static asymmetry

Sat Sep 3 23:06:20 UTC 2011

Mohacsi Janos wrote:
> In my opinion. Home networking (including personal clouds) have to 
> change the brain damaged model of asymmetric tail technologies. Giving 
> back the original peer-to-peer nature of networking the asymmetricity of 
> the access technologies will not be tolerable in such a level (1:10) we 
> have today. Maybe 1:2 should be more acceptable.

I think a more fundamental question is why in 2011 we're stuck with statically
shaped asymmetric up and down. You can pretty dynamically shape *within* a given
direction to do just about anything you want to the traffic, but I don't know of
last mile access technologies that do that *across* the up and downstream. If it
were more like ethernet that doesn't have those artificial distinctions, this
conversation would be moot.

I recall the reason that DOCSIS is asymmetric is had a lot to do with how they
carved out spectrum of the analog channels -- and relegating upstream to slots
that weren't very good for those analog channels. That's been about 15 years
ago though and in the mean time the internet has sort of become important.

Now things may have changed -- I'd love to hear about it. Maybe Fred or
John Chapman can comment.

Mike