One of the things you need for a comfortable internet experience is a high-speed internet connection. And a Swiss engineer recently shared a story of his own experience, when “trying hard” to achieve the maximum transmission speed that telecommunications infrastructure can provide, which is 25 Gbps.
The engineer’s name was Michael Stapelberg. Starpelberg prefers its Internet service provider (ISP) to Init7 and has contracted to use their system for many years. But, after a long time of seeing other major ISPs in Switzerland such as Swisscom and Salt begin to offer plans to upgrade the line to 10 Gbps, Init7 is still standing still.
As someone with experience in this area, and regularly monitoring Init7’s dynamics, the engineer knew that the service provider was about to have a major infrastructure upgrade. And in 2020, Init7 CEO Fredy Künzler revealed that in 2021 they will start offering a 10 Gbps service plan.
Unexpected announcement of Init7 carrier.
What no one expected, however, was that almost a year later, Init7 announced that they would not only provide 10 Gbps network speeds, but also support 25 Gbit/s connections. And there’s an interesting principle of Init7’s way of doing business, which is “maximum speed at a fixed price”. Which means regardless of whether the user is using 1 Gbps or 25 Gbps, they will have to pay the same monthly fee. Init7’s approach is to provide maximum bandwidth to the user, and it is limited only by the customer’s own physical connection.
Starpelberg did not know in advance that the 25 Gbps package would be offered, and he was shocked. Having experienced network speeds from fast to slow, from the era of ADSL to fiber optic cable, this engineer decided to give his best to experience speeds close to 25 Gbps.
The PC has been converted into a router.
Therefore, after registering with the network operator, Mr. Starpelberg quickly corrected and re-prepared his network environment. He ordered the MikroTik CCR2004, the only router that Init7 listed as compatible with the new system. He then customized the PC, plugging in high-end Intel network cards (XL710 and XX V710), and carrier-supported SFP28 optical module, to turn it into a capable router. support up to 25 Gbit/s.
The upgrade was originally scheduled for fall 2021, but a global supply shortage has delayed the schedule. It was not until April 2022 that everything was officially completed.
He manually plugged in the network connection at the carrier’s PoP point.
Eager and looking forward, Starpelberg personally went to the point of presence (PoP) upgrade at 11 pm to manually plug the connection into the network’s general system.
The results of measuring the line speed by specifying the connection destination to the Init7 server then gave satisfactory results. The download speed is 23,563.53 Mbps and the upload speed is 23,013.10 Mbps, which is pretty close to the theoretical value of 25 Gbps.
Starpelberg’s home network connection measurement results.
And if you specify the connection destination to a non-Init7 server, the line speed will drop to 6 Gbps to 9 Gbps, but this is still a shockingly large number.
“I still can’t believe I now have a 25 Gbit/s connection in 2022”he shared. “It feels like I’m living 10 years into the future.”
Check out Gigazine