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Verizon To Use New Tech With Old Cables
Ant wrote to mention a ZDNet article about a new initive to get modern high-speed net access into homes utilizing old coaxial cable lines. Right now Verizon digs up streets and lays out expensive fiber to get homes online, but new tech may let them accomplish that task for much less hassle and expense. From the article: "Later this year, it plans to use new technology from the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) , an industry group that promotes using coaxial cable installed for cable TV to transmit broadband around the home. The organization says that its technology supports speeds up to 270 megabits per second. Because most homes already have coaxial cable installed in several rooms, Verizon can significantly reduce its Fios installation costs by using existing cabling to connect home computers to its broadband service."
I'll start holding my breath now.
This second post is sponsorized by Verizon, thx for the free daypass!
Is this another one like all the other Verizon ads I'm getting because I am using the Slashdot free day pass? Or is this an article?
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Uh, isn't this.. cable?
The summary says Right now Verizon digs up streets and lays out expensive fiber to get homes online, but new tech may let them accomplish that task for much less hassle and expense, but the article is talking about using pre-installed coax to connect computers within the home to broadband, it has nothing about getting the broadband to the home.
Oh no... it's the future.
Verizon came and fixed my voice line last week - we had a lot of noise and other people's phone calls on our line. Unfortunately this also 'fixed' my DSL connection, which hasn't worked since then. Perhaps by using a separate set of wires for voice and data this kind of problem will go away. Of course once everyone starts using VoIP for thier phone calls....
Will this anger the cable companies? Aren't these lines property of cable companies, who are obviously competing in this market?
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..several Telecom firms are planning to introduce amazing new technology that allows the Internet to go through telephone lines. Also, in the distant horizon, talks are beginning to emerge about telephony itself going over telephone lines, and even an exciting new breakthrough called the telegraph has been mentioned.
Will code a sig generator for food
I'll do the rest.
And men do not put new bits in old wires, else the wires rot and the bits leak out; but they put new bits in new wires so that reliability is preserved.
Here in Montreal, Canada, this has been available for at least 10 years (since 1996 or even earlier).
I used to run my school computer lab on co-ax. What a pain. The connectors were always breaking. They didn't have to completely break either, they just had to go slightly bad and they'd take down the whole network. Anyway I suppose they will come up with a solution that has 'more conventional' connectors because most NICs don't have co-ax connectors.
The question on my mind is, what makes this so "new" and different from existing cable internet? The only thing he mentions is that download speed is 270Mbps.
I suppose they're probably using a higher frequency to transmit the data as opposed to existing cable internet.
The other concern is, won't the cable companies charge Verizon an arm and a leg to use *their* cable networks? I would imagine this would drive the price of this new solution up through the roof, to the point where its cost makes it prohibitive for the end-user (that is, you and me).
I think its a great idea to use "existing" infrastructure to reduce costs and speed up implementation. IMHO a "new" technology using copper is suitable as long as it meets certain criteria (which I'm sure it does). My only beef with the article is in the title -- existing copper cables are not "OLD" technology -- copper has many advantages over fiber in terms of practicality, cost, etc. I'm going to consider that they were referring to "copper" as old... but I don't foresee and sudden disappearance of wires in the near future.
Matt Wong
http://www.themindofmatthew.com
Guess people will have to choose only one of either the cable or phone company.
What are the chances they will actually pass the savings on to the consumer? Exactly nill. Anyway, since everything and the kitchen sink will soon be relient on an IP address and broadband connection, is this really a good idea? Just lay the fiber and get it over with.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I thought they learned the last time not to band-aid these issues. We have fiber that would be upgradeable to ??????? speeds, or we can bottleneck ourselves yet again at 270mbit (and that's probably theoretical only) so in reality maybe 200mbit? So that in another 5-10 years they'll have to do the fiber thing anyways. Why not just do it right the first time so there's a nice long-term upgrade path?
