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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: runes who wrote (59534)	1/28/2002 8:40:33 PM
From: John Trader	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

OT - "Clear as Mud", Runes, Thanks for your inputs. I am starting to convince myself that this question of bandwidth demand and supply is impossible to figure out. There are just too many difficult issues, including monopoly rights to key infrastructure, lack of government initiative, etc. Also, there seems to be no agreement at all even on basic questions, such as the rate at which internet traffic is rising, assuming that it is rising, that is. I have heard the argument that it would cost a fortune to upgrade the network and also the argument that bandwidth has and will be increasing much faster than processor speed. Who is right? In a recent magazine interview the SUNW CEO said the following: "Over the past three years, bandwidth has doubled every nine months. Compare that to processor speed, which doubles about every 24 months, and it is pretty clear that bandwidth is not going to be a problem. A single fiber-optic strand can carry the equivalent of 400,000 DVD-quality movies streaming down the line simultaneously, and there may be 800 or more strands in a cable." (American Way Magazine (American Airlines), 12-15-01). This statement apparently ignores the last mile problem, but implies that other parts of the network will be increasing in speed at a rapid rate, and also that the capability of existing fiber in the ground is enormous (400,000 * 800 = 320,000,000 DVD-quality movies down a single fiber optic cable - that is more than the population of the USA!). I do not have the technical info to understand all this. I find it interesting though, but incredibly confusing as well. It is pretty clear though that high quality video uses a lot of bandwidth. What does this mean for the chip industry? Who knows. If McNealy is right, should be really good. If he is wrong, and we are stuck with 56K modems 5 years from now, then companies like AMAT will have to get their growth more from gadgets / new chip applications, and less from bandwidth growth. As you pointed out, however, fast PC's are still needed for working with DVD discs and so forth. Maybe some day the government will let us climb the telephone poles and run our own fiber optic cables over this last mile. Given all the other rights we have, like the right to bear arms, for example, this seems reasonable to me. Clear as mud. John