The need for speed

Forget ADSL, forget cable modems. Forget asynchronous transfer mode, synchronous optical network and the rest. The future is Ethernet. And it will be fast.

Now, if you had really fast Ethernet connections to plug in, anywhere you went, what would you use them for?

At the moment, it's probably true that most peoples' PCs are too fast for their internet links. The typical PC home user doesn't actually use the internet at all; it's just an occasional dial-up for mail ("Google? What's that?").

In a decade, the typical PC will probably be a 64bit processor (maybe two) running at over 20GHz; maybe twice that speed. And it will struggle to keep up with your internet connection, which will be 100Mbps.

What exactly would you do with a 100Mbps Ethernet connection? Here's a list of some of the things researchers are toying with:

Put all your storage somewhere else.
Why carry data around with you if you can connect to it at 100Mbps? Why spend money on shelves of data? You don't? What are all those DVD boxes, then? Not data? They look like data to me!

But with 100Mbps you could watch two High-Definition TV streams simultaneously and still have 20Mbps left for IT connectivity like databases.

Use really effective speech recognition.
Today, if you talk to a human being, you'll be asked: "Sorry, could you repeat that?" quite often.

But talk to a computer and you're going to realise just how clever people are at understanding you, especially if they can watch your lips while listening. Computers are absolutely awful at voice recognition.

But if you've got 100Mbps of connectivity, you can send a high-fidelity audio stream (and maybe also a video of your lips) to an off-site processor cluster of 64 parallel 64bit processors. It'll know what you mean.

Have truly trivial things done for you.
Why? Well, suppose you are chatting to a friend in a car. Your conversation covers your forthcoming date with someone you admire very much; you wonder if this person likes flowers. Or Wittgenstein.

That information probably exists somewhere. Your 'online valet' has nothing better to do than check, just in case you ask. You order roses, just like that; your online valet says: "I'm afraid I've checked; severe hay fever means that's not a great idea."

Trivial? Sure. But who cares?

Join in.
Three of your friends meet in a pub, and you aren't there, and they're all missing you. You're on your own, maybe on a train or in a hotel across the world. They're watching the football.

All four of you can share the match, and a 3D image of you can be projected to the pub where they are sitting; and you can probably get most of the pub atmosphere, short of the stale tobacco.

You'll probably have to order your own beer locally, though ...

Be well known.
This is the downside. Spam is going to get worse. Of course, there will be better defences against ordinary spam; but the clever stuff is going to be very clever.

There will be databases that know you very well, and know what you like to watch, eat, visit, play and read. Did you realise that your car is sending your speed and medical state to roadside monitors every 50m?

Nobody said technology created Utopia.

The first steps towards this high-bandwidth world are being taken right now. The powers that be are being dragged, protesting their innocence, into a world where all their existing comms infrastructure is to be made obsolete.

It is already possible to buy bandwidth from one of the new Ethernet-only telcos and internet service providers, for less than half what it costs to get a leased line installed by the established giants like BT.

What's interesting, though, is that the cost isn't just lower (and dropping) but variable. If you want 2Mbps, you have to buy a 2Mb leased line, today. If you want 20Mbps once or twice a month, tough; either you buy a 20Mb line, or you do without.

With fast Ethernet, you get that 20Mb surge on demand. All the things I can think of for ultra-broadband are computing-based.

That's understandable; that is my focus. But we're at the point where electricity was in the 19th century, as Andrew Davies, minister for economic development and e-minister, Welsh Assembly Government, put it when I was chatting to him recently.

His point is that broadband isn't a purpose in itself, and that it is going to be the underlying 'enabler' for a lot of other purposes that aren't even slightly technological.

"In those days, electricity only provided light; and the same company which provided electricity also provided new bulbs when yours died.

"And at that time, few people would have said it was going to drive all sorts of things like light and heat - they wouldn't have seen it. The same applies to broadband."

The authorities, even the more visionary among them, still talk about broadband as something like 0.5Mb, distributed over copper through BT's ADSL, or Telewest or NTL's cable networks. It's important to realise that within a decade, ADSL will be just historic nostalgia.

In addition, the processor technology that allows today's PC to keep up with ADSL easily, won't work when it's faced with 100Mb of data streaming off 20 simultaneous feeds, each charging you different rates.

And remember, I haven't even touched on what bandwidth I think wireless will run at!

People do say that computing has stagnated. I think you should write down what they say, every time you hear that; it will make amusing reading.

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