Umm havent we been doing this for 20+ years now? ( though admittedly 'home service' is farily new in the grand scheme of things )
What did i miss here?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I had Cat6 run from the Fiber terminal up to the computer room when I got FiOS installed. The Fiber will still go to the home but the connection will not be Cat6 according to this article. All it states is that instead of running Ethernet they will use the pre-existing Coax lines to make the connection. I plan on getting the Verizon Television (FiOS TV) and have already read that they will use my pre-existing Coax for that connection.
So this article summary is misleading. The fiber is *still* going to the home, it's just that they will not run Ethernet into the home if they don't need to. Instead using the pre-existing Coaxial runs which are already in place.
Eventually we're going to bump into limits yet again with the coax cabling, so why not still go forth with the fiberoptic plans? -- Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/
Lack of security, not as reliable, and slower. I'll take wired any day, thanks.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
So, what's the difference between this and the cable modem I'm using right now, other than the fact that it has a higher bandwidth cap?
The idea is that you have subscribed to Verizon's FiOS TV, so you won't have a cable company hooked up to the coax. It's basically reusing your existing house wiring for data. It's what will allow one DVR to stream video to other DVRs, signal for PPV/VOD, etc.
ZDNet just sensationalized it some.
However, in cities like Montreal where houses are very old and almost impossible to run any new cabling, this has been an alternative for years. Without this technology, there would have been almost no broadband outside of cable modem in Montreal, much less the majority of the rest of Canada's old cities. However, as its said in the article, this is not primarily for an internet based usage. This is more related to the features of the new IP-based television services. Even in new houses today to find networking cable near a TV is a shot in the dark, and this technology, even though by no means new, will allow Verizon (and the other Telcos that are providing the same service) to install the services without having to ask the customer to change their entire room configurations around. Since the tech provides enough throughput to stream video, its a perfect solution for something that would otherwise cost a lot of money. The post is misleading though as this really has nothing to do with the wiring outside of the home. MoCA is not made for outside use, its an internal usage, with a host adapter acting as the router for the coaxial lines. Coaxial to ethernet bridge, thats all they are.
The next Slashdot story is visible early to free day pass visitors; sponsored by Verizon Business.
And then the story itself is basically a plug for Verizon business.
That phone company which is installing FiOS in my neighborhood, whose:
(a) prices are no cheaper than my current cable hookup;
(b) promised download and upload speeds are virtually no better;
(c) riddles their advertisements with information about MICROSOFT and WINDOWS, when I use only LINUX for all of my computer needs and my Internet access; and
(d) Tries to sell this FiOS on the basis of its accompaniment with some type of IPTV service associated with Microsoft which is riddled with Digital Restrictions Management crap?
That Verizon?
This PHONE COMPANY needs to get a clue about COMPUTER users before they will have any success in a computer user market.
It's just another ISP corporate "make money without spending it" hoax. You see these once every few years. A major telco/cable conglomerate/backbone operator/ect talks about using some old'n'busted tech to deliver a faster than pie in the sky internet connection. Almost all the initial information is from the marketting dept of the company that is selling the idea (not from engineers or anyone who could really explain how these fabulous data speeds will be accomplished).
Stock Market laps it up like candy. Thinks Company X is going to become the new King of Content Delivery (because, you KNOW all the company's competitors and going to sit on their hands and have their kiesters handed to them by Company X).
Then there will be delays of getting the project actually going. Maybe even some slight downplaying of actual speeds of conetnt delivery.
At some point someone with a PhD in physics or a heavy EE background gets ahold of the actual method of content delivery and point out it simply isn't possible in the real world because of interfereance, older lines than they used in the lab, ect.
Marketting dept for technology company downplays statement made by PhD/EE. Slashdot crowd made up of people who know WAY too much about the national power grid and enough about radio spectrum to work at the FCC pop up to defend the scientist's statements.
