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.

Comments

Don't get too excited

[venicebeach]

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.

Mega/milli

[gspr]

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?

Re:Problems with this

[ikkonoishi]

They never mention what kind of distance you have to be from a node in order for this to work.
Yes they do.

Article Quote.

VDSL, a newer kind of DSL, provides much higher speeds, of up to 52mbps. But it can only transmit signals up to 800 meters, making it useful only in very densely populated areas, such as high-rise apartment buildings. VDSL services are popular in large cities in Asia but are not viable for most markets in the United States.

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.

Second look at DSL

[Anonymous Coward]

>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.

Misleading Headline and Caption

[Little Grey]

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.

Our Home and Native Land, True.....

[J2000_ca]

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.

No solace for those outside urban zones

[Fooby]

According to the article, at distances greater than 1km UDSL only provides ADSL-level service. It does not mention maximum range, but I suspect that at the sort of distance from the CO one finds in rural areas it is most likely just as unusable as standard ADSL.

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?

Re:isp's

[PlusFiveTroll]

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.

Re:Problems with this

[Jack Porter]

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.

Re:No they don't

[hdparm]

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).

Re:Problems with this

[dissy]

Actually,
an OC-3 is 155mbit/sec
an OC-12 is 622 mbit/sec