On Mon, 22 May 2000 12:44:30 -0700 James Newton writes: > The key point is.. again... AFTER the DSL end run reaches the CO, it > gets > shared with all the other DSL end runs from your neighborhood just > like the > Cable network does. Your connection to the "rest" of the internet is > no > faster and is no more immune from overload than the cable > connection. > Pacific Bell's ad is a lie, a damn lie, and I understand that they > are being > sued for it. > I see it as DSL just moving the bottleneck from one place to another. It'd be interesting to see a bps versus time of day graph for various multiplexing points on the net. How many minutes per day is the PacBell DSL access box at my local CO (and the "pipe from above") saturated (running at capacity)? At what point does the DSL provider put in a bigger pipe? This, of course, is just like plain old telephone service traffic management... But, it'd be interesting to see what it looks like. Similarly, how full is the pipe going to my local ISP? When do THEY order a bigger pipe? The CATV companies can increase their data capacity by doing a hybrid fiber/coax network where only a small neighborhood shares the bandwidth of the coax. This is the same as shrinking cellular telephone cell sizes as traffic increases. Eventually we might have a piece of coax going from the fiber mux to each individual house... Or maybe a separate fiber circuit to each house? On the DSL twisted pair side... DSL speed is limited largely by the distance from the CO. The phone company also doesn't try to cram 100 or more TV channels down the same wire like the CATV company does. If bandwidth from the CO to the subscriber starts to become a problem, they can do the same thing the CATV companies are doing... Run fiber out to the neighborhood and demux out to pairs to each subscriber. The've been doing similar statistical muxing of voice for quite a while as they run out of pairs from the neighborhood to the CO. Not everyone talks on the phone at the same time, so they can share some of those pairs amongst several subscribers... So... I have DSL at home and am quite satisfied with it. Here at work we're a bit far from the CO, so we're looking at CATV... Harold FCC Rules Online at http://hallikainen.com/FccRules Lighting control for theatre and television at http://www.dovesystems.com ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.