[LINK] How fast is the NBN?

[Andy Farkas]

On 26/02/2016 13:33, Paul Brooks wrote:
> On 26/02/2016 8:30 AM, Tom Worthington wrote:
>>   
>>
>> The first mile of fiber is cheap to install. The expensive part is getting the fiber
>> from the street into people's homes. It is much easier to put an antenna on a pole
>> outside in the street.
> Easier? perhaps. Cheaper? probably not, since you've got to do a truck-roll or two anyway.
>
> How about this Tom - deploy this radio network of yours, and we'll appoint you Chief
> Maintenance Officer. You'll be responsible for the cost of the vast fleet of repair
> vans, spares holdings, warehousing, and technicians to keep all those radio
> transceivers and antennas all running, fixing all the blown power supplies and
> transceivers after lightning strikes within CSG timeframes, and then you can press the
> 'go' button each time the firmware in the radio transceivers on the poles needs to be
> updated and reflashed, hoping you've ensured compatibility with the units inside the
> homes so that all the millions of radio links come back up again once their reboot
> cycle completes - because you're also responsible for the call-centre that will take
> the complaint calls when the radio links break.

It's really hard to understand why people cannot comprehend that FTTH
is the *best* solution. Malcolm has truly F'd up the NBN, even Bill Morrow
stating that FTTN will have to be replaced within 20 years (in a Senate
Estimates Committee hearing no less).

Your proposal is an excellent one. I wonder if Tom will take up the 
challenge.

>> Six laptops seems a lot for the average home of less than three people. I doubt that
>> they will have any laptops or desktops in the future. All you need is a docking
>> station for your mobile device, to connect it to a large screen and keyboard.
> 'average home of less than three people'? - thats like saying the average human being
> has precisely one boob AND one testicle, and then building a factory to make clothes
> for that average person - I would hazard a guess that actual homes of three people
> don't form a large proportion of homes. I do know that in my household of 4 people we
> have three desktops, four laptops, plus tablets and phones - and that doesn't count
> the obsolete ones that aren't turned on much - because devices are generally cheap
> enough that you can use one appropriate to your needs at the time.
>

Yes, I think Tom has lost it a bit, perhaps too much academia? The desktop
may decrease in numbers but it will not die. Multiple displays? My work
desktop has 4, my home office uses 3. I can upgrade it. Other reasons
abound.

When I first setup my home office about 10 years ago, I assigned my network
as a /29 - this gave me 14 IP addresses to use as I thought I'd never 
have that
many devices on my network. It is nowhere near enough now.

-andyf