More backpedaling of speeds for new service. Marketting direction of new tech starts to veer slightly into the "will allow service in areas not currently reachable by standard broadband providers" direction.
Companies who have not yet publically committed to using tech start to back out. In the others unfortunately, corporate inertia takes over. Whoever greenlighted the project doesn't want to try and back out and look stupid for having wasted plenty of company money at this point.
New tech has limited rollout, shows to be the flop we knew it was the whole time. You never hear about the new tech in the media again and it becomes one of those fringe technologes only seen in rural regions. Perhaps eventually phased out as traditional broadband service (Cable/DSL) are pushed into the region.
A few years pass and major Telcos/Cablecos grouse about the cost of last mile hookups and getting ot that last few % of homes in the middle of nowhere. Stock is tanking on high network infastructure costs gobbling revenue.
But then a company no one's ever heard of pops up with the idea of...
I always thought the cable company owned those lines, and also one of the many reasons why one location is usually never serviced by 2 cable companies. If the cable companies do own those lines, why would they ever let a phone company borrow their lines to give highspeed to consumers when they can do it themselves. If they don't own the lines, is it the city that does? If that's the case, why are we so often locked down to only 1 cable provider.
HD Trailers
This was actually decided by a court case years ago, you own the cables in your house (Hence, Verizon now charges you when there are problem in your home). One question I would have is whether the cable TV and FIOS and live on the same cable, or if this is a way to force adoption of FIOS TV
Verizon has been surprisingly willing to cable up homes accepting FIOS for almost no money, I've been wondering how long that can go on. Then again, they take a durprisingly long view of this stuff.
Man I want FIOS :(
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
This way, they can pocket more of the billions that Congress gave them in the 90's for that fiber project that was to go live in '06.
The same is true of the U.S.
This is distinguished by being faster.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Phone companies managed to get usable broadband over ancient phone lines, and all I have to do is plug in a little adapter to my telephone. This is a good re-use of existing infrastructure, and stock holders should look favorably on this. Of course, a smart company would take some of the resulting savings and keep a fund ready for eventual replacement of their lines.
TFA cites those costs for 2005 as $1,200 and $1,400 respectively.
How exactly is this a profitable business venture when their optimisitc goal is to spend over $1,600 per household for installation of a service that they sell for $40/month, with relatively little commitment to stay with the service?
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Phone companies managed to get usable broadband over ancient phone lines, and all I have to do is plug in a little adapter to my telephone. This is a good re-use of existing infrastructure
DSL was the phone company using inside wires that were installed by the phone company. This is the phone company using inside wires that were installed by its major competitor, the cable company.
Isn't this really just a rebirth of 10-Base-5 Ethernet?
Can 10BASE-5 and cable TV be reliably carried over the same wire?
Let me get this straight. I now have telephone service through my cable company and I can get cable internet through my phone company? Uh...
"1394 Trade Association and Pulse~LINK To Demonstrate Bi-Directional HDTV Streaming of IEEE 1394 S400 over Coax at the 2006 International CES, Jan. 5-8"
"The HANA exhibit will showcase how Pulse~LINK's CWave -On-Coax and the 1394TA's S400 interface provide a powerful, whole-home distribution capability that can run over pre-existing in-home coax cable AND co-exist with legacy cable and satellite programming. The demonstration will consist of two 1394-enabled CWave(TM) UWB transceivers, one in the Trade Association's booth and another in the Pulse~LINK booth, with splitters and several hundred feet of coax cable between them. 1394 HDTV audio and video will be streamed bi-directionally between the two booths in the HANA suite, showing how coax cable in the home works as a broadband backbone with 400Mbps application layer throughput for seamlessly transporting multiple simultaneous streams of digital content to 1394-equipped devices throughout the home."
http://www.pulselink.net/pr-jan02-2006.html
270 Mbps on coax - the OP was correct, Whoopty-frickin-doo!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You talking about Ether2 or Ether5? I think this is more like using the existing coax cable to go from the fiber to the wall. There's probably some kind of transceiver/cable modem on the other end to hook it into the RJ-45 jack.
