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200mbps DSL On Its Way?
An anonymous reader writes "I came upon a news story about Texas Instruments developing a new DSL technology which will allow ISP's to boost their bandwidth to 200mbps (Yes, mega bits per second). The UDSL service, as it is dubbed, is backwards compatible with current DSL technologies such as VDSL and ADSL. This should get many cable internet users, like myself, a second look at DSL." Update: 06/15 01:26 GMT by T : "mps" and "mbs" both de-mangled.
Doesn't look like this is going to be a reality any time soon:
Texas Instruments expects to have samples of these new chips available in the second half of next year.
The first generation of products using Texas Instruments' chips will likely be introduced sometime in 2006.
200mbs (Yes, mega bits per second)
No, millibits per second. Get your prefixes straight. Oh and by the way, the headline says "200mps" - 200 metres per second?
Yes they do.
Article Quote.
As it says in the article it allows for ADSL speeds at distances > 1km and only reaches the fast speeds at 1km. Doesn't seem all that great to me. You still need your network provider to have a very fat pipe coming to within 1km (probably less) of your home. Which is not the case for most people.
"UDSL provides a middle ground, according to Chow. Because the technology is compatible with both ADSL and VDSL standards, it adheres to requirements of both technologies. For example, at distances greater than 1 kilometer, it provides an ADSL-like service with ADSL data rates. But at shorter distances, it can provide VDSL-like service with data rates that match or exceed VDSL. In some instances, Chow claims, a UDSL service could provide up to 200mbps of bandwidth. This is four times as much bandwidth as is currently available through VDSL services. "
>This should get many cable internet users, like myself, a second look at DSL."
Ever try using a packet sniffer on your cable modem? Seeing all my neighbors Pr0n browsing was enough to make me switch to DSL.
200mbs (Yes, mega bits per second)
First, the `m' should be capitalised. `M' is for mega- (1000000 times), `m' is for milli- (1/1000).
Second, Mbs means megabits times seconds, not per second. It should either be Mbps or Mb/s. The former is used much more commonly, so let's go with that.
Yeah, I know it's a minor nitpick, but it's irking me, and I had to get it off my chest.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
If you actually read the ZDNET article, they state:
"UDSL provides a middle ground (between ADSL and VDSL), according to Chow. Because the technology is compatible with both ADSL and VDSL standards, it adheres to requirements of both technologies. For example, at distances greater than 1 kilometer, it provides an ADSL-like service with ADSL data rates. But at shorter distances, it can provide VDSL-like service with data rates that match or exceed VDSL. In some instances, Chow claims, a UDSL service could provide up to 200mbps of bandwidth. This is four times as much bandwidth as is currently available through VDSL services."
So basically 200mbps is probably only attainable under an incredibly small percentage of installations where the variables are all basically perfect.
I have to say I'm glad I live in Canada after hearing you all bitch. My dsl seems pretty decents. No download or upload limits. Uploads and downloads cap at a reasonable level. Bell doubled the speed for free. I do have one arguement against cable right now though. When the cable and phone line got cut down the street. Bell was there pretty much right away and it was fixed in 2 hours while it took rogers (cable) all night. Cable doesn't seem to consider itself critical yet.
I know I'm stupid for actually reading the article, but this isn't much more than a combination of ADSL and VDSL technologies that will allow ISP's to only buy one set of equipment on their end. You will still expect the same ADSL speeds you get now unless you live next door to the phone company. Most CO's aren't even equipped with VDSL hardware in the first place, so don't expect much unless you live in Hong Kong. This will not magically make your 1.5Mbps ADSL line any faster. The only ones benefitting here are the ISP's and possibly the VDSL users closest to the CO's.
Nor does the article seem to address whether this is a symmetric connection or not. Of course having that kind of a fat pipe in the house would be revolutionary anywhere in America, but it would be nice to see more symmetrics options available. Even cable providers are putting arbitrary uplink caps on their service these days. Time to move to Japan?
Less than 1km.
AC to prevent karma whore.
That's OK, now they're "fixed".
200mbps == 200 millibits per second == 1/5th of a bit per second.
I think timothy may have meant to use 200Mbps.
Actually that wont work, there is about a 10:1 download to upload ratio(very rough estimate from experance). If you download too fast you wont be able to [ACK] acknowledge all of your tcp packets and the connection will start ratelimiting itself. On a 200Mbps you absolutely have to have at least 10Mbps up with very large receive windows to see the anywhere near the max.
But do you know why you can't get service?
One typical situation with the new neighbourhoods was that they build fiber out to the new construction. It was all high tech and going to be great for providing phone service to an entire neighbourhood over a single wire. But, of course, DSL requires copper from the home to the local teleco office. This is probably why you can't get DSL - your copper terminates in a small box somewhere in your neighbourhood that has no room for additional DSL equipment, then you're optical from there out.
