Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Alcatel-Lucent Boosts Copper Broadband To 100Mbps

Posted by timothy on from the faster-better dept.

Mark.JUK writes "Telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent has today become the first-to-market with VDSL2 Vectoring technology which, it claims, will push the top broadband internet access speeds of existing copper telephone lines over 100Mbps and without needing to bond multiple lines together. Vectoring is essentially a 'noise cancellation' method (similar, in principal, to the technology found in some headphones) that works to cancel out background noise / interference (i.e. crosstalk) and can thus boost performance and reach (coverage) by between 25% and 100%."

5 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. What about latency? by Hentes · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The biggest problem of copper is latency not bandwith.

    1. Re:What about latency? by Pharmboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The biggest problem of copper is latency not bandwith.

      In the consumer market, bandwidth sells, latency doesn't.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
    2. Re:What about latency? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There really is no difference in latency between copper and fiber. Fiber runs ~200km/sec which about 2/3 the speed of light. Copper is very similar. Switching equipment causes latency.

    3. Re:What about latency? by jpstanle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't know what planet you live on, but here on earth waves propagate through copper transmission lines at a speed on the order of about half the speed of light. The latency due to a copper cable with a .66 velocity factor over a 10km run is about .050 milliseconds. Considering the latency of the IP network that you're connected to is probably at least 50 ms to even the closest nodes, I doubt a 0.1% increase is going to bother you.

      The biggest problem of copper is not latency, it's that you have to lay the fucking cable.

  2. Re:Irrelevant? by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Copper is mainly used for last mile delivery not for backhaul. The majority of latency issues which come into play only if you're really a hardcore gamer are to do with routing and switching. Fibre does not fix this problem, actually it may make it worse as routers are purchased which provide more bandwidth with bigger buffers which further contribute to a the bufferbloat phenomenon which affects and degrades routing.

    Furthermore your typical ADSL connection to a local game server is 20-30ms. Unless you're the type of gamer who makes their primary career from p4wning n00bs, reducing this figure by 5ms isn't going to provide you with much of an advance. Not into games? What else is there? About the only other really low latency service (and by this I mean service where 20ms becomes significant) is supercomputing, and for grid projects likely to use home internet connections and consumer hardware this isn't an issue.

    So my question back to you: Why is it a problem? What are you hoping to fix?