Comcast Brings 50Mbps To DC > Competition

reply to Matt

Re: Competition

Cloud computing is only years away because there isn't the bandwidth to do it. Take Animoto for example; it's an online video slideshow maker that's quite awesome. But high-quality photos take several minutes to upload on a 512k or even 2M up cable connection. On a 20M connection the photo uploads take seconds and everyone's happy.

On the business side of things, I could give you examples of awesome systems that are bandwidth-hungry, if you're interested Just finished talking with a guy here in town that's going to try bringing serious bandwidth into town for this purpose. He and I actually want to do many of the same things, and fat pipes are required for his IT solutions.

On the cloud side, my primary computer just shut off last night. Have to drive about 60 miles to the Apple store to see what's wrong with it. Fortunately I have much of my stuff on GMail, however my Adobe CS4 install is sitting on that computer. I'm at a local coffee shop to download Photoshop CS4 trial to get the work done I need to. It's a cable connection but bandwidht is much better than at home 9WISP). However on uploads things still take a bit.

If I had this connection, but symmetric, I'd be happy (15/15). 10 Mbps up? Not so much.

Cloud Computing is years away because the platforms are very immature.

Used any of 'em? They're quite solid if you ask me, and will get even better as more bandwidth is available. Seriously, bandwidth is the big limiting factor here. Chick-and-egg problem.

I'm talking about cloud computing as a general sort of thing, not about a specific brand. Can be open source (and should be IMO) for all I care.

By cloud computing I mean having your applications, data and even computing power hosted elsewhere in a scalable fashion. That's about it.

Nice idea, however, many of us like to have our applications and media right beside them. Just like records, CD, DVD, BluRay, Install disks..... I don't trust that a company will always be around to get to those applications, or that the delivery pipe will be there. I want some media to own. Maybe I'll do the cloud thing too, but if I buy a product, I want something tangible. I purchased one of those High bit rate, HD DVD for T2 several years ago... I can not play it back any longer... The "authentication server" no longer responds... Now imagine that with an old version of word or some game. The company goes under and you're S.O.L. The company may just decide to not support that app. It may be your life blood to use THAT version. It takes power away from the consumer and puts it elsewhere. Also, I'm not sure how much of my DATA I'd want being hosted "IN THE CLOUD"
Good side of Cloud computing is that those centralized upgrades will take no time.... I'm sure there's more to it but I'm rather too lazy to dig further.

All well and god. But for some applications the flexibility of cloud based stuff is a godsend.

Agreed. Hosting movies you paid for isn't really what most people consider a legitimate application for cloud computing. It's more office productivity services that count.

I think the point is that only until faster pipes are available for everyone will services start to be developed that actually make use of those pipes. You can't claim "there are no services" until there is actually an incentive for those services to come online.