And yet, developers still build sites that load 500kb of JS just to display 5kb of text.
We don’t need faster speeds, we need more reasonable and thoughtful site design. Most sites are ridiculously overengineered, and don’t need a lot of what has been stuffed into them.
They are more under engineered because of cost cutting and over designed by management to make profit
Here is a lightning fast website that gets the proper amount of engineering time because the goals of management and that of the development team align perfectly.
You know we use the internet to transfer way more than most websites right?
Yes however bloated websites slow traffic for everyone.
But then how will you be able to mine every single possible data point on every single visitor so that you can maximize profits with advertisors?! Huh?! /s
Nah its not even always about profit, sometimes its just pure sloppy showoff like a page where I am supposed to sign up should not be promoting the company, if Ive already got onto that page why do I need to scroll all the way down to the join/sign up button!
IME it is more devs and managers going wild on the “golly gee wiz” features that are meant to dazzle site visitors, rather than on actual content (or to obscure a lack of actual material content).
Sure, what you mentioned is a problem, and a serious one at that. But your issue arises more from marketers and bean counters and C-Suite execs than devs and managers.
over 1,120 miles (1,802 kilometers).
This is the most American thing ever. Taking an official number (1,808km), converting it to customary units (1,123mi) rounding it (1,120mi) then converting it back again with rounding error.
I also have to laugh when someone takes a very rough estimate (around a hundred miles) and converts it to metric with 4 significant figures (160.9 km). Even 160 is too precise when talking about a distance of 80-120 miles. If the original number has 1 sigfig, the conversion should too, even if that feels way off.
I swear I’ve bought stuff at Costco before that was 1.3608kg.
There really is Xkcd for everything.
is there an xkcd for there always being an xkcd for everything? i wonder now …
#2087
Disappointed it wasn’t tbh
404 could legitimately be argued to be tangentially related, but I can’t find any reference to Randall acknowledging that it’s a thing.
No, real Americans would measure it in rocks, or football fields or something.
“Stone” is British, we don’t use that bullshit here.
It’s right there in the article.
over roughly the distance between New York and Florida
Pretty clickbait title to compare a lab speed to average internet. I’m sure it’s several million times faster than average Japanese internet too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds
07. United States 274.16 Mbit/s 19. Japan 212.06 Mbit/sAccording to this page, seemingly sourced from Ookla, US has way higher average speeds these days.
Japan had way faster internet on average than the US like twenty years ago, but the US actually did a decent amount of broadband growth even if it still doesn’t cover rural areas well.
ranked by Speedtest.net data for January 2025
And the average speed of a passenger car is 170km/h, as ranked by speed data from the Nürburgring.
People on shitty slow connections don’t have a need to go test that speed much, they know it’s shit, people who just got their fancy new 1Gbit fiber and want to know exactly how fast it is, do.
ranked by Speedtest.net data
I have no other ideas to collect that data better but i’m sure that does not give a good generic view of the reality. Every tech I know in Sweden uses bredbandskollen. Even if an end-users is asked if they did test speed and delay, the site was bredbandskollen in nearly 100% of the cases if they had done so. Therefore I dare say speedtest is missing data and that list has no statistical relevance outside the scope of the speedtest user population.
Also, measuring speedtest result tells us about the subscription users took out. It does not tell anything about availability. I can get Gbit here, but subscribed to 100/100 because my average is low
Not to mention that Japan tends to use their own local services usually so I’m not sure if speedtest.net is even well known there.
This is yet another thing the Republicans have been attacking (funding for rural broadband providers). Our rural areas are actually extremely well covered. Most of the midwest is fibered up. My local co-op’s minimum offered speed is 350x350.
I’m in a rural place and I just have DSL for my house and LTE for my phone. Lived here 20 years and that’s the worst thing about it.
My condolences. We have one last office to convert at the coop I work for. We’ll be 100% fiber by the end of the year. Hope your ISP is close as well.
Is this all of Japan? I wonder what it looks like comparing just Tokyo with LA
Most DOCSIS (cable tv) systems are pushing gigabit speeds these days, especially in Los Angeles. That said, it is a bit of a misnomer considering CATV’s upload speeds are still doodie compared to fiber.
Japan seeming to be ahead of the curve 20 years ago but now being at the same level or behind, seems to be a common theme.
Could be related to their stagnating economy and population. Conservatives love to point to Japan as a successful ethnostate, but their xenophobia has directly led to the stagnation.
Do you think Google Fiber made the average internet speed increase in part?
Wasn’t Google Fiber available in like, one town in Kansas? So I suppose yes, it did increase the average speed, but by a very small amount.