Smooth. Getting the damn fiber in the ground once and for all sounded like too good of a plan did it? Verizon needed a way to move back in time instead of forward? I wonder how many more years carriers will spend trying to squeeze whatever they can out of old, decaying infrastructure. We all know how great cable modems and DSL work compared to 'true' digital circuits (T1, Frame, etc) and fiber-based infrastructure. There are so many fundamental flaws with reusing old wiring for new services that I don't even know where to begin (Cable Modems = shared medium & collision city, DSL = distance limitations and interference, etc.). Because most homes already have coaxial cable installed in several rooms... GIVE ME A BREAK! I'm sure that was a real deal-breaker.
15 years ago i was working on a plant network run on broadband/cable TV. All internal network, with a T1 heading to the outside. Each pc directly connected to the cable. Ran IBM"s PC-NET.
It was really old tech even then.. I kept wondering why cable companies didnt do someting like that themselves since it was proven technology.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A friend in Ottawa told me how his Bell phone service went out one day and they didn't send someone for at least two days to fix it. He finally went out to the demarc to take a look, and a service guy from Rogers new phone service had CUT HIS PHONE LINE. How's that for a little unwarranted competition between the cable and phone providers?
Oh You POS
The standard is ancient. I don't know where it came form orignlly, but some time back in the eairly days of video, someone worked out that coax cable made a good waveguild for RF signals and they decided on 75 ohm coax to do it with.
It works great for many things, no question. Provided the tolerances are tight, you can use it for uncompressed HD video (and the broadcast industry does) at distances around a kilometre. However that doesn't change the fact that it's a very old standard. Still extrememly useful, but old.
From the New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd Edition):Well, there goes my karma. But I really, really hate that word.
sig? Oh, that sig...
Verizon To Use New Tech With Old Cables
Verizon has announced a new method to supply faster internet connections (a concept they have dubbed "broadband") using existing telephone lines. The information will be modulated to a higher frequency and transmitted from existing local switching stations along with voice data. The user will be able to utilize their existing landline by placing a "filter" inline before their telephones to remove the high frequency data transmission. The illusive internal project name at Verizon R&D is simple the acronym "DSL."
m0nstr42.blogspot.com
Cue the "Beg the question" police.
Finding other idiots on
fer gawd's sake, please use your spelling checker....
thank you!
Some months back I finally decided to upgrade my 1.5Mbps service to the 3Mbps. They had no problem letting me do that and charging me $20 less per month than I had been paying.
Then I noticed I wasn't getting 3Mbps - I was only getting about 10% more speed than I had been getting before. I didn't mind too much since it was still costing me $20 less than it had. But finally I decided to find out why.
After SBC tech support referred me to ASI, their provisioner, it turns out I'm 12,000 feet away from the CO DSLAM. The tech said 3Mbps service was only for people at 10,000 feet or less. Not only that, if they raised me nearer to 3, my line would start experiencing drops more and more frequently until the line went down and stayed down. They set me back to 1.5Mbps. I had to renegotiate my cost with the Sales department which decided I should pay $26.95 a month for six months, after which it would go up to $30-something.
I see a class action lawsuit coming up here, as SBC sells 3Mbps upgrades to people who THEY KNOW can't handle the speed and THEY KNOW will damage their service and make it unreliable.
Not only that, but they're promising TWENTY Mbps service this year. How is any subscriber going to get that speed - by being twenty feet from the CO - when they can't even deliver 3Mbps?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
RTFA
Libertarian: label used by embarrassed Republicans, longing to be open about their greed, drug use and porn collections.
I'd say as long as possible... "infrastructure" == "assets", aka, "sunk costs".
Do you replace your car before you need to?
