ZAR130 for an unshaped, 60gb cappped account. This is a 4meg line, so max 400-odd kbps. So yeah, $70 seems pretty reasonable to me...
Doesn't South Africa have a backhaul problem though? Overpriced internet in North America tends to be artificial scarcity at the last mile. I'm not sure that's the case in SA?
I've visited quite a few times and yeah, your internet connections truly are painful to use even when I'm on holiday and not really using the net that much. Much worse than rural areas of Europe which typically only get 1-3Mbit/s ADSL. Some of it is the latency to faraway CDNs and EU/US-centric servers and saturated intercontinental cables, but even South African sites seem to be awfully slow, with high latency, which to me suggests overloading on the core infrastructure. Is that the case? (I know you see microwave comms towers all over the place - if those are being used as the main cross-country internet links then that could be it.)
"Western" seems like an odd term to distinguish Europe/North America from Africa, but I assume that's what you meant.
I don't have any data to back up or refute such a claim, but it makes sense: Europe & North America have economies of scale for internet infrastructure, including hosting, so hosting there is presumably cheaper than in SA or other African countries. Which drives the domestic demand for hosting abroad, causing that money to not be reinvested in the local infrastructure. I don't know what the solution to that is. Maybe global CDNs building (more) datacentres in Africa will bring some of that money back and have a positive impact on the local ecosystem? (Taking their hosting money abroad is presumably the rational choice for most African companies, so it's difficult to fault them for not "helping themselves")
yeah, but how is your peering once you get outside the country's border? people talk of super-cheap fast residential internet but usually it suffers once when you start accessing content that's remote.
$70 for an internet connection is not cheap. The author just means that it's not a no-brainer for individuals currently on one of the big providers who are on a budget.
Comcast charges $65.95/mo. to $78.95/mo for 70mb/s in the Detroit metro area. $70/month for 1gbs service and not having to deal with Comcast is a no-brainer
Oh wow that is expensive. In The Netherlands the big ADSL/Cable providers are 20/30 euro p/m + whatever you pay for TV and phone. The fiber operators charge 40-50 euro. I didn't expect it to be that much more expensive in the US.
> $70 for 1gbps rather beats that by a drastic margin.
You need to factor in the marginal utility of added bandwidth. Few people can meaningfully utilise 20-50mbps (a full HD stream is <10mbps), much less 1gbps, so you're looking at paying $20-30 for, essentially, nothing.
For the record, I count myself in the group of people who can't utilise such a connection, although I'm squarely in the group of people who'd pay for the faster connection in a heartbeat regardless.
Nobody needs 70 mb/s for basic internet access. I think the cheap lower/end is 20-30 /month. I pay $30/month for 50 mb/s and it works just fine for HD streaming videos.
I would love higher BW but while I could afford it I already have my own cable modem and to upgrade would need to get special equipment from my ISP, which I would have to lease and deal with the inconvenience of giving back at one of their far away locations. It's been annoying the past so decided to pass.
But for anyone who is price sensitive doubling/tripling their internet bill is a non-starter.
Time Warner 100/10 Mbps at $50 per month in NYC. Promotion is at ~$45. But I invested my own router and my own modem (one of those Motorola SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0) to get the most out of my bucks. Verizon in the neighborhood can give a two-year promotion for similar price for FiOS optic, but I will have to get rid of my modem and try the experience... god knows good/awful.
Why is upload always so low? Is it expensive for upstream bandwidth?
> Why is upload always so low? Is it expensive for upstream bandwidth?
Nah. Sometimes it's due to the last mile access technology being asymmetric (ADSL, cable, PON), but mostly it's to differentiate consumer products from business products.
Their asymetric bandwidth offering is configured that way on purpose, it isn't the hardware. They offer symetrical bandwidth if your line a business connection.
I've had FiOS residential and business over the _same_ line (different times, of course) and it goes to the same CO.
It's even worse in Detroit, since those Comcast prices you listed are temporary ones for new customers or bundles. You can call them to complain and they'll probably knock the price down but it's a hassle. I pay $67 for only 25mb/s!
In Switzerland, 1Gbs down/up optic fiber costs 150 CHF, roughly $150 USD. It comes with TV (no separate Internet only option). It's a lot of money, but given the median income still very affordable.
You're probably talking about the Swisscom offering, which is roughly comparable to what at&t might offer. Fiber7 sells 1 Gbps lines for around CHF 65.- per month, without the obligation to also get a TV subscription and more nonsense.
Are you happy with it? I like the idea of getting rid of the TV that I do not use, but I am quite happy with the performance and support that Swisscom offers.
In urban NZ we pay almost this much for 100% shitty ADSL with data caps. Speeds vary wildly but it'd be rare to get more than 50 down / 10 up. 1Gbps is not available to consumers anywhere in the country no matter how much you pay AFAIK.
