pulse Report This Comment
Date: January 09, 2024 01:34AM

Wait until you learn about wavelength division multiplexing..

woberto Report This Comment
Date: January 09, 2024 01:49AM

That's too much physics for me.
I can "almost" understand USB and firewire physics but not the technology....

This video here is worth watching just for the CT scan images.

Anon Report This Comment
Date: January 09, 2024 02:12AM

The internet is physical connections in geographical locations. It always was. People have since found ways to provide more bandwidth in less physical space, as seen by optic fibre compared to copper wire. Pulse's comment mentions a way of compacting data to fit more down the same cable at once. That's all.

What people want to make the internet comes from George Orwell's 1984, but it's always people who don't understand computers, so it will fail. I first heard there are people who imagine government will be a computer in the late 80's (a leak from within Australia's Liberal Party), before the internet, and that they didn't understand computers. So I haven't lost sleep over mad plans: George Bush's "Internets" (whom you are and what's known about you determines what information, and what edition of information, you may access online - such as the CIA's 'World Fact Book'. What idiot would let the yanks mentor their information?) to the enclosed box type controlled forums funded by the Pentagon: Alphabet, Meta and whatever else (Vladimir Putin is dying from a different ailment every week and facing a different coup every month, remember? - that's Telegram and you're stupid to join it). At its heart, it's people declaring to be true what they want to be true, not what is true. That always fails.

pulse Report This Comment
Date: January 09, 2024 02:35AM

Yep, fitting more information down the same physical path; but doing some pretty amazing math (& yes, physics) in the middle to make it work.

At the point we're at commercialization of terabit/sec down a single strand of glass about the same width as a hair, over thousands of kilometres.

POC has us at 22.9 petabits/sec on the same technology (but with a multi core cable). It blows me away how far we've come. I remember the first fibre link I ran in my first job; 622mbit/sec over 2km. This was at a time that 56K dialup was considered pretty neat.

Anon - not logged in Report This Comment
Date: September 29, 2025 06:05AM

My first job was installing new phones in BP House in Sydney. I earned $105, as a school kid, over school holidays and by boss, a family friend, asked my parents if he could pay me in two notes - guaranteeing I couldn't spend at least one note.

I also remember when an actual download speed of 7kbs was satisfactory...

Anon - not logged in Report This Comment
Date: September 29, 2025 06:06AM

my boss...

pulse Report This Comment
Date: September 29, 2025 07:27AM

The funny thing is for the most part the tech to do these insane speeds isn't all that expensive. Sure, my mother has no interest in 400Gb download at time, but the actual last mile, once you're on a proper FTTP connection, is as simple as changing out the device on both ends.

Something like this:
[servethehome.com]

Switch/router with 2 x 400Gb, 2 x 200Gb, 8 x 50Gb ports and hilariously a 10Gb copper port for management. At $1300 list price, that's insane connectivity.

My stuff is running mostly 25Gb these days, with some 40Gb in the mix for storage. Hell my home connection is nearly twice as fast as that 622Mb link I mentioned earlier, and that ran an entire ISP 20 years ago with way more bandwidth than every user combined could pull simultaneously.

Some parts of tech are moving along fast and it's great. And some parts are just fucking awful. Tech industry will destroy the world.

woberto Report This Comment
Date: September 29, 2025 08:28AM

The best piss-up I ever went to was the merger (buy out) of Magna Data and some big Japanese company.
Magna Data was started by these two "dudes" who even had a yacht in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.
These "dudes" who gave hilarious speeches figured all this crap out in the late 90's and started wiring up NEW buildings with their cabling and hardware so if you wanted more they could just flip a switch and on the same network deliver any speed you were prepared to pay for. No big deal now but THEN it was huge and they got a lot of attention and eventually bought out for megabucks. Which is IMHO what these "dudes" wanted all along.

quasi Report This Comment
Date: September 29, 2025 09:52AM

I had DSL internet from the local telephone company at my semi-rural home for years with decent service. Last year they ran fiber optic and one day I noticed a guy walking through my rainy season swamp of a yard dragging a cable. They were about to take down a section of my fence and tear the shit out of my yard without my request or permission; good thing I was home. I told them to leave and within days, still months away from the fiberoptic system being operational, my DSL went to hell, maybe deliberately, maybe not, so I said screw those guys and went with 5G wireless internet which actually works better than the DSL did. A different crew showed up a couple of months later with their boss and I bid them farewell too. Don't fuck with old people, lol.

pulse Report This Comment
Date: September 29, 2025 09:56AM

I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud internet connection to a 1.5 megabit fiber-optic T1 line.

Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring Ethernet LAN configuration?

pulse Report This Comment
Date: September 29, 2025 10:09AM

The funniest piss-up I ever went to was the Cisco Christmas party in 1999.

We got there, started early, started hard. There dozens of attractive bar girls carrying trays full of shots, they'd hired out the largest nightclub in Crown Casino. I have no idea on numbers, well over a thousand there. Basically if you worked in tech you were invited.

I don't remember much after about 4:30pm, but around 8pm I got a phone call from DK. I answered and said "what cunt?" and it was the police. He was found by the river with his pants half way down and had no idea where he was. I had no idea he wasn't in the building.

I had to go get him and convince the police that I was responsible and could take care of him. After doing that I walked around the corner, I'm pretty sure I threw up everywhere and fell over. DK may or may not have pissed himself. In my version of events he did. I don't remember.

Cunt was like cookie monster with free shit though, there would've been a DK shaped blur on those trays.

I miss the pre-Y2K industry.

woberto Report This Comment
Date: September 30, 2025 12:18PM

28.8 kilobaud, in the case of a line code, would be 28,800 pulses per second.
That's a lot of pulses.
But as we know, there is only one pulse.