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Aussie Claims Copper Broadband now 200x Faster

SkiifGeek writes "Winner of Melbourne University's Chancellor's Prize for Excellence, Dr John Papandriopoulos could soon find himself the focus of a number of networking companies and government agencies interested in wringing more performance from existing network infrastructure. Dr John developed a set of algorithms (US and Aussie patents pending) that reduce the impact of cross talk on data streams sharing the same physical copper line, taking less than a year to achieve the breakthrough. It is claimed that the algorithms can produce up to 200x improvement over existing copper broadband performance (quoted as being between one and 25 mbit/sec), with up to 200 mbit/sec apparently being deliverable. If the mathematical theories are within even an order of magnitude of the actual gains achieved, Dr John's work is likely to have widespread implications for future bandwidth availability across the globe."

43 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Finally! by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Funny

    My dreams of building a top-notch deathmatch LAN using old rolls of 1970s speaker wire from my basement could finally come true.

    1. Re:Finally! by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just imagine the network you could build with Monster cables.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:Finally! by kcbanner · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yea, if you go to those Monster cables or perhaps these ones, your games might become "danceable".

      --
      Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
    3. Re:Finally! by Gilmoure · · Score: 3, Funny

      Dude, lamp cord; it's really cheap!

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
    4. Re:Finally! by micknz · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just imagine the network you could build with Monster cables. Haha. The guy at the store where I bought my LCD TV tried to tell me if I bought some fancy $200 (NZD) surge protector that it'd improve the picture 200%.

      Yeah Right.

  2. Metaphor please by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Funny

    So is this like coating the series of tubes with an improved surface so that the trucks get better traction?

    1. Re:Metaphor please by arivanov · · Score: 2, Informative

      Nope.

      I can bet that it is a reuse of the 3G MAC ideas. 3G uses multipath to improve the signal to noise ratio by filtering the signal versus delayed samples.

      Similar thing is possible with crosstalk as long as you handle all wires from the same duct in the same ASIC this usually is not the case. It will simply not work in countries where access to the copper is unbundled. In other places it will require major rewiring in the exchange.

      I would hate to extinguish the hopes of all hopefuls which think that the holy grail has arrived. This type of algorithms provide O(LOG N) improvement and there is major improvement only for the first couple of filter buckets. Once you are past that each bucket adds less and less.

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
    2. Re:Metaphor please by Omnifarious · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Your post is labeled informative, but it is so filled with jargon that is missing any nice links to references that explain it that I find it quite unhelpful.

    3. Re:Metaphor please by Von+Helmet · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, if you're using like, then it's actually a simile.

      That being said, I think the appropriate metaphor for your post would be "flogging a dead horse".

    4. Re:Metaphor please by lloydchristmas759 · · Score: 2, Funny

      You must be new here.

      --
      I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
    5. Re:Metaphor please by Belacgod · · Score: 3, Funny

      So the technology in TFA will allow us to flog dead horses 200 times as fast? Won't our arms get tired?

    6. Re:Metaphor please by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Informative
      Your post is labeled informative, but it is so filled with jargon

      I think the premise that this tech is based on 3G multicast is wrong too.

      Dr Papandriopoulos paper suggests the algorithm works by iteratively lowering power, and therefore reducing crosstalk. The reduced crosstalk allows faster protocols like VDSL to be used on the copper that was previously only capable of ADSL2.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    7. Re:Metaphor please by Spokehedz · · Score: 2, Funny

      No... it's more like this:

      You have many tubes going one way, with the internet flowing through them. If one fills up (it's not a truck!) then it spills over into one of the other tubes, or sometimes if a similar amount of internet is flowing in two tubes that are next to eachother then they spill over randomly.

      Now, cross-tube-spill makes for slow internet--more so than an email from your coworker--and this guy here figured out how to send the internet through the tubes in such a way that there is no spill over, and the tubes never get full, and that allows him to send more internet through the tubes at a faster rate.

      There. Happy?

    8. Re:Metaphor please by arivanov · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Quote from the article: one wire is wirelessly pushing its signal on to another wire (a phenomenon known as crosstalk), a microprocessor could use the noise from the crosstalk to do error correction on original signal...