Not quite. Google fiber did 2 things: 1) in any market thry entered, they forced an ante speed and 2) they provided a model that a bunch of local coops and/or municipal networks could follow (and did)
They are currently in 28 markets in the US.
A good point for Google
I feel they may have been something of a catalyst that got other providers to start upping the speed. At this point, a lot of service providers offer at least 1 gig download speeds, with fiber being synchronous often. Some places offer up to 10 gigs to residential.
Its just got nothing to do with “internet”. That is the issue with the headline. Its just some random piece of fiber that isnt even connected to any wider network. Im assuming they just used big ass rolled up rolls of fiber connected to one another to get to the 1800km. There are no end user “internet” applications for it either. The only thing it could be used for is isolated connections between internet hubs or inside datacenters for local network.
Still impressive ofcourse but just doesnt have anything to do with “internet” in the end user sense.
Meanwhile in aus we get like 5 MB/s
;-;
I was complaining to my wife yesterday that it’s not easy to find torrents for the Aus version of Taskmaster.
She told me to be patient, their internet is shit so it’ll take a while to get it off their servers.
Is it? I feel like I’ve accidentally downloaded it by accident on more than one occasion when trying to get the UK version… I usually just go to tpb.
Half-duplex
Only until you hit your data cap!
And they won’t tell you what it is, they’ll just throttle you when you reach it.
Yeah Australia still hasn’t quite caught up to the internet speeds some other countries had 15 years ago. It’s kinda sad. I’m still sad the original (good) NBN got replaced by the janky NBN that’s taken years to fix.
The other weird thing in Australia is that even the expensive fibre plans are asymmetric. Most countries that have fibre have a 1Gbps symmetric plan (meaning upload and download are both 1Gbps) whereas the 1Gbps NBN plan has a ridiculously low ~50Mbps upload speed.
I moved from Australia to the USA in 2013. Back then, I had ~9Mbps ADSL2+ in Australia, compared to 600Mbps in the USA. Huge difference. Now I’ve got 10Gbps symmetric in the USA for $50/month through a local ISP.
I’m still sad the original (good) NBN got replaced by the janky NBN that’s taken years to fix.
Malcolm Turnbull is the one I blame most for that. It was his party’s policy, but it was his charisma and perceived technology knowledge that sold it.
And he did it for the chance of being PM, not because it was the correct course of action for the betterment of the people he was supposed to be representing.
Imagine selling out an entire country’s future for a promotion. What a cockhead.
One of my friends was part of the original NBN trial in Brunswick. I also lived in Brunswick but unfortunately I was a few blocks outside the test area. That was back in 2009 or 2010, and if I remember correctly it was 100Mbps down and 40Mbps up via FTTP.
15 years later, there’s still a lot of people with connections slower than that. My mum’s on a 12Mbps plan because she finds higher plans to be too expensive. Meanwhile, the slowest speed I can get from a major ISP in my area in the USA is 300Mbps.
Where the hell are you getting 10Gbps for $50/mo? I’m paying $95/mo for 1Gbps
I’m actually paying $40/month because I’m on a legacy plan that’s $10/month cheaper in exchange for no phone or email support (SMS only) and no free addons like email, web hosting space, eFax, or VPN.
Sonic has caused the other ISPs to lower their prices here. For example, Comcast Xfinity has 2Gbps for $70/month, although that’s not symmetric and only has 250Mbps upload speed. AT&T’s fastest plan here is 5Gbps for $155/month.
There’s a few cities throughout the US that have a similar service, or cheap municipal fiber (ran by the city itself). Unfortunately it’s not very common though.
Im paying 125/month for 50 Mbps. Lol
That sounds like a coax network instead of fiber.
It sure does, but AFAIK it was only available to houses that use fiber (FTTP - fiber to the premises) until recently. My mum could only get 250Mbps max over the coax network before (Aussies refer to it as “HFC” - hybrid fiber and coax).
They do have a 1000/250 plan but it’s ridiculously expensive compared to the “standard” 1000/50 (called “NBN 1000” - NBN is the National Broadband Network)
My ISP used to advertise about fiber because their backend is fiber but residential connections are coax with DOCSIS whatever. One of the downsides is assymetric up/download speeds. Upload gets reduced to favour download and you get these whack ratios.
This is amusing because practically every backend is fiber. You need it for speeds above 10Gbps, and all ISPs will have at least 40Gbps or 100Gbps connections in their data centers, sometimes even faster (QSFP can do up to 400Gbps).
Wow, it’s that bad?
I live in rural Pacific NW and just upgraded to 5gbit symmetric fiber.