Do you replace your carpet if it can just be steam-cleaned back to "presentable"?
Sheesh - no grand conspiracy here... if they can make a buck on what they have, they will.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I have FiOS service currently -- phone, internet, and TV -- and they are already putting IP over coax. They use it for the video on demand. They have a simple ethernet to coax bridge (made by Motorola) and the cable box then is able to get it's guide data and VOD streams over the internet connection. What I haven't been able to figure out is if the bandwidth used for VOD is taken out of my 15mbit internet bandwidth allocation or if they have some traffic shaping going on for the VOD separately.
I'm not really sure how it's going to be cheaper -- coax isn't that expensive, and they were more than happy to replace the sub-par cabling that MediaOne/AT&T/Comcast had left behind. They even ran more wire inside the house to accommodate the way I wanted to setup things.
dennis
I have idea for Verizon. Why don't they use some new tech, old tech, or any goddam tech, to stop the overwhelming array of spam originating from zombie PCs in their netblocks? How much shit do we have to put up with before Verizon gets off their lazy asses and stops polluting the net!
AOL and other ISPs have taken aggressive and extremely effective approaches by filtering port 25 traffic on their networks. As a result, the spam and zombie activity from their customers has dropped off dramatically. ISPs like Comcast and Verizon still have yet to do this and they're a major source of internet pollution.
Until Verizon controls the illegal activity of their users, I urge all system administrators to block all port 25 traffic from Verizon IP blocks such as:
68.160.* * - 68.170+
70.16.*.* - 70.23.*.*
70.104.*.* - 70.124.*.*
71.100.*.* - 71.251.*.*
141.150.*.* - 141.158.*.*
151.199.*.* - 151.200.*.*
etc.
Screw you Verizon. Control your idiot users!
Interference.
Once fiber becomes easy and cheap enough to run in the home for most people, it will take over for the mere fact that there's no electrical interference, like there is for coax and CAT5/5e/6.
Then, coax will become useful for another purpose: being used as pull cable for running the fiber in an existing home.
I have a friend who is a paralegal and he said this is already being looked at by class action lawyers at his firm. A complaint by a fellow lawyer started it. Yes, they are looking at a fraud class action for knowingly selling a service that technically CANNOT be delivered.
I would say keep all your past bills as a record of your service dates.
Here in Montreal, Canada, this has been available for at least 10 years (...)
Allow me to clear this up: The article is discussing a technology which enhances transfer bandwidth over existing coaxial cable networks, to near parity with fiber.
I'm pretty sure you were thinking of secessionist politics.
In Canada, it's regular practise for Rogers to cut lines from DTH satellite dishes.
Heh. Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. Ask any telecom tech what he thinks about letting a cable guy do phone wiring, you'll get an earfull. Cable guys are the basest of all wire technicians. From what I've seen, they're the least trained, the poorest equipped, and do the shoddiest work.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
This move by Verizon is based entirely on short term financials, but at some point fiber will be needed to keep up with other network technologies. Verizon's move is reminiscent of the proverbial "640K should be enough for everyone" uttered by billg - while true contemporaneously, it didn't take long before the shortsightedness became very apparent.
Like you, Verizon is looking backwards, not forwards.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You own the wiring inside your home, not $CABLE or $TELCO.
Verizon is running fiber to the home, but taking advantage of the speed is difficult inside the home. Wireless just isn't fast enough. Most people don't have Cat5e running throughout the house like I do. But they do have coax installed for cable TV. You can hook it to Verizon, cable, or satellite. Your choice.
Where do I sign the EULA ?
"Freedom and Justice for All" is a registered trademark of The United States Govt Inc. Not available in all areas.
Verizon just discovered DOCSIS.
Someone call the CEO of Time Warner up. I think this is a multi-million dollar idea!
RTFA. This is about reusing wiring inside customers' homes to distribute content brought into the house via fiber.
DurendalMac is exactly right.
