Now that local speeds are finally up to snuff (which 15 years ago was believed to be achievable only with glass, never copper), we've gotta work on the telcos.
In today's WAN, it's the baby bells that choking our throughput. Go crazy with all your disposable income and buy a point-to-point DS3. And what does that buy you? Only 45 megabits per second, which is child's play for a 100M full dux NIC.
And with home networking, anything better than a 10M ethernet card is almost wasted (unless you're doing PC to PC file transfers). That's because even with cable modems, the best downlink speed you're gonna see is around 8M. Don't take me too seriously on these comments--I'm simply trying to make a point.
Anyway, hope IS around the corner. In SoCal, the LEC has been implementing fiber-to-the-home or fiber-to-the-neighborhood for almost every new housing development.
Hold on to your hat. Here it comes...