Tony posted a blog post about the effective bandwidth of a (I'm assuming) his car; as far as between Waterloo and Thunder Bay.http://compsci.ca/blog/the-effective-bandwidth-of-a-speeding-toyota-matrix/
Recently there have been some discussions about additional off-site backups and it was put forward that this was actually an ecomical method of backing up data. As such, I've decided to take a look at the actual cost per GB of driving a HD around, downloading over a highspeed connection (rogers extreme) and good old fedex. And since time matters as well we'll work out the effective bandwidth and time taken. Of course since comparing the options is the goal, we need a comparable metric; I shall use cost per GB over time.
I'm also changing the end points to Windsor and Ottawa since those are the two places I'm interested in. Oh, and I'll use my car (Chevy Cobalt) to calculate fuel consumption.
Let's start with transferring 500GB by car. Google maps gives a distance of 807km (linky), and my car does 100km per 5.5L at highway speeds. This gives us a round trip cost of (((807*2)/100)*5.5)*1.00 (gas is a dollar, for argument's sake), or $88. If we do double duty and carry 500GB of data down, and a different 500GB back; that's 1TB of data. $88/1TB is a cost of $0.08/GB. Pretty pricey it would seem
. The trip would take 16H giving us an effective bandwidth of 62GB/h or 141kbps (kbits); a wee bit more then your average home connection maxes out at. Finally out cost/GB/time is $0.088/GB over 16H is $0.0055/GB/H.
Next up: Rogers High Speed. Rogers limits it's customers to 100GB/month and charges $1.50 per extra GB used to a maximum of $50. 500GB > 100GB so we're gonna be using the extra; all of it to be precise. So, the cost per month is $55+50, or $105 per month. Now we need to know how long it will take. Assuming that Roger's advertised speed is correct, we max out at 8Mb/s down, or 1MB/s assuming no overhead (really it's closer to 700kB). That's 500000s or 138.888889 hours. Less then a month, so it'll only cost us $105. So, cost/GB is $105/500GB,or $0.21/GB and the cost per GB per hour is $0.0015/GB/h. Our effective transfer rate is of course 1MB/s.
Finally, fedex. Instead of driving down we can just get someone already there to buy a drive, fill it with data and ship it back. However, as shipping is only $28.48 for overnight delivery per direction of travel it's cheaper to send a drive there, and have it sent back. So, 1 day to get there, 1 day to 1 the data on the drive, 1 day to get back; 3 days or 72 hours. Since your sending a drive you can do the data both ways trick again, netting you 1TB of transferred data, at a cost of $56.96. Cost/GB is $58.96/1TB or $0.05/GB, and our effective bandwidth is 1TB/72H or 13GB/h. The cost per GB per hour is $0.0008/GB/h.
Now to decide which method is best. Rogers is the most expensive and slowest, however if you already have high speed then your costs are half that. It's still the most expensive per GB, but it's pretty close to the others and you still spend forever doing it. Rogers is therefor not the best solution. Next, driving. Driving is pretty cheap, and has the highest transfer rate. But it's dependent on having a car (not exactly cheap) and it's not very fun driving 16h strait. Driving is MUCH better then rogers, but we can do better. Fedex! Cheapest by a good $20, and requires almost no effort on your part. Sure it takes 3 days; but that's half as long as downloading the data would take, and you can still use your connection while doing it! Fedex also has the advantage of being insured, so you can replace your drive if they lose it (though not the data on it).
Overall if you have a car, and you have lots of data to transfer and $20 then driving is your best bet. However, in all other cases Fedex wins.
*Note, shipping another drive doubles the price of fedex , whereas it has no effect on rogers (except time) and driving. If you're transferring more then 500GB driving is definitely better (again... providing having a car...). Also if your driving you can car pool, potentially quartering the cost.
**Note, driving does not take into account the cost of a car, insurance, speeding tickets, or food and drink while driving. Music to help keep you awake is of course free.
***Note, Fedex doesn't include having to pay someone to copy your data, but it's a 5 minute job to hookup hte drive and run cp. Anybody worth their salt will do it for free.
****Note, notes add up!