Tired of hearing the stupid Core narrative that Bitcoin can't work because of bandwidth requirements?

Shut them down by explaining about the Nielsen's law of internet bandwidth states:

• A high-end user's connection speed grows by 50% per year.

• It predicts that the web will get 57 times faster every 10 years.

• It has been observed to be true since 1983 and up to this day.

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1998 Predictions

For the next 5 years, the web will be dominated by users with such slow connections that any reasonable web page will take much longer to download than the response time limits indicated by human factors research. Thus, the dominant design criterion will be download speed in all web projects until about the Year 2003. Minimalist design rules.

Starting about 2003, high-end users will have speeds corresponding to a personal T–1 line (1.5 Mbps). This will allow them to download pages in less than a second, meaning that they will be able to navigate the web freely. The user experience will become radically more gratifying with subsecond response times.

Of course, low-end users will still have slow speeds in 2003, so high-end users' megabit access will still not sanction bloated design. Looking even further ahead, Nielsen's law does predict that the web will be 57 times faster in 10 years (2008). At that time, even low-end users will be able to access multimedia designs, and the high-end users will be able to use very advanced sites. The future of the web holds great promise for much richer designs. It is simply that the current web is so horribly slow that it will take 5 years to achieve acceptable response times. Only after 2003 can web design change direction and aim at higher bandwidth.

Update 2008

10 years after writing this article, I updated the chart with data points showing the bandwidths from the cable modems I have had during the period 1998–2008. My latest cable provider gives me 16 Mbps, which is 122× the speed of the ISDN modem I had when I wrote the original article.

Despite these seemingly large changes, the new data points fit the chart perfectly. (I got the ISDN modem in 1996, and a growth factor of 122 over 12 years equals 49% per year — incredibly close to the 50% per year I predicted in April 1998.)

Updates 2010–2018

2010: another upgrade. Now to 31 Mbps. This new data point also fits the prediction from 1998.

2013: the line was upgraded to deliver 58 Mbps, without the need for a new cable modem. This upgrade was a bit below the predicted trend, so I certainly hope for better next time.

2014: upgraded to 120 Mbps. The differential between 2013 and 2014 is somewhat better than the law predicted, so some of the catchup I called for last year did in fact happen.

2016: upgraded to 240 Mbps. Almost exactly on trend.

2018: upgraded to 300 Mbps. Slightly below the prediction.

Conclusion

With minor variations, Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth has held true throughout a 36-year period. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will continue to be true for the next several decades, but it's certainly likely.

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/avpyvv/tired_of_hearing_the_stupid_core_narrative_that/