peter lothberg's mother slashdotted

Thu Jul 12 21:02:34 UTC 2007

On Thu, 12 Jul 2007, Paul Vixie wrote:

> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/12/1236231
>
> http://www.thelocal.se/7869/20070712/

For those who haven't followed the links, the story is that Peter's
mother, a first-time computer user, now has a 40 Gb/s Internet connection
to her house.  It is described as the world's fastest residential
Internet connection.  It was done as a demonstration project by Peter and
the local city council "to persuade Internet operators to invest in faster
connections."  It goes on to say that "Peter Lothberg wanted to show how
you can build a low price, high capacity line over long distances."

So, I'm curious here.  The only thing specific the article says about the
price is that Cisco contributed the equipment, but there may be economies
of scale that could make one end of this more affordable in larger
volumes.  Data transmission at that sort of speed is certainly a topic
Peter knows a lot more about than I do.

The thing I found more curious was the article's emphasis on the distances
data can be transmitted over fiber:

"The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation
technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers
up to 2,000 kilometers apart, with no intermediary transponders."

Does this make residential connectivity (or at least, residential
connectivity on a large scale) any easier?  Wouldn't residential fiber be
expected to radiate out from neighborhood break-out boxes, or at the
longest from a central office in the middle of town, rather than having
some central point where enough individual strands of fiber converged to
serve everybody in a 2,000 kilometer radius?

So, Peter, are you reading this?  I'm curious what the real story on the
economics here is.  How affordable is affordable?  What should we be
learning from this that would let those of us backwards people with DSL
connections cheaply move into the modern world?

-Steve