Cable TV, however, still used copper even when they went digital - their primary business was TV and they still had to be backwards compatible for receiving the basic channels on older analog TVs.
With some planning and forethought on the teleco's part (and in an alternative universe) you would have gigabit internet over fiber to your house right now.
Don't expect 200Mbps for general home use any time soon. The costs to provide that much bandwidth, even ridiculously oversold, are too high.
My home internet connection is over 50Mbps (I can get up to 5MB/second using BitTorrent). My apartment building has fiber from the provider, and they run 100BaseT ethernet to every apartment. I pay about $US35 a month for unlimited service.
I do live in South Korea, but it goes to show with enough demand, this kind of bandwidth DOES scale economically.
ATSC HDTV is broadcast at 19 Mbps. Network feeds (less compression) are about 45 Mbps. Uncompressed HDTV is 1.5 Gbps.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
RTFA is not always enough, as it seems. You also need to digest the information and apply thinking process to it.<p>After I did, I figured < 1km will provide ~50Mbps (like VDSL). 200 looks more like an extreme - << 1km or even <<< 1km. Come to think of it, it provides that much bandwidth only in case you plug ISP's DSL straight into your PCI port :o).
Actually,
an OC-3 is 155mbit/sec
an OC-12 is 622 mbit/sec
This isn't about getting huge bandwidth from the CO to the end user via installed copper. It's about installing boxes on poles, pedestals, in apartment houses. These boxes have fibre coming in from the CO and provide LAN-range connections to the end user.
The basic idea is to have a compatible set of equipment that works with existing DSL standards, but can be upgraded, section by section, without changing out the other parts. It's a somewhat lower cost alternative to fibre-to-the-home.
This is roughly comparable to what cable companies do, running a neighborhood LAN with a box that provides an upstream connection, usually over fibre. The topology is about the same.
The phenomenon you are experiencing is called "deregulation". It's what happens when monopoly telco lobbyists write the legislation that creates a fair competitive environment for other companies to compete with said telcos. Of course, the actual legislation is anything but fair. See also: Covad vs. the "baby bells".
This is sort of like the power "deregulation" that took place in California and led to rolling blackouts and ultra high electricity and gas prices, and required a statewide bailout of the monopoly power company, Pacific Gas and Electric.
When anybody in a suit starts to wax romantic about free markets, competition, and deregulation, look for the crossed fingers behind their back and wads of dollar bills sticking out of their pockets. What they really want is to replace a regulated monopoly with an unregulated monopoly, and an inefficient government bureacracy with an unaccountable corporate pyramid scheme that leads to offshore accounts, unprecedented executive payouts, and bankruptcy (followed by an emergency government bailout). See also: Enron, Worldcom.
Real competition would be great, but that's not what we've got. What we have is legislated, goverment-subsidized monopolies paying protection money to Congress with one hand and waving a "Free markets now!" sign with the other.
Of course, the bold new twist on this scheme is to first announce that you're going to replace a government bureaucracy with an efficient outsourcing contract, and then just award the contract to your friends with no bidding process (or a secret bidding process), claiming that national security (or the interest of fair competition) forced the bidding process to be secret or to be skipped altogether. Then you can sidestep all sorts of rules and laws and replace huge sections of the government with unaccountable private corporations, and you get deniability even if you own stock in said corporation. See also: Halliburton, Bechtel.
P.S. Welcome to the USA!
You are confusing your cable modem with the cable system. Current HFC systems (Hybrid Fiber Coax, the cable infrastructure) get about 6.8Gbps of bandwidth and they are expected to max out around 10Gbps. However, that is broadcast, one-way bandwidth. Everybody gets the same thing. For interactive services, like cable modems, the cable companies install equipment further down the line. In the case of cable modems, this equipment usually has its own fiber feed and will serve hundreds or thousands of homes. I don't know what the data rates will max out at for cable modems, but probably not very high. The systems are designed for bursty traffic and the current 3Mbps connections being advertised won't hold up to downloading a few ISOs.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baud.
Cheers
Actually Telcos are really trying to get into the TV market to compete with cable.
When I was co-oping this past spring, an engineer (from sales) gave a presentation to us co-ops about this issue (the company sells DSLAMs). The main problem is bandwidth. Even with ADSL2 and VDSL using mpeg4 compression you're limited to 1 or two simultaneous HDTV channels, and even then you have to be close to a CO in order to get that. Most people who are used to cable would balk at only being able to watch 1 channel at a time (otherwise everyone would be using satellite). So in order to provide a competing product, they need more bandwidth.
In a couple years I'll bet we'll start to see Telcos offering this service, and cable TV will start to get really cheap (or networks will start gouging more </pessimist>).