Why should it have to be slower just because you run it “over the web”?
November 13, 2006 at 10:50 amToday I got an interesting comment on my popular post where I try to store 100+ GB on an online service. The comment reads:
“You say: The interfaces are too slow. If I would replace my local storage they have to be faster and more reliable.”
Why would anyone ever possibly think pulling and pushing data from online could be as fast as a local hard drive, much less faster?! How old are you?
First of all - thanks for commenting - I love these comments. I do understand the technical difficulty. Hey - I work with systems managing tens-of-thousands of users every day so I got a pretty good idea of the limitations (BTW: I just turned 29 this weekend).But as I’ve stated earlier - I see it from a user’s perspective (just as I do managing our users at the company I work). They shouldn’t have to care where their data is stored. Just like our users, they don’t store anything locally on their PC. They have everything stored on our servers and they would tear us apart if it would be too slow.
At home, I don’t store any files locally on my PC - I keep all my files on a fileserver stored away - and access everything using my 100 Mbit network and I don’t really notice much difference during my day-to-day usage.But then you probably think: “But the server is on the local LAN…“. Well, what is a LAN? Probably most common speed is 100 Mbit which means around (theoretically) 10 MByte/s. And 100 Mbit is not completely uncommon for people to be getting at home if they’re living in a newly built house with fibre connectivity.
But of course, you can’t expect the same fully-blown 100 Mbit dedicated speed to a server situated on the other side of the globe - both you and me know that! But that again - that’s just technology! Do you really need 100 Mbit dedicated except for when you’re copying the file to the server? Probably - no! Why do you even have to copy the files to the server? Why not simply download everything directly to it? I’m trying to draw out new ways of using the technology!
Why should we stop at 100 Mbit? A few years ago you couldn’t get more than 0,5 Mbit to your house - today you can get 100 Mbit. You even got 1 Gbit to some places in Sweden [swedish link] since they year of 2004.
So yes - today “speed” is a problem. But it’s just a matter of time before this can be solved and in a few years I think we’ll have “our second harddrive” on the net instead of moving around our external USB-stick or drive. And maybe in a few years we’ll just keep everything online.
But that’s why I have this blog… I try to get it to work by keeping everything online. I’ve run into numerous problems and found out “hey - this doesn’t work as I hoped…“. But everything improves - the speed - the usability - the security. So keep reading my blog and every month we’ll find new exiting services that will make our online life easier.
Comments: 3 Responses (Comments RSS)
Johnny
Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 4:47 amWhat file storage service do you use? I find that http://www.box.net is really good!
By the way, Happy Birthday!