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Cringley On Bandwidth-Expanding Modulation Technology
jtappan writes: "Robert X Cringely has an article describing a new modulation technology that will allegedly allow cable modems to run 10 times as fast, and which will eventually allow existing cable networks to carry 500 HDTV channels."
I almost got excited about this, then I realized that the Cable companies couldn't manage a decent ISP if you held a gun to their heads (believe me, I wish I could). As someone who has had cable modems since '95, let me tell you it has not been pretty. After the recent @home fiasco, I have lost all faith that even if this technology ever comes about, that it will be even close to anyone's expectations because the cable companies will ruin it.
Sure, it would be a great technological advance. Unfortunately, as we have all seen, this really means very little. Espically in the ISP game. With the recent consolidation of ISPs into 3 or 4 major players, getting this type of thing out seems even more difficult. We can't even use the technology we have. Cable companies limiting bandwidth. DSL providers requiring you to log off every 2 hours. None of that is necessary to the technology, but those in charge feel the need to add these "features" in order to squeeze every last bit of cash out of the users. Not to mention trying to get them to roll something new out. Good Luck.
When I look at where we are headed, sometimes I just get more and more depressed.
Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
I have a 64K (128K when coupled) ISDN connection for about $20/month here in France (without having to pay $10 for the telephone since my phoneline was replaced by these three marvelous digital channels). But my country invented ISDN, and here it uses our national Transpac network (created in 1978 and also used for the most modern bank network in the world, health system and the Minitel, a 1200 bauds terminal which was distributed by the State for free in '85 - the year of my birth ;-)
do you have an equivalent of it in the US?
can't wait the 10X improvement! I will have a 640K/1280K synchronous digital connection!
Yeah, you're telling me.
You got them pegged.
I live in one of the pilot cable modem towns... Like the 4th nationwide to get cable modem service. I first used cable Internet around 1995, our high school got one.
They still have the ancient Zenith modems in service, and just a couple months ago started to move to DOCSIS.
The old modems had no rate limiting capabilities, so anyone could saturate the T1 they had to the Internet (it's a small town with not many geeks, so they can get by with a single tier 1 T1 and some peering T1s to their other locations nearby).
Anyway, they talked about migration to DOCSIS for the last 3 years, and they are just getting around to it. Cable modem companies are really resistant to changing the customer hardware.
One good think about those old Zenith modems though, was they were like an ethernet hub, you could see the activity and collisions on the cable side. That also gave away their secret that the collision light stayed on without flickering at all from 10:30 am until 8pm.
Somehow you could still pull down around 30KB/sec every now and then. After P2P came to town, it got a lot worse though.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Wavelet modulation provides reliable high-bandwidth transmission of data, voice and video over existing wireline (phoneline and powerline) and wireless media.
It doesn't seem clear why this is a particularly cable-oriented technology. The fact that they say it can be used for wireless would seem to hurt cable more than help it. I understand that the cable guys are going to be able to extend the life of their wired infrastructure, and maybe make money off of 3rd party providers, but if wavelets can be used to jack up the b/w in wireless, then I think this is pretty bad news for any wire providers.
As far as I can figure, getting fat (or reasonably fat... 1Gb/s) b/w on a cellular link (or CDPD, or sat-tel, or whatever) would attract people who want applications like voice/IP, e-mail, messaging, chat, Web browsing, etc. on a mobile platform. Wire will be fine for big stuff like HDTV, server traffic, etc., but I bet most consumers don't use most of their b/w most of the time. (They would just like to know that they COULD take advantage of a fat pipe when they need it... maybe someone should come up with a "bandwidth/QOS on demand" scheme?)
I don't think Cringely is that great a reporter, and the fact that he focuses completely on cable makes me wonder. And judging by the uncritical "Ra! Ra! Rainmaker!", I'd say that he doesn't plan on remaining a non-investor for long.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Current cable modems have separate downlink and uplink signals, running on different frequencies. Only the uplink signal has any need for collision detection; the downlink signal all comes from one source (router or switch), so there's no need to worry about collisions.
I can't claim I have a good idea of what they're trying to do here. But if they're proposing a system that can run over a broadband line, with a separate downlink and uplink, then they would simply apply the new modulations to the downlink. You might also find some way to apply the technique to the uplink, but it's nowhere near as important.
If they're proposing something closer to Ethernet, then they'll need to rebuild the system from scratch. I have no idea what they'll do to avoid collision problems.
Maybe they'll bring over european tv channels, that would be rad...