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New Look at ADSL2

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the getting-connected dept.

genrader writes "broadbandreports.com just posted a news article which had an interesting story about the new ADSL2, which should be approved in 2003. They say it should be backward compatible with current hardware. It seems pretty interesting. ISP-Planet has the featured in-depth look at it, so you might want to see if it is of any intrest to you."

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Does this really matter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, ADSL2 is faster, but how many of us are running our DSL lines at close to the max speed now? I can do 3+ Mb/s on this line, but only get to use 640 Kb/s. New technology that allows me to go faster, yeah that'll come in handy! If it worked at a much longer range it might be useful for some who are out of range now, but it really isn't much of an advance there either. So why should we care, this is like getting excited because Macs are shipping with a gigabit ethernet port when your office is running on a shared 10 mbit hub!

  2. Doesn't look too promising by nekdut · · Score: 5, Informative

    The increases in performance and range are pretty minimal. An additional 50kbps and 600ft of range isn't all that impressive, although the fact that it is backwards compatible with some existing hardware is semi-promising.

    Anyway, here's some extra info on ADSL2, or G.bis that i dug up:

    http://www.aware.com/products/DSL/gbisadsl2.htm
    http://www.convergedigest.com/Silicon/siliconartic le.asp?ID=5435
    http://www.dslprime.com/a/adsl21.pdf(sorry about the pdf)

  3. Ooh, I can't wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Look - new, faster stuff that won't be available in my neighborhood!

  4. Clueless commenters and meaningless links by hoegg · · Score: 5, Informative

    First of all, the story at broadbandreports.com is nothing but a short blurb about the story at ISP-Planet.

    Second, the people who posted comments didn't read it. Not sure what the original author meant by a 50kbps increase, but earlier in the article he mentions a doubling of the frequency used resulting in a doubling of the downstream bandwidth. That's significant to me.

  5. Wonderful. . . But by jchawk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well this is all well and good, but lets keep in mind that dsl is expensive to roll-out, what is motivating the company I work for to go out and purchase this *new* wonderful equipment which is going to require upgrades at least in the DSLAM's / ATM switches, nothing is just "hook it in and it works", ever.

    It's wonderful that they claim these super fast speeds, but what's the point right now? My company already has equipment in place to offer a few megabit to the home user, but we don't currently offer speeds faster then 768/768. Why? Because the demand isn't there, period. A few geeks here and there, or maybe a business or two, but most business that need something faster then 768 symetric are going to go with another dedicated telco soltion such as a T-1, or a DS3.

    I'm happy that we have these wonderful systems, that promise super fast bandwidth, and I'm not saying I don't believe the speeds, I'm just skeptical that we're going to see them hitting the market anytime soon because phone companies aren't eager to roll them out, keep in mind they're all still trying to re-coup the costs to roll out the network in the first place.

  6. Range increase may be more promising. by CharlieO · · Score: 5, Informative

    Speaking as one of those in the UK sitting pretty much on the wrong side of the limit of the 5.5km restriction we have on British Telecom's ADSL implementation, the range increase may be more promising.

    I'll hit the maths a bit -

    Asssuming all the lines radiate directly out of the exchange so you can assume the range limit proscribes a circle with the exchange at the center (you can tell I'm a physicist can't you?)

    The range increase talked about in the UK is 5.5km -> 6km of cable length. Now compare the areas of these 2 circles.

    5.5 x 5.5 x 3.14 = 95 km squared (approx)
    6.0 x 6.0 x 3.14 = 113 km squared (approx)

    So this gives an extra 18 km squared coverage. If we assume one household per 100 metres squared (not unreasonable in the UK) then this bring 1800 homes in range of broadband.

    Of course in the real world things will vary, but I've seen figures from BT suggesting 6km will bring 97% coverage of the population.

    The irony for me is I live 30 miles from London, 4 miles from the end of the runway of one of our major airports, 3 miles from one of the major motorways and yet my broadband options are the same as someone on a remote island, no ADSL, no cable, just my trusty 56k jalopy...