[arin-ppml] debunking the myth that Moore's law helps

[Charles O'Hern]

Lee Dilkie wrote:
> I wonder how much b/w to the home is actually needed and if there is a
> natural demand "limit". It seems to me that once b/w to the home reaches
> realtime HD video there's not really much more that is required (except
> for separate channels for the kids, of course). If you think about it,
> there's only historically been two drivers for b/w throughout the
> history of communications. Ignoring the original low b/w uses, morse
> code, teletype, etc, we have realtime voice and realtime video. For 80
> years, video has stabilized at about 3 Mhz b/w and it's only with the
> advent of HD that we have exceeded that (is that true? I'm not sure,
> considering compression and all).
>
> Is it really reasonable to expect future b/w demands to the home to keep
> going up and up? What drivers do you see for this?
>
> Just curious.
>
> -lee
>   
I've found that customer demands have a tendency to fall outside the
bounds of reasonable expectations.  Some will want more bandwidth
because their neighbor/relative/friend has more than they do.  Some will
want more to fix a perceived problem that may or may not actually be
related to their current bandwidth usage. 

While it may be reasonable to expect technological causes of bandwidth
demand to taper, it might be imprudent to expect, and plan for, consumer
bandwidth demand to follow reasonable and rational expectations.  

-- 
Charles O'Hern
Network Operations
 
TCSN - The Computer Shop Netlink
1306 Pine St. Paso Robles CA 93446
1-(805) 227-7000  1-(800) 974-DISK
http://www.tcsn.net  abuse at tcsn.net