And I think theres a different reason for why your school network kept going down...
You're thinking of the older 10-base2 Ethernet with BNC connectors, and earlier 1 Mb/s nets like Arcnet or Corvus. Three things:
1. You most likeley used 50 Ohm BNC's but the Cable systems use 75 Ohm F-connectors. Those are somewhat more reliable than BNC's, and are much easier to replace.
2. Those early nets were daisy-chained from connector to connector, and any break would take down part of or the whole network. With the co-ax system the Cable system uses, they are usually radiating in a "star" configuration using n-way splitters as the "hub". That way even with a catastrophic short to ground on 1 node, it would just reduce the signal strength at the other connectors by 1/n (half for a 2-way, 1/4 for 4 way, etc.)
3. The cable signal doesn't go straight to a NIC. Unlike Net cards, you are not sending analog RF to the computer directly, you still need a cable modem to decode the RF signal back to digital data. That data gets turned back into different RF for the net, and the net cards have their own RF transciever onboard. The exception to this would be an internal cable modem PC card (I would imagine they exist, but not everyone will have one).
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
By eliminating the need to rewire every house for Cat5 (or higher), Verizon can cut down on time to wire large areas for FIOS itself. They don't just reduce their cost. Home owners can then later upgrade their home wiring to use the full capacity of FIOS, with or without the support of Verizon.
Verizon (and investors, including in a small part myself) doesn't know if FIOS will be profitable yet. There are a lot of competing techs that are a threat. They can't compete in speed, but they make up for it in their assumed lower cost. Verizon is spending a TON of money on FIOS in the Tampa area and from what I've seen is making very little real profit on it yet.
I'm a bit disappointed that Fibre is being put in by a private company. In my opinion, it should be installed just like streets are--public utilities funded by federal, state, and local governments. It would be a massive upfront cost but the economic gain would, in the long term, be massive. Lease the lines to private companies to provide the actual service. The only thing that would worry me is the government feeling it has the right to monitor all traffic, but I'm sure that isn't too far off from how it is now.
I'm excited for FIOS. My neighborhood is set to be wired in about 2 months.
This new tech is just so they can be lazy/cheap once already inside your home. They'll still build the fiber network to get broadband into your house. This is a local area technology that's more so replacing ethernet then anything. The only company that will give you net access through your coax cable (from outside the house) is your cable company.
Hmmm... Pie...
I got really good at finding bad connections. This was the early 90s and we were using mostly stand-alone programs under DOS and Windows 3.1, there was no internet. The network was mostly for printing so it didn't matter if it was a bit flaky. These days if we lose the internet, it's major panic time. The other poster is right, all the computers were daisy chained and a bad connection anywhere would take down the whole network.
The thing was that I had a lot of experience with RF and I wouldn't believe that twisted pair was any good at 10 MHz. Anyway, co-ax was the standard at the time.
You can't teach an old cable new techs.
"I used to run my school computer lab on co-ax. What a pain. The connectors were always breaking. They didn't have to completely break either, they just had to go slightly bad and they'd take down the whole network. Anyway I suppose they will come up with a solution that has 'more conventional' connectors because most NICs don't have co-ax connectors."
Hmmm... sounds like the token fell out. Why don't check to see if it rolled under your desk?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Smoke. Lots of it. Reducing the cost of installing FIOS. Whoopie.
Don't hold your breath. I have sought something better than POTS from verizon since about 1998. Twice they agreed to sell me ISDN (but they didn't). They are not bringing ISDN or DSL or FIOS or anything else anytime soon. Rural America will get its broadband from wireless or BPL before Verizon will bring us anything better than POTS.
People should just forget cable and wait for some decent BPL installs to start happening nationwide.
Verizon would love to see me disconnect Comcast Cable, sell me IPTV vaporware, and use my existing home coaxial wiring to distribute it to the rooms.
