Two weeks ago I saw the future. Together with 22809 others alike i visited the world’s largest LAN party: Dreamhack! The numbers are astonishing:
- 8714 participants with computers, most of them teenagers
- 17403 connected devices
- 438 TB Total transmitted data, 304 TB in downlink, 134 in uplink
- Available downlink bandwidth 120Gbps!
To enter Dreamhack with a laptop and a wireless connection is of course unheard of in the year 2013. Fixed CAT6 cable connection and a “fat” stationary computer preferably equipped with 3 screens and water cooled graphic cards and processors are to be preferred. Still, many lessons of the future can be learned by the mobile broadband community:
- Almost 30% of the transmitted data is uplink.
- There is never enough bandwidth.
- Latency kills the game.
In 10 years all of these teenagers will be professionals in various areas. Will then their computing habits dramatically have changed? Will there be a wireless standard that may satisfy their needs?
I don’t know the answers to all these questions but my guess is that what we saw at Dreamhack 2013 is only a glimpse of the internet demands of the future!
