Ethernet Sets To Bridge The Last Mile

sacremon writes: "An article in EETimes reports on a recent meeting to finally bring Ethernet to the home user directly, rather than using broadband technology like DSL or Cable. At this point, they're only in the planning stages, and they don't expect to see implementation till sometime in 2003. Nonetheless, I would love to have a 100Mbps/full duplex line direct to the house. I can see the self help manual now -- 'OSPF and BGP for Dummies.'" Ethernet could bring good rates (for both data and dollars, if this article is correct), but I'm still looking forward to fiber running straight into the basement.

Comments

It's been done

[Kalak]

This has already been done in Blacksburg, VA for the Blacksburg Electronic Village. As a result of this project which started a few years ago, a number of apartment complexes have gone to adding ethernet to units. $30/month for ethernet rocks! (Too bad I had to move out, but iit was great while it lasted for me.)

Re:It's been done

[rearden]

Not only has 100Mbs ethernet been done but two appartment complexes in Blacksburg do have fiber to the apartments. While the idea seemed good at the time the cost for the resedents has proved to be too high (cost of hubs/ switches/ NICs) so we quit doing the fiber. They complained that their friends just needed a $20 NIC (that most had from being in the dorms) and that they had to purchase more expensive fiber cards. In the end we quit wiring with fiber and went to copper.

fiber to the basement?

[mach-5]

Actually, the phone companies are working on getting fiber right up to the curb in front of your house. Problem is, they aren't gonna actually run it in to your house. I'm not quite sure why this is, but I can speculate that it has something to do with competing with DSL. My guess would be that the phone companies are going be ready to put fiber in your house, but are going to keep selling DSL until there is something else to compete with fiber.

Re:fiber to the basement?

[Evil Grinn]

My guess would be that the phone companies are going be ready to put fiber in your house, but are going to keep selling DSL until there is something else to compete with fiber.

My understanding was that if the phone lines in your neighborhood have been replaced by fiber, then you must use IFITL instead of DSL. And of course the phone company are the people who will provide IFITL.
---

Re:fiber to the basement?

[sjames]

In fact, no utility does any work past their meter or switch box - not the water company, the phone company, the electrical company, or the cable company - at least not without you paying extra for it.

At least in my area, the demarcation is at a small box mounted in the back of the house. They are responsable for everything up to the modular jack. The house wiring just plugs in to that. In the case of fiber, they are typically running it either to the head of the subdivision, or to smaller boxes at the curb. The run from curb to demarcation point is copper.

I suspect that a good part of this involves not wanting to undercut their $1000/month T1 business. That would go right out the window if they provided static IP and reliable DSL (without no server restrictions) at about the same cost to them, but $40 a month to customers. Currently, it looks like they are spending more money on DSL provision to make sure it doesn't become as good as a T1.

OSPF and BGP

[Phizzy]

Ok.. so I'd like to have ethernet or fibre into my house, but I _still_ wouldn't need to use OSPF or BGP. OSPF is a medium-to-large network routing protocol, which cannot be used on the internet, and is not suited for home use unless you have a _REALLY LARGE_ network at home, otherwise it would be a waste or resources.. static routing with a defualt route is much more efficient. And unless you plan on having more than one 100mb eth line or fibre line pulled into your house, and buying a router which can handle something around 200,000 routes (the current internet routing table x2, one view from each provider), the BGP isn't going to do you any good.. BGP is only helpful for a multi-homing situation.

SO.. do you research on your routing protocols.. you'd more likely need PPPoverEthernet for dummies, or maybe Routing for Dummies.

//Phizzy

Solves nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. So now they're going to dig up concrete and run antiquated CAT-5 to my house.

This is a complete waste. The cabling itself is not causing the logistical nightmare of the last mile, digging up that concrete ($$) is what's bringing us down. (IIRC, CAT-5's nominal length doesn't even come close to a mile anyway ;))

That solution that is evolving with competition is the most obvious, and most profitable; utilizing existing infrastructure to get down the last 'mile.' -- be it over telephone, cable, or powerlines -- or a combination of the three.

Digging isn't an option, and unfortunately neither is wireless. I would dig it (no pun intended) if the power companies in the US began to put whatever connectivity into their substations and fed us 2mbs+ power-line networking.