Good luck. I do intend to get FIOS when it comes to my neighborhood; they're already stringing the fiber. (One of my customers has their 15 Mbps service. As a test, we downloaded SP2 at a sustained transfer rate of 1.81 MB per second, which is pretty much what he's paying for).
But... rely on Verizon for home networking, or TV? No way. Their customer service reps remind me of the David Spade Capital One commercials. "The answer is always NO: our service is working, it must be your PC." Customers often pay me just to call and (successfully) argue with them.
Bottom line: This is Verizon trying to use outdated cabling of dubious quality to limit their infrastructure investment... again, since that's been their DSL strategy from day one.
Did no one read the article?
The article? Hell, I didn't bother to read your whole response! As a typical slashdot reader I am far to busy thinking how to vote in the next poll to read anything. I just post here.
What was it you were saying again?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Isn't this really just a rebirth of 10-Base-5 Ethernet? What's old is new again...
Not quite. 10-Base-5, like 10-base-2 is ethernet on coax at BASEBAND. What Verizon is proposing is Ethernet on an RF carrier over coax. I.e, "broadband". But that's been done too. It was 10-Broad-36.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10broad36
Here's the funny thing: 270 Mbits over coax has been around since the early 1990's. It was called CCIR601, but then the ITU dissolved the CCIR so the standard is now known as ITU-R BT Rec.601 or some such alphabet soup. It was also called (inaccurately) "D1 video" (D1 is/was a digital video tape format). Since then, the 270 Mbit transport layer has been used for moving MPEG around, which is called DVB-ASI (that's right, as in the European "Digital Video Broadcasting"). ASI stands for Asychronous Serial Interface, and is the common transport for data between MPEG-2 encoders, IPE's, and MUX's at DTV head ends throughout the world. So, the idea that you could move lotsa stuff around at 270 MBits, even on crappy home-installed RG-6, is not rocket science. Making products that can do that CHEAPLY in the HOME is NEWS! (A DTV head end is a $million or 2.)
The inititive to protect our country Electronic Communication infrastruction is critical if we are to continue to maintain dominance in the Internet sphere. Even rogue C3 centers are being setup by small business entities that is planning to capitalize in the fallout of the next Net blackout.
Portable EMP system is being made cheaply and we all need to rush the FCC to push all level of fiber and sheilding technology in our Internet devices.
We need to be ready for E-day.
In my area Verizon is supposedly running all fiber. In fact they won't even add more DSL in this area, they say even my present phone number which is using DSL is not available for DSL. Seems more likely they may use coax since they seem in many cases to take the most profitable way out. They can't even provide a DSL modem from a manufacturer that doesn't radiate harmonics all over the HF spectrum, probably because it was cheaper. In the south USA they have DSL modems that are "clean", not so up here in NJ. I cannot really believe Verizon would step BACKWARDS and use coax cable when fiber is available and has virtually unlimited bandwidth. That's my 2 worth
If Coaxil cables can deliver 270 Mbps... why the crap am I living with 5Mbps with TimeWarner!?!!?!?! Someone like Verizon should stick it to the man.
Give me a productive error over a boring, mundane and unproductive fact any day. ~Anon
At least, no more difficult than convincing ComCast to pull a wire so I can subscribe to their own offering.
So, err, wait a minute....
damn.
"Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
Sometimes, the token gets stuck in the cable, between two rooms. If you blow into the little hole in the wall jack, it should knock it loose. You just have to make sure to get the cable back on before it falls out.
This is not the same as a cablemodem service and it is not an alternative to running fibre to the home. What the article is about is saving costs of rewiring the home itself with cat5 (or higher). When they bring fibre in to the home it does not do much good until they hook into the house infrastructure. They need to hook up computers, televisions etc. Instead of spending the extra money to rewire a house with ethernet to all the required rooms, they will utilize the existing cable system in the house. Most houses have cablevision runs installed but pretty rare for an older home to have ethernet.