Of late there have been some interesting photosets of the decay of formerly "high end" real estate (residential and commercial), and I seem to recall theories that Detroit could see a resurgence as tech businesses look to take advantage of the power infrastructure formerly needed by manufacturing companies.
One thing that seems strange to me as an outsider is how all your tech startups and companies are clustering in areas with very high cost of living. I don't know much about the US since I'm European but I do keep track of stuff around here on HN.
I can understand it from employee point of view - large city - big job market and naturally those places are also more desirable. But if you're going down the startup route you're already going to sacrifice things for a potentially big payout down the road (assuming you have stocks - right ?) which is why I would have no problem relocating to a cheaper/less desirable area in order to lower the operational costs and increase the chance of success.
Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong but unless you are doing B2B or direct sales location shouldn't matter more than having funds to stay operational/becoming profitable ?
One explanation I can come up with is that if you are looking for investors instead of profitability it makes sense to be closer to them - but at the same time that kind of feels like perverting incentives.
I was under the impression that the costs differences can be huge (2x) between regions - maybe that's not the case ?
Do startups commonly have traditional employees in US ? As in people working for a paycheck and no shares ? I feel like if I was going to work in a startup I would have no problem moving for a couple of years and taking less money in exchange for shares in the company (ofc. if I thought the company was going somewhere)
From what I can see* locally it's usually founders with shares in company and there's also a growing number of investors/incubators in Eastern Europe (where the cost of doing business/living is considerably lower than Western Europe). Perhaps it's because Europe is more separated legally and governments also play a big role (trying to imitate US model) so investors are "forced" to go to multiple places instead of bringing everyone to them.
*I'm very superficially familiar with startup scene, I'm considering getting in so I'm trying to figure things out :)
We just got this at work and I have to say it's insanely fast. Makes downloading things like Xcode a joke. We are getting around 250Mb/s down over AC wifi and a blazing 800mb down over ethernet. Great stuff so far!
Wanted to touch on this post. I think having that kind of bandwidth, given proper and reasonable connectivity outside the "last mile" is a big draw. I'm a co-founder of a telecommunications start-up (cloud call center stuff) and the thought of running our own DC on the cheap is a serious draw with a proper connection. But that's a separate discussion (only 19 buildings right now, etc etc etc).
Here in Portland, at my house I currently pay around 200/mo for 50/20, but only really get 25/10 most of the time, on top of their second from lowest end cable TV package. Google Fiber is moving in, but there is another player that is really ramping up here, CenturyLink. As far as the west coast goes, they are the kinds of fiber (from the long chain of acquisitions). Level3, Integra, etc all lease much of their network from CL. But now CL is offering Business 1g lines as well as residential for the same price (around $115-$145/mo depending on contract). I got TV (Prism) and 1Gbit for $145/mo. The kicker? No caps. No throttling and no data caps at all on neither their residential service nor their business. They also don't care if you use your residential line to host servers on. Their entire network is fiber, and they've been building it out since the late 80s.
I wonder why Comcast is so much more expensive here than what others are reporting? I suppose as far as Cable Providers go, until this year your choice in PDX has been Comcast or Satellite (Dish / DirecTV).
This is not new. Existing Carriers have been offering 100GbE services for some time although the type of customer who requires this type of service is few and far between.
As for 10GbE for residential, if this is literally 10G to the home then that is something new (as a product offering, technology is not new). Interesting to know how they do the hand-off as 10GbE interfaces are simply not useful for home use.
I live in the Detroit Metro area, and despite the way the article was titled, the 100Gb and 10Gb service doesn't seem like the main announcement to me. I would love to get 1Gb/s for $70 a month, especially from someone other than Comcast.
It's new and pointless at this point for individuals.
Very few places will be able to stream anything to them at 10GbE. Most regular harddrives have a bandwidth substantially below that - it takes an expensive RAID or high end SSD to feed a single user at that speed....
For an apartment complex, though, it might be useful to take 10GbE link...
Even on the business side - I run racks of servers handling dozens of clients running booking services for several hundred restaurants, and we're using tens of Mbps including really excessive amounts of regular disaster recovery syncs and backups between our two data centres.. Some companies will benefit, but most won't get anywhere near...
I think this is more of the case that it doesn't cost them that more to offer to set things up for 10GbE, since these users will mostly be limited by upstream servers that won't send them traffic enough so their bandwidth usage won't go up nearly as much as it theoretically could, so it's part a long term view, part a competitive move to make 1Gbps or less from competitors seem too little or too expensive for what you get.
I see comments like this on every announcement of fast internet and it is very narrow minded.
Working remotely, high res video conferencing, screen casting, and even booting a computer remotely over the internet are all big applications for things like this.
With a 10gb connection you could have a computer at home that would boot remotely and be part of a company's network as if you were in the office.
