[funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)

Tue Mar 13 17:11:39 UTC 2007

On 3/13/07, Jack Bates <jbates at brightok.net> wrote:
> In US metropolitan areas we are seeing a lot more fiber to the home.

That depends highly on your location.  Additionally, many FTTH
deployments (*cough*some parts of a company with former ticker symbol
"T"*wheeze*) are artificially rate limited to standard US ADSL ranges.

> The cost will never be justified in US rural areas.

Not that I'd expect it to be so.  There are other technologies better
suited to rural deployment, such as satellite, powerline, some cable,
or even re-use of the previous generation's ADSL gear once metro areas
are upgraded.

> I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be
> used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload
> instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up?

It has to do with the transmitter/receiver populations.  Without going
into deep technical detail ("frequency division multiplexing"), a
single talker on the cableco's end makes it "much easier" to
channelize downstream traffic across a large number of carrier
frequencies, because there's essentially zero traffic collision.  On
the upstream, the talkers are more like 802.11* wireless clients
engaged in a babblefest.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv at duh.org> <tv at pobox.com> <todd at vierling.name>