FTTH Active vs Passive

Deepak Jain deepak at ai.net
Tue Dec 1 19:16:52 UTC 2009


> If, 10 years ago (1999) when most internet-connected homes still used
> dialup, you had suggested that ISPs would be putting in gigabit
> services
> to homes, people would have laughed.  Yet today, here we are talking
> about gig feeds.  I wonder how much bandwidth homes will be using 10
> years from now...
> 

s/be using/have access to/

One could make the argument that when we were doing dial-up over POTS the % utilization vs port speed was higher than today with packet switching to the curb. People have been lamenting the lack of for-profit apps that will actually each up these 100+ mb/s residential pipes (the "killer app"). 

One could further argue that the talk of gigabit pipes to the home has been ushered in by the cost-effectiveness of gigabit ethernet over SONET or other technologies and this is why we are seeing such a massive increase in the port speeds to customers. As a percentage of pipe available (discounting things like kiddie's using Torrent), I wouldn't be surprised to see that percentage drop. (Residential broadband folks chime in please).

Deepak




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