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.)

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

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

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: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.