On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Florent Daigniere <nextgens at freenetproject.org> wrote: > Modern compression algorithms allow FAST decompression. We are talking > 10 to 20 times faster here! > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lempel-Ziv-Markov_chain_algorithm > # Compression speed: approximately 1 MiB per second on a 2 GHz CPU > # Decompression speed: 10-20 MiB per second on a 2 GHz CPU > > Anyway, the assumption is and has always been that CPU cycles are cheap > contrary ?to network traffic. Moore's law doesn't apply to networks.
It does, in fact. Networks are just a combination of processing, storage, and connectivity. Each of those is itself a combination of processing, storage, and connectivity. At the limit of this recusion the performance of all of these, except the connectivity, is driven by transistor density? Moore's law. There is a *ton* of available bandwidth on optical fibers. For the communication part we have Butter's law: "Butters' Law says the amount of data coming out of an optical fiber is doubling every nine months"[1] It took me a day to find a graph of historical wholesale internet transit prices: http://www.drpeering.net/a/Peering_vs_Transit___The_Business_Case_for_Peering_files/droppedImage_1.png (In fact, this graph appears to be overstating the current cost for bulk rate transit. Advertised pricing at the gbit port level is down to $2/mbit/sec/month from some cut-rate providers; negotiated prices can be lower still) Of course, Freenet does a lot of network criss-crossing... this shifts the balance in favour of stronger compression but that doesn't magically make compression that only gives a 1% reduction a win. [1] http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000926S0065
