Alcatel-Lucent Gives DSL Networks a Gigabit Boost

coondoggie writes "Alcatel-Lucent and Telekom Austria have completed the world's first trial of G.fast, new technology enabling gigabit broadband over existing copper networks. The technology is only intended for distances up to 100 meters or 0.06 miles. But at that distance and less it helps copper keep up with fiber." It works, says the linked article, "by continuously analyzing the noise conditions on copper lines, and then creates a new anti-noise signal to cancel it out, much like noise-canceling headphones."

Comments

A Cautionary Yay

[ackthpt]

Nobody's going to roll this out unless Google or another larger player starts rolling it out and making the existing 6 Mb/s connections unpalatable to consumers.

We'll probably see this in about 10 years.

Re:A Cautionary Yay

[smooth wombat]

Exactly. Why try to get the most out of something that's already bought and paid for when you can get something completely new and force people to either pay nearly usurious rates for slow speeds or go without.

Re:A Cautionary Yay

[Chuckstar]

Disagree. This is great for apartment buildings/complexes where running fiber to the buildings isn't the problem. It's running fiber within the buildings (to the individual units) that's expensive. Something like a third of Americans live in apartments, so a system that spans the last few hundred feet in apartments without needing to rewire buildings would definitely be a win.

Re:A Cautionary Yay

[bdwebb]

The fact of the matter is that the ancient cables are still there and if the addition of simple noise-cancelling can increase the copper speed to allow existing infrastructure to carry greater amounts of data, why is it a waste of resources? Ultimately it may be BETTER to run fiber, but it is almost never CHEAPER. This is especially the case in old buildings where ripping out concrete walls is not feasible or drilling through them to run fiber is not cost effective.

I doubt you'll ever hear an argument that you shouldn't run modern cabling no matter what decade we live in - the problem is that the money just isn't there most of the time to do so to replace infrastructure that is existing.

neat idea

[X0563511]

The noise-cancelling scheme sounds interesting. The hardest part though is figuring out what exactly is noise - so it sounds like they would have to either invert the intended signal to cancel it out on the path to the noise measurement, or they would have to periodically turn the signal off so they can get a clean measure.

Re:neat idea

[adolf]

My VDSL link from AT&T already does noise measurement. Buried inside of the web page for the magic box on my end, I can see a graph of what portions of its spectrum it is actually using.

Seems to work OK: There is a very neat notch which corresponds with a nearby AM broadcast tower.

Meanwhile, it doesn't have to turn off the entire signal all at once. Just parts of it. One end says "Hey, George, we're going to turn off 1.6MHz and look for noise there," and the other end says "OK Bob. Let's do it."

Or at least, that's one way. *shrug*

great announcement

[slashmydots]

Wow, so as long as you're in the same building as Alcatel Lucent, you're all set. You know, I think 802.11ac goes over 1 gigabit/s and reaches 100 meters on a good day. Maybe they should just go with that. I can't wait until fiber puts all these awful DSL companies out of business along with their ancient technology. AT&T really needs to go and TDS is pure evil too. Those are the big 2 around here. Time Warner's fiber backbone and 15 megabit coaxial-based internet for about $38/mo crushes them and yet some people are dumb enough to still go with AT&T and their legendary support and "pay 4x the value for your own modem up front and install it yourself" policy. You can actually get 50 megabit download speeds on a connection for under $100 around here too. Good luck with that, AT&T.

Re:great announcement

[hattig]

Most likely this will be used for the last 100 metres from the cabinet to the home, in a Fibre To The Cabinet (or Curb) scheme.

Yes, the article mentions this at the end.

Re:great announcement

[gl4ss]

Dude, this isn't going to reach from the cabinet, it'll have to be in a small box at the curb and at that point why bother, just run a piece of glass or plastic and have a network that will work for 25+ years instead of a 5 year stop-gap measure. To put this in perspective we run into 100m limitations within a single building, it often requires carefully planning where to place the IDF(s) to make sure that all drops are within the 100m length limit for ethernet, using this for a last mile solution is stupid.

well do you want to rewire an entire apartment block with ethernet or use this? that's what it pretty much boils down to.

Re:great announcement

[Chuckstar]

Why do so many comments in this thread assume everyone lives in a single-family home? In an apartment setting, it's huge cost savings to avoid having to rewire that last few hundred feet to the individual units.

What an improvement over gigabit ethernet!

[dills]

With gigabit ethernet, you can go 100 meters with cat6 wiring.

So, all this provides is the ability to use a single pair instead of two pair...at the expense of having equipment to terminate it at each end.

This has zero applications for delivering broadband. Nobody is within 100 meters of a DSLAM.

Re:What an improvement over gigabit ethernet!

[hattig]

Lots of people are within 100 metres of the cabinet however, in a FTTC scheme.

And perhaps this method also works to improve bitrate at longer distances too.

Probably doesn't matter

[MetricT]

The phone companies have long since proven they aren't going to make any further substantial investment in their copper networks, and are simply determined to milk them for as long as possible. They are in fact actively trying to shed their copper networks and go wireless, which has less regulation and higher profit margins.

The odds of AT&T/Verizon making a huge investment in technology that will be lucky to last a couple of years (fiber scales to 10 Gb fairly simply, and cable can probably get close with future revisions of DOCSIS), in a domain they are actively withdrawing from, is pretty much zero.

Re:Fiber to the curb

[Skarecrow77]

Those 17 people within 100 meters of the hub are going to be thrilled!

Re:So just a more expensive Gigabit Ethernet then

[Imagix]

Or the majority of an apartment building which already has twisted pair running to each suite.

Re:Why does DSL still exist

[scuzzlebutt]

I'm on 128k ISDN, you insensitive clod! :)

Re:Fiber to the curb

[davester666]

Great, now all the ads for DSL will be for "Up to 1 Gb/s download speed [tiny print]Actual speed will vary"

pointless

[Charliemopps]

I work with this kind of equipment. The problem isn't the last 100 feet... we've got tech that will do 100mb @ 30,000 feet relighably. If we could get that to people they'd be thrilled. The problem is the trunks leading to the DSAs. They cost upwards of a million dollars a pop to install, which is barely cost effective in city centers... but get out in rural areas where cable companies don't even bother to serve and you have as few as 12 people off a remote. Sorry, but that's only going to get 2 T1s feeding it if they're lucky. Gigabit speeds to and from equipment fed by a 3mb trunk is useless.

The real problem with broadband is the link between the CO and the remote. This goes for DSL and Cable. solve that problem and rural broadband will explode. Cable doesn't even have facilities in those areas so it would have to be over phone copper. Get gigabit speeds on 10+ miles of unshielded copper pairs... that's the goal. Good luck.