Cyprus-Forum.com

[Piratis]

Cytanet:

[erolz]

Thanks for that Piratis.

Still doesn't tell what I wanted to know unfortunately. I was kind of curious as to where the fiber that runs out from the RoC makes 'landfall' at the other end of it. Somehow I doubt that this is the USA or UK

[cannedmoose]

Being a fibreoptic man, perhaps Hazza will know

[Piratis]

Ok, here you go:

http://www.cytaglobal.com/network-submarine.php

[erolz]

Thanks Piratis - just what I wanted (though link would have done )

[fi]

Cool Piratis!

Very interesting!!!

Thanks!

[cannedmoose]

Yay! According to this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4749987.stm

NTL are going to be ramping up my 3Mbps speed to 10Mbps for no extra charge... blimey... hope so

[erolz]

Yay! According to this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4749987.stm

NTL are going to be ramping up my 3Mbps speed to 10Mbps for no extra charge... blimey... hope so

The increase in speed by NTL is welcome

but

It is not clear if the upstream speed will change from its current 300kbs but it is likely it will not (on the basis that if they were they (NTL) would be shouting about it). 10mbs down and 300kbs up is 'too aystmetrical'. This however is not the major problem.

The major problem are the usage limits they place on your connection. NTL lead the way in the UK for applying specific usage (download) limits on it's users. They originaly applied a 30GB download limit on their 1mbs service. This 1mbs service has now increased 10 times but the download limit has only increased by a factor of 2. A monthly limit of 75GB may sound like alot - and in some ways it is. However with a 10mbs connection you could reach you limit for the month in around 20hours of usage. Or put it another way if you use this connection (saturate the download) for only 45 minutes a day by the end of the month you will be over your limit and it would seem that then NTL will be charging you extra for this. For many users the 75GB monthly usage will not be a problem - but for others it will and it basically undermines the whole power of having a faster connection. For me one of the key things I would want to do with 10mbs connection in my homes is to create a VPN (virtual private network) between the the PC's in my house and those in my brothers and mothers house - making it appear as though we are all on a local 10mbs LAN. The NTL usage limit (cap) makes applications like this unfeasable - and many more besides. Just imagine if you bought LAN equipment for your home or office that allowed 10mbs or 100mbs or even 1Gbs connections between your PC - but you could only use it for about 1 hour per day , before you started to have to pay incrematal additional costs dependent on usage. Would this affect the decision to buy such networking kit? Would it slow the take of such? Would it undermine the developement of new applications and uses of such a network. I contend it would and just as that would have been bad for UK drive to build a 'networked econnomy' and 'digital Britian' then so too do the limits on services like this one from NTL.

At the simplest level with a properly built modern digital network there is no (significant) incremental cost on usage to provide such a service. Just as with a home/office LAN all the cost is the cost of kit and (boxes and wires) and this cost does not change if you use 1% of the capacity or 100% so is the case of provision of internet connections (on properly built networks). The fact is that NTL did not build the 'right' network in 1985. They built an old world one way broadcast TV network (and an old world telephone network as well) and they have then 'bodged' it to provide two way data services.

And so we come to Mr Goodland's (whom I have crossed swords with in the past at conferences and government meetings) statement in the BBC article

Mr Goodland said that cable technology - fibre optics - had fewer technical issues when it came to being able to offer more people faster speeds.

This is an obvious oxymoron. Is their (NTLs) network a fibre network or a cable (co ax) network? The fact is it is a hybrid network, not a fibre one. Such a hybrid network has just as many technical issues as say a DSL based service (also a hybrid of fibre and copper pair (phone lines) and quite possibly more (with DSL the non fibre part is exclusive per user, with cable the non fibre part is shared between typicaly 200 or so users). This statement is intended to leave the less technicaly minded consumer with the impression that NTL have a more advanced all fibre netwrok in comparrison to their competitors. They do not and to me this statement is tant amount to a lie with the intent of misleading consumers. I will be looking at what can be done about such a blatant lie with my colleagues in the UK.

and a couple of links for anyone interested

NTL customer run forum are discussing the issue here

http://forums.ntlhell.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=10652

general consumer based 'anti cap' campaign forum here

http://www.anticap.co.uk

[cannedmoose]

To be honest Erolz, I have to use the internet a lot, literally for 8 hours a day at times doing research and downloading some pretty hefty documents. I also use it for streaming radio and TV and for other downloading activities . I've never once hit my download limit for the month. I think you'd only hit that if you were downloading movies every day, which one is against the law and two I don't have the luxury of a DVDRW so is pointless for me.

As for NTLs service, as a mere leisure and business user, I don't have a problem with it, until something goes wrong - then it's a total pain in the backside to get hold of them.

[erolz]

I think you'd only hit that if you were downloading movies every day, which one is against the law and two I don't have the luxury of a DVDRW so is pointless for me.

Like I say for many NTL users today the limit is not a problem. To me though the point is that we want to encourage and increase usage. That the things we do tomorrow will be defined by how 'cheap' use of bandwidth is. That we should be seeking to ensure that the benefits of 'zero cost' (on usage) of bandwidth that are at the core of the digital revolution are delivered down to those that use the network and not just to those that build and own them.

The argument that anyone who goes over current limits is in fact a criminal, is to me a suprious one. We do not seek to limit crime commintted via the post by limiting how many letters everyone (criminal or no criminal) can post. Yes some of the people who hit the NTL limits will have done so by engaging in illegal activites. Other however will do so by creating and defining the new and innovative legal appliactions and uses of the network. Would you not like to be connected via VPN to university networks around the country and the world at speeds akin to if you were actualy in this places physically? Would you not like access to your freinds and family's home shot videos as though they were local to your home network.

What we do with networks (and therefore how much they change our lives) is a direct function of how cheap the resource of bandwidth is. Just as what we do with computer is a direct function of how cheap 'processing power' is. If for historic and purely commercial reasons we limit how much and how quickly we deliver the decreasing cost of bandwidth to those that use it from what it could be based on 'cost of provision' then we in effect limit what we do with such networks, limit the devlopemtn of new and innovative usage of such networks and work against the ideas of 'leading the world in a digital age'. Thats my view anyway.