This would also push JINI, etc. into my household devices - if your TV can get online through the same socket it gets its power, it may actually begin to have useful networking features (ie. program channel 82 to browse to so-and-so URL. Maybe the URL for my baby monitor, whatever.)


Think about it. If you want to talk in private about the commercial aspects of anything mentioned, let me know. ;)

Jason (jfisher AT feroxtech.com)

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE KATZ!!

Umm.. Ethernet at home is quite common in sweden..

[_GNU_]

My neighbourhood has a fiber backbone linking ~50 Cisco 1924 switches providing us with ethernet access.. 4 neighbourhoods here have 100Mbit and some, like my neighbourhood have 10Mbit.. 3 neighbourhoods even have fiber in their walls and you get a fiber nic in the package when signing up... wellwell..
All neighbourhoods are also interconnected in a fiber MAN... Nice for them dvdrips ;)

This is Borlänge, in Sweden...

Hope you get your ethernet in the states soon so we can bring that transatlantic bandwidth to it's knees ;)

// _GNU_

WTF?

[GodHead]

I'm still looking forward to fiber running straight into the basement

So you're telling us that Fast Ethernet is too slow for you? Good lord man, how much pr0n do you need?

G.H

Re:Would you get 100mb?

[Arethan]

30Mbps is correct. DOCSIS does require that all compliant modems be capable to delivering this throughput for _downstream_. The upstream can vary from 320 Kbps to 10 Mbps. I used to work for a cable company in their broadband internet department. They capped their modems at 128kb upstream, and I have yet to find a cable provider that lets their modems run wide open. Better to cap the throuput in the firmware, and squeeze as many customers as you can into an OC192. At least, that's the apparent trend.

http://www.cabledatacomnews.com/cmic/cmic3b.html has a quick list of the DOCSIS specs.

Already being done

[TheBrez]

Funny, why wait for 2002/2003? McLeodUSA's ATS project is doing this right now in Cedar Rapids, IA. Anywhere from 256K to 7192K upstream and downstream (half-duplex). Price on a 7Mb connection is comparable to a T1 from the ILECs. If you're in the area and interested in more info about it, contact sales. I'm just one of the techies who makes it work. :-)

I want more

[BroadbandBradley]

current cable modem technology based around the DOCSIS standard can give you up to 38Mbps downloads and 10 Mbps uploads. Cable companies currently cap that potential to about 1/10th of that. The Coax cable coming into your house has a 'bandwidth' of 750Mhz and each TV channel uses 6Mhz slots. Cable modems use 1 slot upstream and one slot downstream, meaning about 12Mhz out of the 750Mhz is used for your data connection. Digital TV boxes now can stuff about 10 TV channels into one 6Mhz slot. Obviously most of that 750Mhz is used for a broadcast medium.
Cable vendors can easily scale this approach to take away from 'broadcast' and move to 'download TV' where you could open up a guide and see what's on for the day and then pull a TIVO to download the show only if it's requested. in theory, this would allow them to dedicate more of that 750Mhz into Data-like connections and to provide that 38Mbps to anyone who wants it using the equipment currently installed in your home(if you already have a cable modem). think about 750Mhz divided into 6Mhz slots gives you 125 slots at a potential of 38Mbps per slot you come up with some 4,750Mbps downloading potential. Of course this approach would change the way people watch TV and fly in the face of traditional broadcast networks, but technology wise, the Cable providers are already there.
apllications? well I already stream my music in from the net at 128kbps, and downloading the latest Mozilla only takes a few minutes. Getting a copy of a new Linux distibution as ISO images (650Mb) still takes awhile.
still, I want More
currently I'd like more upstream to be able to do DV quality Video conferencing. I'd like more speed to be able to watch DVD quality video from the net like I stream my music today. DVD quality video can not yet be had with 100Mbps ethernet connection. I'd like to see them shoot for Gigabit ethernet to my house, I really need it.

Re:I want more

[No-op]

Consider that regardless of how fast your connection is on the cable network, you still have a limited pipe to the internet. I wouldn't dream of giving end users 38Mbit connections a piece- that would just pound on whatever connection I had, be it an OC-48 or OC-192, even.

