New Zealand connection, was Fw: Re: [libreoffice-users] now can Purchase a NA-DVD

Tom_Davies · July 24, 2012, 12:44pm

Hi
Weird. I assumed it was all done by satellites and that was why the connection to the outside world had such limited bandwidth and was so slow.

I remember a few years ago a ship in the meditteranean accidentally ripped up THE single cable connecting Asia to the rest of the world! or least the middle-east(ish) part of Asia. Tons of people were having serious problems with speed chess (less than 5min for an entire game).

Regards from
Tom

krackedpress · July 24, 2012, 1:16pm

Mostly it is fiber/copper for world-wide communication.
That underwater cable network is used for both phone and Internet communication, since phone systems not seem to be converted to digital to go through the cables to give more "lines" of communication between countries, i.e. more phone connections between people. Long distance is now mostly Internet-based since it cost less to send phone through the communication networks between countries in a Internet-based digital phone system. That is what makes having a call center in India for a US based company so much as a viable option, cheap person to call center calling. If it was the old style phone connections, it would be too expensive.

SO
now there is a set of underwater cables between large land masses in the world, including island nations large enough, like New Zealand. A few years back, the cable running from the west coast of the US, down to South America, was tapped to give more options to a Central American country. They we using the cable connection on the eastern side of the country that was much older and over-taxed with users. This worked, but that tap reduced "bandwidth" to the countries to the south. But, the good part was if there was a problem with the cable to the north of the tap, the countries south of that problem could have their communications diverted through the Central American country's tap to the Caribbean cable network.

As for satellites, it is a more expensive route to go for digital communications. You need to have a powerful uplink and such on your end, but there are limits to how much bandwidth can be sent through a satellite nowadays. Also the "lag time" for satellite can be up to 15 seconds from ground station through a satellite to the ground station.

James_Knott · July 24, 2012, 1:57pm

Tom Davies wrote:

Weird. I assumed it was all done by satellites and that was why the connection to the outside world had such limited bandwidth and was so slow.

Satellites are so 20th century.

Actually, with all the fibre cables that have been laid around the world, I don't understand how NZ could have such poor connections.

James_Knott · July 24, 2012, 2:02pm

webmaster-Kracked_P_P wrote:

That underwater cable network is used for both phone and Internet communication, since phone systems not seem to be converted to digital to go through the cables to give more "lines" of communication between countries

???

Are analog trunks still in use anywhere? The phone system has been digital for many years, long before there was an Internet. It'd have to be an extremely old cable to require analog trunks. Anything running over fibre would most certainly be digital.

Russell_Wilson · July 24, 2012, 2:15pm

try starting with something like 1/4 population of New York, 1000 times its surface area, and 1/4 of 1% of its financial worth

Russell
Dunedin, New Zealand

planas · July 24, 2012, 2:32pm

try starting with something like 1/4 population of New York, 1000 times its surface area, and 1/4 of 1% of its financial worth

Russell
Dunedin, New Zealand

In the US, there are rural areas that still do not have very fast connections because of the cost of installing fiber cable.

James_Knott · July 24, 2012, 2:35pm

Russell Wilson wrote:

try starting with something like 1/4 population of New York, 1000 times its surface area, and 1/4 of 1% of its financial worth

First off, I was thinking of the international trunks. Analog systems are so obsolete that it would cost more to maintain them then to replace. However, even domestically, the same still applies. I don't know if you're referring to New York City or New York State, but even assuming the city, Canada has about 4 × the population, or 16 × that of NZ, but the area of almost 10 million sq Kilometres is close to 40 times that of New Zealand, yet the analog phone system is long gone here.

BTW, I've worked in the telecommunications industry for most of my career and it's been over 30 years since the last time I saw an analog system. New Zealand would *REALLY* have to be a back water country to still be using an analog phone system.

krackedpress · July 24, 2012, 2:35pm

They still have the cables and they are used. Mostly they are used as digital trunk lines, but not every one has been converted do to their age. The expense of laying a new fiber cable across a large body of ocean/sea is something that slows up the process of many parts of the world getting the better/faster connections. The poorer the country, or the less number of potential users of the service, the longer it will take for the giant communication companies to spend the type of money needed to give these users the type of service many of us enjoy. Europe has a better broadband system than most of the USA does. I saw a program for places like the Netherlands and other European countries where they have a very large section of their country with fiber to the home and they have many different companies to choose from for broadband. With that large competition for the broadband market, their Internet prices for 50 MB/s bandwidth is lower than my area of the USA for a 5 to 10 MB/s access. We have just two options. Cable modem service or a DSL service. We pay $50+ a month for either. On some science TV programming, they showed services for as little as $15 a month for the same services. It all comes down to how good is their trunk system and how the marketing controls over those trunk lines are regulated. For countries like New Zealand, they have to rely on a limited trunk cable on the ocean floor. I would wonder if it was possible to run a trunk line from their nation to Australia. Would it give them more access, or is Australia using the same trunk cable system as well.

James_Knott · July 24, 2012, 2:37pm

James Knott wrote:

Tom_Davies · July 24, 2012, 2:48pm

Hi
I think the distance between Australia and New Zealand is surprisingly large. Nothing like as close as i keep thinking it is.

The Netherlands and Sweden are very atypical of European countries. I think they have an extremely high tax-rate but that gets put into very high visibility projects instead of being sunk into black-holes such as "defence" or things that only the rich and famous or just people in the capital get to use.

Regard from
Tom

James_Knott · July 24, 2012, 2:50pm

webmaster-Kracked_P_P wrote:

webmaster-Kracked_P_P wrote:

That underwater cable network is used for both phone and Internet communication, since phone systems not seem to be converted to digital to go through the cables to give more "lines" of communication between countries

???