      Err... That is exactly what I described (without even reading the article).

      IMHO not patentable due to being bleeding obvious. The sole reason it is not being done at present is that till recently it was impractical. You just about handled one wire with one chip. Handling a bundle and running a "cool" algo on them was simply beyond what the electronics could do.

      As far as the likelihood with 3G: 3G does something quite similar using the signal in a feedback loop. As a result echoes from buildings and reflections from earth (aka multipath) which in other technologies decrease your signal to noise ratio are used to increase the signal to noise ratio.

      For example you have the following sequence of bits: 1 1 1 0. Once you get past the first 1 you get the same sequence arriving reflected from a different source. As a result you get slightly better signal to noise on the next 1 1. After that you have a 0. It overlaps with a reflected 1. As a result you get garbled input. If you use a delay shift register and optimise where do you need to add your signal from 1,2,3,4 units of time before that to yourself you can actually eliminate this and improve your signal to noise based on reflections instead of garbling the signal. In addition to that the output of the filter is used also in guess what - power control: telling the mobile to adjust its power.

      What this chap is doing is doing the same by applying signal from wire N to the signal from wire Y as a digital filter. Which means exactly what I said - in order for this to be of any use all wires in the same bundle should be handled by the same ASIC. I should probably do the math but they should probably also run the same line protocol. If you have a third party provider running an ADSL in the middle of your "precious" DSL2 bundle this nice scheme fails.

      Pity actually, while not particularly original this is a cool way of using a well known existing way of improving signal to noise ratio (including the power control part of it).

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
    9. Re:Metaphor please by skarphace · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I remember the days of telephone crosstalk, but I never got the impression that it was RF-related; I always assumed it had something to do with ground loops (are there ground loops in balanced telco?) or improper balancing or things like that.
      Crosstalk is much broader then what people are insinuating here. Crosstalk can be RF, groundloops, bare wires douching each other, etc. Simplest definition is when one signal interferes with each other.

      I also have developed the impression that the biggest speed barrier in copper is reflections, not crosstalk, although I suppose that's more true of CAT-5/6 than of untwisted telco wiring, which is what this invention is supposed to work with.
      Reflection(in data networks atleast) is rarely a problem anymore. It was in the 70s and early 90s, during hub/patch days but not much anymore. This essentially occurs on an unterminated line when it is left connected to the network. It would travel to the break in the line, hit the end, and travel back towards the source destroying everything in it's path.

      Today though, most switches should not allow an unterminated line access to the rest of the network. Should just ground out everything coming in from that line. Probably simply because it doesn't have a source/destination MAC address that makes any sense. Those handy little Fluke handsets use reflection to find the break in a faulty line. Hopefully someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

      Even more confusing is TFA's use of "the same physical copper line"; if they really mean that (a continuous strand of copper), then they can't be talking about crosstalk. But maybe they mean "the same cable (set of wires), and cables are made of copper".
      Crosstalk can be on one wire, or a cable, air, or whatever. I believe they are talking about multiple signals on the wire(multiplexing) which could interfere with each other.
      --
      Bullish Machine Tzar
    10. Re:Metaphor please by wsanders · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Summary: You have to do a bunch of math, like, real fast, and it might not even work if all the signals don't go through the same thingy.

      --
      Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
    11. Re:Metaphor please by Hucko · · Score: 2, Informative

      Umm... a wire wirelessly push a signal? Lets use the unusual and very exotic term, induction. That means wires wirelessly push signals onto other wires. We could use back emf, too, though that is a little better known. This is a tech site after all.

      --
      Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
    12. Re:Metaphor please by petermgreen · · Score: 2, Informative

      It would travel to the break in the line, hit the end, and travel back towards the source
      all discontinuities cause some degree of reflection and it can be a big issue as frequencies get higher. Telco wiring is likely to be full of discontinuities (cross connect panels, different cable types etc).

      destroying everything in it's path.
      Luckilly it doesn't destroy everything in it's path. It destroys some frequencies attenuates others and boosts others. Oh and it causes some nasty phase effects too. It is a very similar effect to that of multipath distortion in radio systems. The fact that primitive systems like thinnet couldn't cope with this doesn't mean it is impossible to do so.