It's the kind of thing where "if you build it, they will come"... someone develops an app like napster for movie trading on a large scale, (that actually works well!) with all these kiddies sitting on huge fat pipes and the whole internet turns to shit instantly. napster was bad enough. just deal with having connections NOW that most of the world can only dream of :P

IP v6 better get here soon then.

[Domini]

For permanent connection and fixed IP addresses one thing that is important is to pre-allocate IP addresses in such a way as to allow future expansion. Thus it will be important to allocate at least a class C (256 nodes) to every home.

So, I think it's going to be imperative for IP v6 to become more utilised soon.

Re:IP v6 better get here soon then.

[mrRaist-]

Class C to every home? What would the average home owner do with a /24? There are many reasons why they WON'T allocatate a /24 to every house.

1. ARIN does not allow public addresses to be allocated for workstations. I'm sure that ARIN considers a toaster, TV, home security system, PDA, whatever to be a workstation and therefore doesn't need a public IP address
2. If I had that kind of connectivity to my house, I would be certain to run some kind of firewall software. Even the most novice of user can setup Internet Connection sharing on their WinME computer. Most /.'ers will opt to some kind of Unix platform I'm sure, but none the less, a firewall should/would (I hope) be in place thus allowing private IPs to be used
3. How many computers do you have in your house? Between myself, my 2 roommates (all 3 of us are Telecom students) and our landlord, there are only 13 computers in total. Even if we had a killer LAN party and had 14 of our closest friends over, with 2 computers each, thats still only 41 computers.
4. 
   
   Now, don't get me wrong, I'd love a /24 to come bundled with my spankin' new 100mbps Inet connect, but I honestly can't see it happening. Most people could hardly justify a /29.
   
   My $0.02
   
   Brad

Re:Please explain.

[_ganja_]

Corrections:

BGP *is* a path vector routing protocol as it provides a vector to a path and does NOT use distance. RIP uses a distance in hop count, BGP uses the path in as_path. Path vector, period not "some might say".

Every time a route changed you would need to run the SPF algorithm? Nonsense. Its LSA not LSD, I think LSD is what you must be taking. Re-read the CCNA book again.

You need a large router to run BGP eh? I've had full dual views running on a 2611 (lowend router).

Phizzy, go back to the books and study harder, you are getting some things very mixed up, you are comparing BGP with OSPF directly. This is like comparing apples and oranges, OSPF or another IGP is generally required for running BGP. Running BGP when you are single homed is a waste? What happens when you are single homed with your own AS, how do you advertise routes to your up stream providor? This is very very common situation especially with companies that want flexability in moving ISPs.

Ganja the CCIE.

IPV6 could wait if this was all done RIGHT!

[cr0sh]

The majority of homes - heck, I would say the majority of geek homes included - should only need a maximum of five addresses, if that. Your home network should be NAT'ed behind the firewall - after that, the network class could be damn near whatever you wanted. With the right firewall (read , a good one), you could have any addresses you wanted, or you could go the cheap route, and use the unroutable address ranges (10.x.x.x, there are two others, can't remember them off the top o' my head right now), for a NATural (in marketing-speak) firewall (heh, side note - have you noticed that is how they market the low cost firewall routers, such as the ones by Linksys? They call them natural firewalls - do they really think NAT means NATural?)...

I have a friend who lives in what I can only call a bachelor pad, who runs a cable modem with now firewalling at all, and each guy in the pad pays for their own IP. I keep trying to tell them how it would be cheaper (and better, since they run winders like mad) for them to NAT the place, but they won't do it - too hard to set up, I dunno.

The cable companies and DSL companies both have a marketing campaign to get the most bucks out of people by exploiting their lack of knowledge of networking. If they could get away with it (and I bet a lot of people are dumb enough to do it, if the telcos/cablecos could technically do it - actually, the cablecos can, they've been doing it with TVs all along) they would charge for a new line to each machine.

I hate fucking companies who prey on other's ignorance - then try to ram it down the throats of individuals who KNOW better.

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

Re:IPV6 could wait if this was all done RIGHT!

[Cato]

NAT breaks many applications (e.g. active FTP, NetMeeting, IPSec VPNs with IKE, many online games and so on). Where applications can get round NAT, they become more complex - e.g. Groove and other P2P apps must jump through hoops or rely on central servers. NAT does provide some security by default, but that's mainly by making it very hard for outside clients to talk to inside servers; a firewall can provide equivalent security quite easily.

