Comment by sigstoat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sigstoat | Hacker News Reader

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> What's preventing the average Joe from enjoying 1+Tb/s broadband?

are other responders not seeing the 'T'?

it is the rare home device which can handle 2.5Gbps. 10Gbps switches are common enough. the cheapest switch i'm seeing on fs.com with a 100Gbps uplink port is $3500.

i don't think we currently have the tech to drive 100Gbps through a single port, i think it's done with multiple wavelengths being multiplexed onto a single fiber, and then split back out.

so... at a minimum, joe is kept from 1 Tbps of bandwidth by $35,000, some optical multiplexing hardware, 10+U of rack space, and having absolutely no conceivable way to put the kind of bandwidth to use.

plus his part of the amortized capital costs to build the ISP's end of that.

You wouldn't even be able to transfer the data out of memory at speed. Even if you overclocked your DDR4 ram to crazy levels - you'd tap out at 50GB/s - a far cry from 1Tbs/s.

There is very little practical use to speeds beyond 10 gigabit for home use unless you have some insane PCIE storage or keep a giant ram drive. (Which again asks the practical use category - what are you doing?)

> There is very little practical use to speeds beyond 10 gigabit for home use

Give it a few years and we'll all be wondering how SPA web apps became gigabytes in size and trying to work out how to make 1Tbs/s to the home practical.

100G per wavelength has been standard fare for some time now.

The confusion is probably due to the fact that you can also run the 100G using multiple lanes at lower speeds.

It all depends on what optics you use.

You also don’t need 10U worth of rack space to switch 1 Tbps. You can do that with a single 1U switch.

> 100G per wavelength has been standard fare for some time now.

fair enough.

> You also don’t need 10U worth of rack space to switch 1 Tbps. You can do that with a single 1U switch.

how much does that cost?

List price for a 32x 100G switch is $30k, but nobody pays list price.

About six grand on eBay.

Edit: for reference, the FS switch with 1.2 Tbps of switching capacity is $4k new.

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