      What has really changed (and continues to change) is the systems we can put on the end of a line. DSP chips get ever more powerfull and with them ever more complex encoding schemes become availible. Systems can split the availible bandwidth into narrow bands an then tailor the encoding perameters to match what is going on in each band.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    13. Re:Metaphor please by unitron · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Summary: You have to do a bunch of math, like, real fast, and it might not even work if all the signals don't go through the same thingy.

      If I hadn't already posted to this story I'd be trying right now to figure out how to use my two remaining mod points to mod you both funny and insightful.

      --

      I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

  3. 200x??? Hardly... by funfail · · Score: 2, Informative

    (Up to 200 mbit/sec) / (Up to 25 mbit/sec) = 8x improvement...

  4. In other news... by EveryNickIsTaken · · Score: 3, Insightful

    PhD student advertises thesis on slashdot! News at 11.

  5. Realism... by Danathar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Dr John's work is likely to have widespread implications for future bandwidth availability across the globe."

    Given what I've seen in the past and knowing how greedy telecommunications companies are, I doubt the above statement.

  6. Re:Sounds good, but... by bflynn · · Score: 2, Informative

    Exactly. Without intending offense to Dr. Papandriopoulos, this is really not news, nor does it have widespread implications for future bandwidth availability across the globe. Global bandwidth is more about high speed backbones, which this technology does not even begin to approach. It is only useful in solving the last mile problem of getting things off the backbone to a terminal. And by the time this gets commercialized, I think we can count on at least three other technologies being faster still, with cellular style broadband probably at the top of the list.

  7. John's actually a pretty cool dude by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Had a few beers with him. Here is his homepage.

    1. Re:John's actually a pretty cool dude by 0xC2 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Dr. John is way cool, but methinks you got the wrong home page. http://www.drjohn.org/

      --
      Be heard || Be herd
  8. Re:Sounds good, but... by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It could on cost. Using fiber in many areas requires that you lay new lines. Even if it's not quite as fast as copper, or has a little more latency (light is faster than electrical signals), you could probably make quite a bit of money since there's a much smaller investment.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  9. The limit has been exceeded.... by mks113 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And we learned, in Electrical Engineering, that the theoretical maximum bandwidth for a phone line was 2400 bps.

    Using basic bandwidth calcs for voice (500 to 4000hz?) and imposing a modulated signal inside that, the distortion created by the physical arrangement of the wires would cause the limit.

    I'm glad that some people aren't scared off by theoretical physical limits.

    (That was in about 1986, A Hayes 1200 baud modem was an amazing piece of equipment and cost about $700)

    1. Re:The limit has been exceeded.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's only true if the bandwidth is limited to 3 kHz, as it is in voice circuits.

      Plug a 3 kHz bandwidth and about 35 dB signal-to-noise ratio into the formula for channel capacity and you get about 35,000 bits per second. This is consistent with the last generation of analog modems (33.6 kb/s).

      Now if the bandwidth is not artificially limited (remove transformers, filters, bridged taps, etc.) the theoretical capacity will increase by a large amount.

  10. Fast Forward to Slashdot 2009 by dada21 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Geek Post Subject: Comcast Throttles Bandwidth, Breaks Contract

    Geek Post Comments: I can't believe Comcast! They promised me an unlimited 200mbit connection and all I am getting is 60mbit! I want what I paid for, who cares how fast my connection was 3 years ago! I demand my 200mbit connection, and at $50 per month!11!

    Geek Post Moderation: +5, Insightful

  11. Re:Obligatory ... by smilindog2000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not true... information theory shows that a fractional bit is a probability of transmitting the desired bit correctly. A true source of random noise generates no bits, but a highly noisy channel transmits fractional bits per noisy bit sent. Fractional bits are well-founded mathematically.