If you ever want to be able to call in to a system at home (e.g. to tell your TiVo to record something), it will need a non-NATed configuration. IPv6 is the only way to do this without quickly running out of IP addresses - RSIP (Realm-Specific IP, a combination of tunnelling and IP address management) doesn't solve the 'call ing in' problem as far as I can see.

Before too long you'll want laptops to be able to roam between 3G networks when away from home, and then roam back to your Wi-Fi (802.11) wireless LAN at home. IPv6 enables much simpler IP mobility, i.e. your laptop keeps the same IP address (at least as far as TCP's concerned) no matter where you are. None of this is possible with NAT getting in the way - in fact, getting rid of NAT is one of the main reasons for IPv6.

For more information, see www.ipv6forum.com.

Re:Dorm room?

[McSpew]

No, not like having a dorm room in college.

College dorm rooms are connected to large LANs which get their bandwidth the old-fashioned way (via routers connected to T1s and T3s which speak frame-relay or ATM).

What's being proposed here is using Ethernet signalling to carry your traffic from the phone company's CO to your house over plain old CAT3 copper, instead of using one of the DSL variants.

The concept of using Ethernet to carry signal down the last mile is not exactly new. Nortel Networks came up with a technology called Etherloop three years ago. Bob Metcalfe wrote about it extensively in his InfoWorld column back then. Nortel wound up spinning off a startup called Elastic Networks to develop and market the product.

Etherloop's biggest feature is that it automatically compensates for crosstalk in binder groups by treating them as Ethernet collision domains, although it doesn't actually incur collisions as normal half-duplex Ethernet does.

Re:Athentication?

[DrgnDancer]

Doesn't cable have the same basic issue though... You're still sitting on the same network loop as everyone else in the neighborhood. Actually, a good possible solution to this (considering the amount of bandwidth that would be avavilable) would be to have the subscriber's router and the local exchange router encrypt traffic between them. It would require a bit more power out of the local exchange router, but not so much as to be a huge issue. If each subscriber had their own encryption key, there could be no neighbor snooping. Anyone else see a problem with this scheme?

My issue with the article was this:

The flexibility of such an architecture is enormous. Over one connection, a user could conceivably run an Internet hookup at 6 Mbits/s, four concurrent telephone calls at 0.064 Mbit/s each and four concurrent videophone conversations at up to 768 kbits/s each

I personally have never gotten anything close to 10 Mbits a sec on a 10 Mbit/sec ethernet connection. At best they could reasonably hope for 5, and that would assume nearly ideal conditions.... While we are still talking about a vast improvement, I think they are being a little optimistic.

Re:Athentication?

[Tassach]

Doesn't cable have the same basic issue though... You're still sitting on the same network loop as everyone else in the neighborhood.

Yes and no. Yes, cable modem is a shared pipe. However, with a DOCSYS cable modem (virtually all, now), all the traffic between your modem and the head-end router are encrypted with DES (with DH key exchange IIRC). Also, there is also authentication done via the MAC address of the device(s) connected to the cable modem. The cable modem is actually a router, and is not supposed to pass any packets to the LAN other than ones directed to the ip(s) it serves. In some of the early rollouts, misconfigurations were common, allowing MS networking to see everyone on thier local loop in the Windows 'network neighborhood'. Most cable modem ISPs now filter the SMB ports

I personally have never gotten anything close to 10 Mbits a sec on a 10 Mbit/sec ethernet connection.

Of course you have. A large percentage of your total bandwidth is taken up by protocol overheads - frame headers, packet headers, control messages, which is why your maximum effective data transfer rate is going to be around 8 Mb/s on a 10 Mb/sec connection if you are using TCP/IP; probably a little higher if you were using UDP.

The only way to get transfer speeds approaching the maximum bandwith would be to write a minimalistic UDP-like data-transfer protocol which could read & write raw ethernet frames. The speed gain from such a protocol would be offset by the unreliability that would be introduced by stripping out all the error-checking and reliability elements present in TCP. It's impossible to use the full 10Mb/sec for your data, because the ethernet frames themselves have some overhead.