Most Australians live in or near a major city, it’s pretty common to be able to get gigabit. if you’re unlucky you might be limited to 100 megabit, but in some remote or rural areas I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 5Mb.
Until I switched ths other day from iinet to superloop I was paying 80 a month for 100mbs and lucky to get 20 on off peak times. Switched to superloop for an extra 10 dollars a month and meant to get 1gb instead. At the modem I get 950mbs and 350mbs over wifi to my phone. It’s amazing
That’s quite a speed. How much does it cost and is this a company or personal subscription?
transmitting over 125,000 gigabytes of data per second over 1,120 miles (1,802 kilometers).
Please include usable metrics in the title
Lol, does this mean there is one apartment building in Japan with a hundred units that uses more bandwidth than the entire United States 😂
Ignoring clickbait title, this is impressive. Networked devices used to be the limit on data transfer.
Are there any devices even capable at reading/writing at 125,000G/sec?
Seems breakthroughs here are more relevant to for backhaul networks.
0.125 P/s
Most likely sending pseudorandom data so that the data can be validated at the other end.
Given they say it’s really 19 fibers in one, that’s really just 6,600Gb/s per fiber which is really just 4 colors per fiber with one of those and some amplifiers: https://www.fs.com/c/1.6t-osfp-infiniband-1392
Apparently those go into a watercooled switch. Those 1.6T NICs sound absolutely insane. Makes your home 10G network look strings and cans.
It’s not that insane in perspective. Probably still needs a whole rack of equipment to run just that test, but the technology is not too far off that it’s quite plausible.
they say it’s really 19 fibers in one … It’s not that insane in perspective
The impressive bit being that the bundle of 19 fibres is around the same overall diameter as a single regular one - “diameter of five-thousandths of an inch (0.127 millimeters), which is the same thickness as most existing single-fiber cables already in use” - meaning those individual strands are unbelievably thin.
It’s going to be interesting to see how a cable like that is getting fixed in the field when a backhoe inevitably goes om nom nom on one.
The actual source: www.nict.go.jp
Not really an ‘internet’ world speed record, but really a wired data transmission record if I’m reading correctly.
It’s a record in data transmission. The medium doesn’t matter.
The title is ‘internet’, implying a network of networks. The title wasn’t ‘new record in data transmission speed’.
Article explains. You don’t read it.
Of course I read it, and investigated the source. The issue is with the title the article chose.
Theoretically, you could always increase the speed of data transmission by using more cables in parallel.
What’s the point though? With more and more trash content on the internet what would the bandwidth be used for? To force-feed people more ads?
640K ought to be enough for anyone.
For better piracy 🥰
Right, but have you seen this new trash in 8K? Do you even have a video wall?
Wouldn’t it be bottlenecked by the upload speed?
fiber optics
Won’t come out immediately, as that tech would first have to be finalized then introduced to the domestic market.
Japan is already pretty damn close to achieving 100% fiber network coverage for every household.
Living there right now and that is hard to believe. It’s very common to find housing that still runs on VDSL. Living in Tokyo too
If it’s like here in Finland, coverage means there’s a fibre running under the street in front (or close enough nearby) but because it costs quite a lot to connect a building to it, especially if you want higher speeds and have to start retrofitting every apartment, many haven’t done it.
For example our house officially has fibre coverage, but the street-to-house connection costs ~1800€ which is why we still run a VDSL while the apartment building down the street has 10Gbit to every apartment.
That’s exactly what’s going on here. My landlord refuses to install the upgrade even if I pay for it too 😔
damn that list is so clean. if it was any other place on earth, i guess it would be an incomprehensible or hard to read form
I’m sorry, fiber optics needs to be finalized before being introduced to the domestic market?
I’ve had fiver since a long, LONG time
Yeah, I’ve had a fiber cable running all the way into my apartment for over a decade, and directly into my router for years.
Round 37 of Dead Horse vs. Baseball Bat.
Avg US speed is kind of silly to compare to isn’t it? I mean, in most of my state satellite is still the most reliable and that’s 100mb/s at most
more than half the households in my county do not have any high-speed wireline service available to them.
i mean a tincan with a wire on it is faster than average us internet speeds
I got some news for you about Australia then.
Let me guess, Kangaroos? Their pouches could hold alot of packets
Once you become one with the high ping, you gain superpowers.
A crate full of microSD cards shipped as cargo could deliver speeds like this with a ping time measured in hours
Now i wonder what would be the average transmission speed of a rocket full of SD cards to another planet, compared to wirelessly transmitting that data?
That ping would be weeks or months btw.
That superpower is mere strength just from slamming many keyboards/mice/controllers at the wall and/or floor.
