[NTLUG:Discuss] Wireless Home Network

[Steve Baker]

Robert Pearson wrote:

> We are currently going round-and-around about Gigabit and
> 10Gigabit to the Desktop. It doesn't make sense except the
> same way that having an 80 GB hard disk does. You can't
> get anything smaller for less money.
> Maybe if we were all running P2P (Peer-to-Peer) and
> sharing lots of MP3, video and multi-media Information
> we would need all of Gigabit and maybe 10Gigabit.
> That's for the Future to decide.

We use gigahertz Ethernet at work for our flight simulator
systems - and if we could get 10GHz, that would be better!

However, the fact that you really only get about 300MHz out
of a 1GHz Ethernet - even with high end CPU's and fast RAM
suggests that we're limited by the PC's we're hanging off
of the network more than the network itself.

We have a simulated aircraft flying over real-world
satellite photo's which are too large to store many
square miles in RAM - so we have to page them from disk.
With dozens of PC's needing to see the same data, and
needing a couple of terrabytes of RAID storage to hold
it all, we have little option but to load from disk.
We can use as much network bandwidth as the hardware
can provide!

> ...He owns a car that has 160 mph on the
> speedometer. He claims to have never gone faster
> than 85 mph. So why didn't he buy a car that only had
> 85-90 mph on the speedometer?

A car that can only go 85mph takes maybe 30 seconds to
get from 70mph to 85mph.  A car that can go at 160mph
can do the same thing in 3 seconds.  For overtaking
on the freeway, that makes an ENORMOUS difference.

(I once took my 135mph car to 135mph - it scared the
poop out of me - but I had to do it once!)

> You have to have the power extremes to get that
> nice low volume fidelity. I believe computers work
> the same way as good stereo equipment and fast cars.

Yes - exactly.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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