Most people could do that with 1Gbps without any caching. If you want to run off fast remote SSDs, then yes, you may be able to exceed a 1Gbps connection. But if you're willing to pay for a suitable switch and network card for your computer, you'd be better off buying a high end SSD for your home machine.
Most office networks I've dealt with have fileservers attached that couldn't max out a 1Gbps connection at the best of days.
Of the rack fulls of servers I manage, we have a total of 2 unused 10GbE connections - this is fairly typical. Most peoples servers don't yet have more than a couple of 1Gbps connections. So trying to max out a 10GbE connection is an exercise in frustration.
Yes, there are the rare exceptional circumstance where someone could manage to make use of it, but they are just that: rare and exceptional.
Yes, there will be a time we can max it out with ease, but it's not there yet, and at the rate of adoption of 10GbE even for servers it won't be anytime soon.
If you have fiber and the right transceivers, you can run 100Gbit/s over it. If you need that sort of bandwidth, you'll probably do your own peering because just paying for traffic will be obscenely expensive.
Chaos Computer Club's 30c3 conference had a 100G fiber link to downtown Hamburg for a couple of days, still 12k users w/ Gigabit ports and a makeshift datacenter with 10g ports couldn't manage to saturate the link:
Right. But I doubt that anyone shifting that much traffic just buys 100G internet service to a certain location.
If you push out that much you might make use of CDNs, if you consume that much Netflix/Google I guess you meet their criteria and the CDNs talk to you (and place their edge servers in your network).
True enough. The distinction really comes down to want and need 100G. If you need 100G, you have options and peering is on the table. If you just want 100G, like Rocket Fiber with their 19 buildings, not so much.
As to buying transit on a 100G port, obscene is perhaps a bit harsh. Transit cost goes down significantly with volume and there rarely is a need to commit to a full 100G port. In any case price per Mbps is going to be in cents, not dollars.
I wonder how they terminate it into the premises? AFAIK (I don't work with fiber though) there aren't SFPs that go above 10G per fiber. On the other hand, there are connectors like MTP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber_connector#/media...) that allow you to multiplex multiple fibers into one cable then separate them back out into multiple cables so maybe that?
100G connectivity comes in different flavours. Some use MTP and multiple fibers to transport 100G others use normal LC connectors and transport 100G over multiple wavelenghts on a single fiber pair.
So, it looks like it's 10 gigabit for $70 for residential service, which is 10x the Google Fiber speed ("1000 megabits" for $70).
Does this service come with any restrictions such as how many devices can share it, can you host with a fixed IP, effectively run an ISP service out of a home? A lot of residential providers limit such activities.
Anyway it's a good sign that entrepreneurs are jumping into this market to challenge the dinosaurs like Comcast, Cox, Verizon, etc.
> So, it looks like it's 10 gigabit for $70 for residential service, which is 10x the Google Fiber speed ("1000 megabits" for $70).
The difference between 10Gbps and 1Gbps last-mile is almost completely meaningless compared to how well the rest of the network is connected. And somehow I imagine that Google might have slight edge on that side...
100 gigabits per second for $300? Holy cow. You can run a whole datacenter off a single such link (and another one for redundancy of course). How is traffic priced?
Dear god, they chose the two cheapest upstream providers on the market [1]. It's a shame they didn't pick up a higher quality carrier to handle the majority of their traffic.
What high quality carrier would you recommend for Detroit? They can go to Cogent, HE, Level3 or one of their competing Telcos. There is nothing wrong with using Cogent/HE for their eyeball network, it gives them cheap connectivity and allows Cogent/HE to balance their traffic ratios Win/Win.
Also to note Google Fiber uses a lot of nLayer/GTT for their eyeball traffic.
I can't really speak for that area. But if I chose out of three you listed, it would be L3.
A close friend of mine spent years managing the network of a smaller ISP in the northeast using both Cogent/HE for their eyeball network, and he was constantly telling me about packet loss issues with Cogent. On the other hand, I haven't seen as many issues with HE as a whole, more localized.
Either way using the cheaper options is a good choice if you want to keep costs low during expansion. Hell, it's probably still better than what I see through TWC.
Meh, I used to use Cogent in the mix of transit providers for hosting services, and it was more than adequate when peering spats weren't going on (in which case we'd dump traffic over to Hurricane Electric or Global Crossing).
Want quality bandwidth? Pay for quality bandwidth. Most people just want their packets delivered, a few extra 10s of milliseconds be damned.
That's easy enough to change later if their upstreams struggle to meet demand. Once they have the last mile finished, the rest is much easier by comparison.
I actually haven't heard a great deal of negative for HE as a whole, but mainly some localized spots. In hindsight, it might have been a bit too much of a generalization.
Meanwhile in relatively suburban australia I pay $79/month for 'unlimited' 600kb/s. I so desperately want to get in on the whole remote working thing but the network I'm on seems to be getting slower by the month rather than faster
