fibre optics

[jesus]

If everyone had fibre optic internet, would gaming be a lot easier because everyone would have like <70 ping?

[=98=]

Re: fibre optics

Yes, as you can reach faster transmission speeds.

It is just not cost effective.

[jesus]

Re: fibre optics

So theoretically, ping can be obsolete if your connection is fast enough?

[Hellsent 2.0]

Re: fibre optics

Lol some cable guy in a cold country in europe gave his like 70 year old mum or grandma the fastest connection in the world with fibre optics...she could download a fulll film great quality in like 4 seconds..although she said she would just be using it for the web surfing

[jesus]

Re: fibre optics

Lol some cable guy in a cold country in europe gave his like 70 year old mum or grandma the fastest connection in the world with fibre optics...she could download a fulll film great quality in like 4 seconds..although she said she would just be using it for the web surfing

yeah I heard about that, too. It was in sweden, I believe. and I think the guy wasn't just a cable guy, but the CEO of a big ISP (I could be wrong, though)

[[GCA]Tim270]

Re: fibre optics

Cant beat copper.....oh wait.

[sava700]

Re: fibre optics

Its a great idea.. and Verizon here in the US is making good on it as it has become pretty cost effective in the last few years. They are running fiber right to people's houses vs down the main road of a city and hitting from it with copper. If Verizon's FIOS was available here I would have left Comcrap long time ago... even though they are working with DOSIS 3.0 they are charging over 150$/month where they are testing it for 50meg down/ 5meg up and thats just crazy.

[Corkum]

Re: fibre optics

Yeah actually i guy i live with worked for Verizon for two summers and was helping them lay down fiber. It will still be a while before it is fully implemented though.

[Flt. Sgt. Powderhound]

Re: fibre optics

The actual plan in the UK is to run fibre optic cables along sewers into people's homes.

[camper.]

Re: fibre optics

So theoretically, ping can be obsolete if your connection is fast enough?

Ping is a time delay and it has nothing to do with bandwidth - imagine the internet as a series of tubes with water flowing through them - the diameter of the tubes (bandwidth) affects how much water will come to the other end, but the pressure in the pipes/speed of the water is what really causes it to go from A=>B. That would be analogous to the processing speed of PCs and well, we're limited by the speed of light anyway.

In theory, the absolute minimum ping from 2 points on polar opposites of Earth is 68ms (i.e. speed of light) but that's a pipe dream.

Fiber optics = meh. I'm satisfied with my 8mbps connection. Sure, a faster connection would be nice but if and only if EVERYONE upgraded. I rarely saturate 800kb/s with most web servers so it's not really that useful. Imagine having a 1gbps connection and downloading at 30KB/s/...

[jesus]

Re: fibre optics

Ping is a time delay and it has nothing to do with bandwidth - imagine the internet as a series of tubes with water flowing through them - the diameter of the tubes (bandwidth) affects how much water will come to the other end, but the pressure in the pipes/speed of the water is what really causes it to go from A=>B. That would be analogous to the processing speed of PCs and well, we're limited by the speed of light anyway.

In theory, the absolute minimum ping from 2 points on polar opposites of Earth is 68ms (i.e. speed of light) but that's a pipe dream.

Fiber optics = meh. I'm satisfied with my 8mbps connection. Sure, a faster connection would be nice but if and only if EVERYONE upgraded. I rarely saturate 800kb/s with most web servers so it's not really that useful. Imagine having a 1gbps connection and downloading at 30KB/s/...

Ah, I understand perfectly now. The water pipe analogy is good and quite easy to understand.

So is fibre optics pushing the "water pressure" to the maximum? And what do you mean by "and that's a pipe dream"?

Also, I know what you mean by how fast your download is, and how rarely you ever use it to the fullest. I get like 2mb/s from nvidia, 1mb/s from filefront and then it varies even more from other download websites. For example, on download.com I only get like 50kb/s

[jake_]

Re: fibre optics

Of course, if you have a sh!tty PC, you still would have gaming problems.



After a certain point you get hit by a wall called "the law of diminishing returns." (look it up on wikipedia)
For example if I'm getting 70 FPS in a game technically getting a second video card will bump up the quality by a lot. However, the human eye can't really discern between 60, 120, and 200 fps, I believe.
It's "better" but you can't actually tell the difference, you only know its better.

Like camper said, 8mbps is plenty fast the way things are atm. :)

(I hope that all made sense. :p )

[jesus]

Re: fibre optics

Of course, if you have a sh!tty PC, you still would have gaming problems.



After a certain point you get hit by a wall called "the law of diminishing returns." (look it up on wikipedia)
For example if I'm getting 70 FPS in a game technically getting a second video card will bump up the quality by a lot. However, the human eye can't really discern between 60, 120, and 200 fps, I believe.
It's "better" but you can't actually tell the difference, you only know its better.

Like camper said, 8mbps is plenty fast the way things are atm. :)

(I hope that all made sense. :p )

Yes, it made sense. But I'm not talking about a 20 difference in ping. I'm talking about how someone in Australia, for example, has a huge ping when playing on a Canadian server. A canadian might have 50ms ping, and the australian could have like 350+ms. That's a big, noticable difference.

But what if the australian had fibre optics? Would his ping be down to like 150ms?

Playing nationally works great now. But playing internationally, especially when the other country is on the other side of the world is kind of difficult

[camper.]

Re: fibre optics

Yes, it made sense. But I'm not talking about a 20 difference in ping. I'm talking about how someone in Australia, for example, has a huge ping when playing on a Canadian server. A canadian might have 50ms ping, and the australian could have like 350+ms. That's a big, noticable difference.

But what if the australian had fibre optics? Would his ping be down to like 150ms?

Playing nationally works great now. But playing internationally, especially when the other country is on the other side of the world is kind of difficult

Well, not really. Fibre optic offers no real advantage in terms of speed (of the actual signal) compared to wires. Probably even lower since in fibre it gets reflected like crazy - in wires, EM waves just go straight down and it's all smooth sailing.

What has to be reduced is the number of server hops per packet - on average a packet gets transferred about 10 times between you and the final server. Each time it has to be processed and whatnot so that's responsible for the overwhelming majority of ping differences. That's all down to geographical issues - bit impractical to lay a wire from the US to China.


Australians will be screwed for a VERY long time, relative to everyone else. The Yurpeans have it lucky.

[jesus]

Re: fibre optics

Aww, too bad. I know fibre optics will be good because of faster download speeds (much faster most of the time), but it's a shame it doesn't help gaming that much