I expect that Google already has plenty of ways to consume an entire gigabit link; eg, Google Play music/movies/tv, Google Drive, etc. I'm sure they'd be more than happy for all of your data to be stored in the cloud, and have all of your access streamed to you in realtime over that gigabit link.
Come to think of it, I would be more than happy for all of my data to be held securely in the cloud so that I would never need to worry about backups or syncing my data between multiple machines. Assuming reasonable privacy and security practices, of course.
That's a good thing. Instead of relying on third-party providers with loads of bandwidth for cloud storage, you and your family create your own private cloud, with direct peer-to-peer transfers across your gigabit links. The reliability would be as good as the size of your family.
In my case it is definitely one of the limiting factors. Try editing your family's latest HD home movies over the 2mbit upload speed that comes with most cable plans.
Good software support is another hurdle; I believe AeroFS is one of the companies working on this, though since I'm fully comfortable with sftp et. al. I never signed up for their beta to find out.
It usually is. Designers tend to say, "Gee, I've got an entire 1Gbps link! I don't need to think about efficiently using bandwidth ever again!". This is fine if the pipe never fills up, but if it does (like I am sure it will) you pay the price.
This is a cycle that has repeated for decades with every type of computing resource, and the end result is usually, for a 10x improvement in hardware capacity, you get a correlated but much smaller improvement in performance.
It usually is. Designers tend to say, "Gee, I've got an entire 1Gbps link! I don't need to think about efficiently using bandwidth ever again!".
This is true, but is only a problem if everything else is equal - which they aren't.
I'm not defending badly performing graphics heavy websites which have no reason for existence except to display 24bit versions of things that could be done in CSS.
BUT I am looking forward to the ability to transmit multiple streams of 1080p (and higher) video while my children play games with rich, 3D video assets and my electricity supply optimization company monitors the temperature of every cubic centimetre of air to determine if the air conditioner's fans need to be turned up.
Yes, that will chew up a lot of bandwidth - and I'll love every single bit travelling over that beautiful, beautiful, fibre...
I think bandwidth will continue to be a problem, no matter how big the pipe gets.
The domain of bandwidth restricted problems may shift, but it will almost certainly still be an issue. Historically we seem to be really good at using whatever bandwidth is available.
The main thing that might prove this sentiment wrong is the other choke points in the system: it's no use pumping data down the line if our hard drives can't store it quickly enough, or we can't render it as fast as we get it.
>[...] other choke points in the system: it's no use pumping data down the line if our hard drives can't store it quickly enough, or we can't render it as fast as we get it.
Or have the resolution to display it.
Displays have been lagging capture technology for a while, and I don't think it's entirely delivery constrained.
exactly and also understand that the 802.11g standard for wireless networking supports a maximum bandwidth of 54 Megabits per second (Mbps) so unless you're wired, you can't really see the difference.
802.11g is quite old, however. The current version of 802.11, 802.11n, supports rates up to 450Mbps. My laptop with a 2x2 antenna configuration (and pricey access point) does pretty close to the theoretical 300Mbps.
Incidentally, once you have a fiber optic connection between two points, you can do a lot better than 1Gbps.
