Shifting Perspective

I sit here at my office, downloading the latest NetBackup 6.5.x update client bundle. It's a 1.4GB GNUzipped TARball. Chrome's downloader says it's going to take 40mins+ to download. This seemed like a really long time. I look at the download rate indicator and it's floating between 200KB/s and 750KB/s. This feels amazingly slow.

Given how long I've been crawling around on teh Intarwebz - over twenty years now - one would think I'd have a bit more perspective. I mean, when I first started using the Internet in early 1989, the Internet backbone operated at like 56Kbps. I mean, this was back in the day when X.25 and frame-relay were still in heavy use. I remember when having a 1200bps modem was the shit.

Still, when I sit at home, I'm connected to the Internet by over 25Mbps of FiOS. The internet itself now consists of many multi-gigabit links acting as its "backbone" (given the number of major transits, can't even really call it a backbone, any more). So, when I'm pulling a file at the office at 1Mbps, I'm feeling the comparison to my current connection at home. While I'm cognizant that this 200-750KB/s is significantly faster than what my first exposure was, it's too far removed from my current thinking.

Then again, I remember the first "huge" hard drive my dad brought home: it was 40MB and as big as an LP player (remember those?).

*sigh*

I'm old.