The Last Bus Stop?

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gnfb

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# 160348 3-Jan-2015 11:54

When in the northern hemi' I often use the analogy that living in NZ is like being at the last bus stop.

I am usually describing the Internet, and have always assumed that the "pipeline" as I like to call it, and imagine it goes from here to the states.

Just incase I am in a roomful of geekzone like persons and not the roomful of Luddites I usually find myself in.

How far out is my analogy? Do we get more than one "feed" are we the last stop?

Is an English Man living in New Zealand. Not a writer, an Observer he says. Graham is a seasoned 'traveler" with his sometimes arrogant, but honest opinion on life. He loves the Internet!.

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TLD

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# 1207581 3-Jan-2015 12:05

There was a news item recently about a new trans Tasman cable

http://business.scoop.co.nz/2014/12/18/spark-voda-and-telstra-to-lay-new-trans-tasman-cable/

Trevor Dennis
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# 1207591 3-Jan-2015 12:20

With modern communications and transport systems, there is no last bus stop.
Everywhere is on a network (except possibly North Korea).

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DarthKermit

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# 1207594 3-Jan-2015 12:22

Plenty of international fibre optic cables transit through Aussie - NZ - USA.

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

johnr

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# 1207596 3-Jan-2015 12:35

NZ to Sydney as I understand carries the most traffic

michaeln

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# 1207633 3-Jan-2015 14:03

The Southern Cross cable system passes though New Zealand on its way to Australia (lands on the east and west coast of Auckland, transits on a terrestrial cable). However, only the New Zealand traffic really stops here. The USA to AU traffic basically goes on an express route (bus lane if you will). It has its own wavelengths which are amplified but no more. (They might be regenerated, I don't know for sure).

In terms of pointing out isolation, I prefer to bring up Google Earth centred on Wellington (although Auckland works as well, but for this image it's better to focus on the geographic centre of New Zealand) and then zoom out. Look at the hemisphere.

The only other inhabited countries are various Pacific Islands, Australia and New Guinea and a bit of South East Asia—and a bit of Tierra del Fuego. The only continents are Antarctica and Australia (and that tiny sliver of South America).

We are more than half a world away from almost everywhere. No part of the continental United States is in the same hemisphere as us.

We are as ar away from everywhere else as it's possible to be and still be on the planet.

New Zealand was the very last place settled by humanity, and that was only around 1,000 years ago (I'm discounting Antartica as 'settled' here).

TLD

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# 1207634 3-Jan-2015 14:04

The Trans Tasman article mentions five main feeds into OZ, and that the new cable will give NZ better access to the rest of the world via those cables. As for 'end of the line', I am waaaaay out of touch with it all now, but thinking back to the distant past of pre-HTML and Usenet, the Usenet data could go round the world a few times before a particular hub picked it up. People used to get really upset with idiots bloating the data feed with long signatures or unnecessary quotes, because it slowed things down. IIRC the entire Usenet data feed amounted to about 5Gb. I wonder what percentage of today's internet traffic that would be?

Trevor Dennis
Rapaura (near Blenheim)

gnfb

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# 1207745 3-Jan-2015 17:32

Ahhhh well I obviously need to restructure my after dinner chit chat. As some would like to think we are actually at the top of the world which could have us believe we are the Clapham junction of the internet!

Is an English Man living in New Zealand. Not a writer, an Observer he says. Graham is a seasoned 'traveler" with his sometimes arrogant, but honest opinion on life. He loves the Internet!.

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freitasm

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# 1207818 3-Jan-2015 20:43

Internet service in New Zealand is pretty good - anyone who actually used Internet in the USA will know our mobile network works a lot better and faster and our fixed line services are not as bad as some make it sound like.

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plambrechtsen

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# 1207830 3-Jan-2015 21:28

Today's internet we talk in tens of gigabits a second in data transferred and terabytes of traffic per hour.