It is that time of year again when the whistles and fifes are being dusted off and people from John street are treated with various terms of abuse on entering the pubs in the Goat street area, the bands are practising, the colours are being flown. Before I turn to the subject of discussion for this week whether you play or follow the Sraid Eoin band or whoever may you have great day.
Consumer broadband was first available with the introduction of ISDN lines in either the late eighties or early nineties by installing eight ISDN lines you could have a potential data transfer rate greater than 1Mbps(Mega bits per second), which is broadband.
Through the National broadband scheme the government has provided broadband capable infrastructure across the country with the latest announcement stating that it is available to all but 1% of the houses in Ireland. This network, which was upgraded in July 2010 provides a download speed of 1.6 to 6.8 Mbps depending on how far you are from the center of the cell and is shared with up to 22 users(contention ratio 22:1). The next upgrade in 2012 will provide download speed of 2.3 to 10.4 Mbps with a contention ratio of 18:1. The higher the number of users the less the speed of transfer to each individual user, which is why sometimes your broadband seems slower than other times.
The network installed by Intune networks during the recent Other Voices series is data transfer in another league. Two young students developed a solution that gets rid of many of the issues concerning data transfer today, such as clogged networks, contention issues and latency issues. Their system delivered uncompressed high definition video of the performances, without any delay to televisions in premises around the town and it also provided wireless access for people who had their own computer equipment or mobile phones. The possibilities provided by this to host large scale events in a town like Dingle or indeed anywhere, without the need for one large premises are worth giving consideration to over the holidays.
Any user of broadband who is consistently having problems with their connection and cannot achieve satisfaction from their provider can contact Comreg at www.askcomreg.ie .
1 bit = 1 binary digit.
1 Kb = 1000 bits.
1 Mb = 1000000 bits.