Are analog trunks still in use anywhere? The phone system has been digital for many years, long before there was an Internet. It'd have to be an extremely old cable to require analog trunks. Anything running over fibre would most certainly be digital.

They still have the cables and they are used. Mostly they are used as digital trunk lines, but not every one has been converted do to their age. The expense of laying a new fiber cable across a large body of ocean/sea is something that slows up the process of many parts of the world getting the better/faster connections. The poorer the country, or the less number of potential users of the service, the longer it will take for the giant communication companies to spend the type of money needed to give these users the type of service many of us enjoy. Europe has a better broadband system than most of the USA does. I saw a program for places like the Netherlands and other European countries where they have a very large section of their country with fiber to the home and they have many different companies to choose from for broadband. With that large competition for the broadband market, their Internet prices for 50 MB/s bandwidth is lower than my area of the USA for a 5 to 10 MB/s access. We have just two options. Cable modem service or a DSL service. We pay $50+ a month for either. On some science TV programming, they showed services for as little as $15 a month for the same services. It all comes down to how good is their trunk system and how the marketing controls over those trunk lines are regulated. For countries like New Zealand, they have to rely on a limited trunk cable on the ocean floor. I would wonder if it was possible to run a trunk line from their nation to Australia. Would it give them more access, or is Australia using the same trunk cable system as well.

This list <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_submarine_communications_cables> shows many cables going to New Zealand, though some have now been decommissioned. I see links to Canada, U.S., Australia, Fiji and other islands. As for local access, you might be interested in this article: <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8073>

These days, low bandwidth tends to be more of a political vs economic or technical issue. For example, in the U.S., someone else mentioned low bandwidth in some areas. Yet, in some states, the incumbent carriers have pushed for state laws that prohibit municipalities from providing Internet service in areas that the carriers refuse to. This leaves the residents with no access to high speed internet.

Kaya_Saman · July 24, 2012, 2:51pm

Sorry to jump in on a whim like this however, there are quite a few
countries out there in the world now upgrading to fiber as the defacto
for residential "broadband internet" platforms. A few years back when
I was doing the Cisco CCNA course my then lecturer who was an
ex-university lecturer stated that during his frequest travels to
China, they had 100Mbps to the port on the wall at home.

In fact even in Europe they are starting to offer psuedo-metro
solutions where you get either 100Mbps or 1Gbps connections directly
to the wall for business or residences.

The question with these speeds then becomes can non-carrier and
essentially consumer based hardware support those speeds?

Even VDSL2 needs a bit of power to be able to get the maximum out of
between 32-64Mbps which is rated at.

Without going too much off-topic looking at most business based
network kit: Cisco, Juniper etc.... they can't get anywhere near
100Mbps on routed connections.

The $5000 29xx series of Cisco is claimed to do round 75Mbps
manufacturers figures, so in essence you are probably looking at round
65-70Mbps. I know for a fact that the Cisco 1800 series maxes out at
round 50-55Mbps when using inter-vlan routing, the 800 series is worse
at 40-45Mbps. (I have a few Cisco's at home to test with )

At work our Juniper firewalls doing inter-vlan routing will only
manage 400Mbps in conjunction with $35,000 Cisco 4900_m switches.

Actually it's cheaper and better to build one's own routing system
however, that is waaaay off-topic.

So in essence I beleive that network gear needs to get better if we
can truly utilize high-speed carriers which are fast coming directly
to our homes!

Regards,

Kaya

James_Knott · July 24, 2012, 3:02pm

Tom Davies wrote:

I think the distance between Australia and New Zealand is surprisingly large. Nothing like as close as i keep thinking it is.

If Sarah Palin lived in NZ, she could see Australia from her home.

Tom_Davies · July 24, 2012, 4:24pm

Hi
Going 'off-topic' in a thread like this is not a problem. We are not trying to fix a set problem for a specific op. It's just a chat. I broke it out of the original question by forwarding it back to the list and i changed the subject-line so that people could filter it out quickly and easily.

Oooo i dream of getting 10Mbps at the wall in this office! Yes, that is 10 not anywhere near 100! We had much higher at the last place and even though we are all just emailing it does feel quite sluggish here. City centre location in a city just outside London (about an hour away by train or car).

Regards from
Tom

webmaster-Kracked_P_P wrote:

That underwater cable network is used for both phone and Internet
communication, since phone systems not seem to be converted to digital to go
through the cables to give more "lines" of communication between countries

???

Are analog trunks still in use anywhere? The phone system has been
digital for many years, long before there was an Internet. It'd have to be
an extremely old cable to require analog trunks. Anything running over fibre
would most certainly be digital.

They still have the cables and they are used. Mostly they are used as
digital trunk lines, but not every one has been converted do to their age.
The expense of laying a new fiber cable across a large body of ocean/sea is
something that slows up the process of many parts of the world getting the
better/faster connections. The poorer the country, or the less number of
potential users of the service, the longer it will take for the giant
communication companies to spend the type of money needed to give these
users the type of service many of us enjoy. Europe has a better broadband
system than most of the USA does. I saw a program for places like the
Netherlands and other European countries where they have a very large
section of their country with fiber to the home and they have many different
companies to choose from for broadband. With that large competition for the
broadband market, their Internet prices for 50 MB/s bandwidth is lower than
my area of the USA for a 5 to 10 MB/s access. We have just two options.
Cable modem service or a DSL service. We pay $50+ a month for either. On
some science TV programming, they showed services for as little as $15 a
month for the same services. It all comes down to how good is their trunk
system and how the marketing controls over those trunk lines are regulated.
For countries like New Zealand, they have to rely on a limited trunk cable
on the ocean floor. I would wonder if it was possible to run a trunk line
from their nation to Australia. Would it give them more access, or is
Australia using the same trunk cable system as well.