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January 08, 2015, 02:08:18 AM |
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An example of per-bandwidth Internet pricing is in smartphones, which pay a much higher price than wired connections (including to wireless routers at endpoints) for physical reasons. Theres only 1 space in the air while many wires can cross that same space mostly not interfering with eachother. Per bandwidth Internet for your house would cost much less than mobile bandwidth.
People like simple, and they've got it. They pay 1 price and get "unlimited" bandwidth, except for some rare people that copy their hard drive to 10 different backup services continuously or use "unreasonable" amounts of bandwidth for whatever reason. Those people buy "business Internet" service for some other flat price.
The problem is the product you get for a flat price isnt the same as the product if priced per-bandwidth. Most ISPs rules do not allow you to run a "server" or give part of your bandwidth to others. For example, someone who uses no password on their wireless router and names it "free internet" saves some of their neighbors the "flat rate" price and the need to buy their own routers, which he may profit from by saying he will password protect it if total money from all neighbors totals less than double what he pays (a profit for everyone involved except the ISP), so most ISPs limit your Internet connection to only be able to send and receive bits to/from certain addresses.
These whitelisted addresses are normally highly optimized computers near the Internet backbone which have IPv4 addresses.
There are far more Internet connected devices than IPv4 addresses, which are maxed out around 32 bit integers (less than 5 billion, and not all of those can be used depending on country etc). Most Internet connections do not have an IPv4 address. They use Network Address Translation so they can send to an IPv4 and receive back on the same connection, but they cant send or receive bits to/from eachother.
Most Internet connections can not send or receive any bits to/from most other Internet addresses. This has been patched over and over to get around the limits of IPv4.
IPv6 has more than enough addresses for all the Internet connected devices and room for expansion even if every square millimeter of Earth's surface had its own unique address (64 bit instead of 32).
What is IPv6 good for? If you want to play a new game with a bunch of people who are near you, all connections can send and receive bits to/from eachother, and you'll get no lag in your game that a Human brain can detect. Your mouse's USB connection to the computer would be slower than the game updating everyone's position, which would take far less than 1 millisecond. Your brain runs at most 200 times per second. But if you don't have an Internet address the others can see, its around the Internet backbone or its smaller branches for everyone. Your game gets visibly lagged because the Internet routes bits on a pointlessly indirect path, potentially miles away just to come back to the computers/smartphones/gameconsoles right next to you or a half mile away. IPv4 lags your game. The only reason you should see lag to someone 186 miles away is the millisecond it takes light to travel between you (not that all routers are that fast, but theres much improvement to be made).
But IPv4 works well enough for selling things. Anyone with enough money can rent a server near the Internet backbone. You'll take your lag and like it, because its necessary to prevent most Internet connections from directly sending bits to eachother so people cant give away their "unlimited" amount of "flat rate" Internet bandwidth. We are prevented from directly sending bits to eachother in most Internet connections because it would allow us to sell something that we have paid for. If I pay for an "unlimited" amount of bandwidth, why cant I sell my neighbors each 1/10 of "unlimited"?
If people told ISPs they want to pay per-bandwidth, then there would be no reason to prevent the reselling or sharing of bandwidth. We wouldnt give away to everyone something that costs us the more they use, except for good reason. IPv6 would soon come after people paying per-bandwidth since its needed to directly send bits between most Internet connections.
The Kinect 3d sensor has annoying lag. Its not caused by Internet since its directly plugged into a computer or gameconsole. I didnt buy one because its junk. I cant stand its lag. You can see the wireframe person move after you do in front of the screen. Its caused by cutting costs on computing power of the device since it needs to think about what it sees. They think theres not enough market for devices with no noticable lag for games, so they were not motivated to speed it up with neuromorphic chips or more internal GPUs or whatever hardware would make it run faster. They think since we accept laggy games we'll also buy laggy hardware. Some people wont use a wireless mouse because its 5 milliseconds slower than a wired mouse. The whole hardware path is built around ancient standards. You can be sure that "smart missiles" contain a much faster version of what could be in a Kinect, as they have to adjust direction at high speed.
IPv4 has made the Internet weak and consumers accept junk that has similar weaknesses. An average computer runs 1 cycle in less time than it takes light to move from your screen to your eyes, a few billion times per second. A nanosecond is about 1 foot (in lightseconds). IPv4 lets you send bits to a computer near you in the time it takes light to travel 1000 miles.
Games lag because of IPv4, which continues to be patched on top of patches, instead of IPv6, because of "flat rate" Internet pricing, which creates the need to prevent you from sharing bandwidth or reselling it or sending/receiving bits directly between those near you, so your game lags as it goes around and around some convoluted path far away and back. If you want to get to your refridgerator, do you leave your house, walk around the mailbox, and in some cases go to the post office, then back to your neighbors mailbox, then back into your house through the side door, then to the refridgerator? You do if the rooms in your house have been walled off so they cant share bandwidth.
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