On Monday 13 September 2010 02:13:29 Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
I don't know about "costly" (that is a relative term). At scale ADSL networks [obviously] have proven to be cost-effective.
For whom? Currently ADSL companies advertise Internet access in my area slightly more expensive than Ethenet providers for the same download speed (and much slower upload speed). Also it is known ADSL speed often much slower than declared unlike Ethernet. If I have (on Ethernet provider) speed slower than in my contract I can call the support and they have to repair the line. This is true for any plan other than "not limited" which speed is limited only by Ethernet bandwidth and in practice is about 80-95% of 100 Mbit/s theoretical limit. But imagine the situation of say 7-8 years ago. Internet was very expensive then. There is a local network provider which allows you to play online games, exchange files, use chat and other services for free. You can befriend a girl in a chat and meet her the same evening because she lives in a neighboring building, you can play games with your schoolmates, once a week there is a meeting of the local LAN called "pointovka" (possibly from FIDO terminology). You need recent Windows? Just download it. You need "The Matrix"? Just download it. For free. At 100 Mbit/s. You can also connect Internet is you need of course... Now compare it with an ADSL provider. If you need something, you have to connect to Internet and both pay high price and wait for ages for any download. Internet was very expensive... Even if ADSL provided more cost efficient connection to Internet (counting $/MByte or $/(Mbit/s)) than Ethernet (this was not the case but imagine), you would have to connect to Internet more frequently and download much more content than with a LAN-based provider, and consequently, pay much more. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org