Bonded SDSL (was RE: ITU G.992.5 Annex M - ADSL2+M Questions)

Tue Jan 5 22:34:55 UTC 2010

Frank Bulk - iName.com <frnkblk at iname.com> wrote:

> It's being done by Actelis, Hatteras, and Zhone.  More exactly SHDSL or
                                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> similar variants.  The market is being well-served.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The highlighted sentence is precisely the difference between what they
are doing and what I am doing.  The SHDSL folks seem to live in some
kind of fantasy world where they think that all major network operators
are going to throw out all their SDSL/2B1Q infrastructure and install
SHDSL DSLAMs across the country instead.

My SDSL work on the other hand is oriented toward working with the
existing SDSL/2B1Q infrastructure massily deployed across USA by
networks like Covad and what used to be DSL.net (now part of MegaPath).
My Open SDSL Connectivity Project has successfully reverse-engineered
the proprietary SDSL/2B1Q flavors used by the DSLAM brands deployed by
the two networks named above, and I want to build bonded SDSL CPE for
those flavors/networks.

And yes, I have already had discussions with some people at both of the
named companies.  It wasn't even necessary for me to initiate contact
with them as both of them have sought my open source project out and
contacted me on their own about this very idea of SDSL bonding.  However,
despite lots of excited talk, both dialogues have ended with a mutter.
Apparently there is some kind of wall of arrogance that prevents those
folks from even considering getting their CPE from a mosquito like me,
even though I can deliver it for one-tenth to one-hundredth of what the
big vendors would want for the same thing if they would even consider
building such - those big vendors have plenty of their own arrogance!

Therefore, my next angle of approach is to see if there are any ISPs who
go through Covad or through MegaPath's ex-DSL.net component as their
Layer 2 transport (I know that at least in Covad's case there is a huge
number of ISPs large and small who do that) and who want bonded SDSL
badly enough to punch through that wall of arrogance.

If you are an ISP who rents Layer 2 transport from Covad and I were to
supply you the CPE, I think you should be able to serve bonded SDSL to
your customers without having to beg Covad to descend from the heavens
and give that service its blessing.  Just order 2 (or 3 or 4 or however
many loops you want to bond) ATM transport pipes from Covad terminating
at your customer's address on one end and at your DS3/ATM interconnection
point on the other end.  Have your Cisco/Redback/whatever router run
PPPoA on each of those ATM pipes and do MLPPP bonding between them.  All
that would be needed then is the CPE, and that's what the Open SDSL
Connectivity Project is for...

MS