Star Wars Revelations @ 202 KBps!!

Today I learned from the Hardwarezone forums that my ISP (which I will always refer to as SCV but is now owned by StarHub) has upgraded our upstream bandwidth from 128 kbps to 256 kbps (kilobits per second). Which in KB terms, is from 16 KBps to 32 KBps (KiloBytes per second). Which is a doubling in speed. That'll be real helpful for, umm, "power users" (see the tanker on the top right of the picture above? lol). And it was only just about a few weeks back that they upgraded the downstream bandwidth from 1500 kbps to 2000 kbps, and, also for free, i.e. no changes to our bills.

Cool. I power-cycled the cable modem, a fancy term for saying that I turned off the power, sat on my butt and waited for a minute or so before turning it on again so that it will update itself with the latest set of operating parameters. To be sure, I did a DHCP release/renew for my trusty LinkSys router as well. FTP'ed over to my post1.org domain account, and sure enough, the test file was being sent out at 29 KBps. Not 100% but close enough - have to allow for some overhead losses, eh. Far better than the 14-15 KBps max last time.

And then I just received word, via news.com, of this fan-made movie called Star Wars: Revelations. I suspected that the fastest way to get it would be via BitTorrent, and sure enough, there's a BT mirror.

Here's what I got, the free, not-for-profit, homegrown, fan-made movie downloading at up to 202 KBps :

The entire download completed in 37 minutes. Can I say wow? Wow!! I'm off to watch the movie now!!

Comments:

Not bad! But isn't the internet one of the manifestations of industrial civilisation that will surely wither away in a post-peak world?

I'm looking at your bittornado image with envy, especially since Singnet decided to cap all p2p programs lately (bt, winmx, dc++, kazaa, limewire, all of it).

Posted by Akikonomu on April 24, 2005 at 12:30 PM SGT #

If it is a fast crash, yes, anything goes (collapse of economy, infrastructure, de-population, etc).

But if it is a more gradual decline, it will mean that the Internet should still be around - at least for a while.

Watch the American ISP's carefully - they were the ones who started to introduce the free upgrades some months ago. If they start to go under from the intense competition and rising costs, or start to merge (more towards a monopoly/cartel that can force higher prices through), then we have to "watch out below"!

In the meantime, hey, it's a free upgrade. So, like most of the other "tanker trucks" (lol), I'll have fun and enjoy the higher speed while I still can. Keep up the good work, anime fansubbers!! :)

Posted by lowem on April 24, 2005 at 01:25 PM SGT #

Heh, good one.

I got the relevations a few days back, haven't watched it yet.

I guess Singnet is more for the normal users, while SCV is more for the power users. Who knows? Maybe bandwidth will become some sort of a quasi-currency in the future.

Posted by gwunwai on April 24, 2005 at 04:13 PM SGT #

BTW, I watched it after struggling to find time away from the kids to do so, and the fact that this was fan-made blew me away. I didn't really like the individual acting (needed more polish) nor jedi play, but I sure loved the background and effects.

I just wonder one thing -- see the planet with tons of traffic and high-rise? What happens if .... if..... if they suffered from Px? (where x=O in our world....in theirs could be anything)

Posted by Rostov on April 25, 2005 at 11:02 AM SGT #