    --
    Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
  12. Re:200 mbit/sec by alexhs · · Score: 2, Funny

    Actually, Aussies just discovered ADSL networking, now 200x as fast as their current POTS network :)

    I kid, please don't bite ;)

    --
    I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
  13. Re:Famous scam? by femto · · Score: 5, Informative

    I know this guy though having attended conferences with him. I know he is not a scam artist. I also think he is brainy enough to do this. He is not a fly by nighter but a serious communications theory researcher with a track record. As I've just emailed to my supervisor, "It's not every day a communications theorist makes the mainstream media". John Papandriopoulos is easy to find on google.

  14. Details? Here are some links. by martyb · · Score: 4, Informative

    The slashdot summary and linked articles are rather short on details. A little googling located some details:

    NOTE: I did a quick skim of it and had not seen any empirical evidence of the advance; seems to be entirely theoretical. I don't mean to lessen his accomplishments, but my experience is that reality usually has unforeseen factors. I certainly hope he IS on to something here!!

    (*) I didn't know anyone used the &ltblink> tag any more. :/

  15. Re:Obligatory ... by WombatDeath · · Score: 4, Funny

    Rubbish!

    0 = one bit
    ( = half a bit

    1 = one bit
    ' = half a bit

    You need to use an appropriate font, obviously.

    I don't know what you people would do without me to solve these little problems for you.

  16. Re:Trans-Oceanic Latency by WombatDeath · · Score: 2, Funny

    That sounds expensive. We should probably just increase the speed of light instead.

  17. Not for distance by Russ+Nelson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not for distance. You're still subject to the 18Kfeet (max) limitation imposed by the resistance (gauge) of the wire.

    --
    Don't piss off The Angry Economist
  18. Re:Across the globe == developed nations by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But the wireless spectrum is very limited. For the first 100,000 people or so on the wireless network, it could probably remain pretty fast. But try running all the computers in New York City on a wireless network, and see what kind of speed you can achieve at each node. So as a starter point, to get the first few people in the country on a network, or to connect a small village, wireless networks could prove extremely useful. However, if you want to take all the network communication in a large city and try to accomplish that without wires, you'd probably fail very quickly. Don't even start to mention current cellular networks, because there's still a lot of wires involved.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  19. Re:Sounds good, but... by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 4, Informative

    You underestimate the cost of replacing the last mile technology... there are millions of miles of copper out there and it isn't going anywhere soon. BT's 21cn replacment for example is going to take until 2011 to update their network (if on schedule, and AFAIK it's behind already), cost many hundreds of millions and *still* relies on copper for the last mile (it merely makes ADSL2 deployment easier). And most countries' networks aren't even coming close to that level of investment.

    If this means they'll be able to go to ADSL3 at 200Mb/s then I'm all for it.

  20. Re:Never happen... by udippel · · Score: 2, Informative

    A short one: Yes and No. It still stands, the numbers are still correct. That's the theoretical limit if you use the normal phone exchange(s), and the existing, limited, phone bandwidth (300-3400 Hz)

    ADSL, though, uses the spectrum above, and needs extra ports on the last phone exchange to your house, since - contrary to standard modem - these signals don't pass through the plain old telephone system. They are kind of injected at the very end.

  21. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  22. Re:Famous scam? by c0nehead · · Score: 2, Informative

    Adams platform.

    Also Australian. Who would have guessed it's an island full of criminals?

  23. Re:I hate "UP TO"... by mfnickster · · Score: 2, Funny

    > I hate "UP TO"...the most meaningless phrase in American Marketing.

    So, it would be safe to say you've had it "up to here" with the phrase...?

    --
    "Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
  24. Re:200 mbit/sec by Kingrames · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Reminds me of my own solution to the Gabriel's Horn problem.
    That's the "infinite surface area, finite volume" problem, if you needed to jog your memory.

    My teacher explained the paradox by saying that it would be like something that would take an infinite amount of paint to paint the inside of it, but it would be able to hold a finite amount of paint.

    I quickly pointed out that this was only true if paint were not made out of molecules. At some point, you can no longer put any more paint on the surface, because the molecules are too big to place there.

    Of course, if you were to ignore that fact, and only look at the mathematical side, I also pointed out that you could paint the surface of the horn with a single very thinly sliced proton.

    --
    If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.