Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
News

Iowa ISP Providing Digital Cable Over Twisted Pair 163

Posted by timothy from the options-options dept.
djweis writes: "An Iowa ISP is existing copper phone lines to provide digital cable and DSL access. More info is available here." If this catches on in other places too isolated for conventional broadband, it would sure make the map of telecommuting territory a lot larger.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Iowa ISP Providing Digital Cable Over Twisted Pair More

Iowa ISP Providing Digital Cable Over Twisted Pair

Comments Filter:

  • Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NiftyNews ( 537829 ) on Saturday February 02, 2002 @01:09PM (#2942198) Homepage
    Okay, raise your hand if you thought that this technology was vaoprware every time it popped into media focus every 6 months or so for the last 3 years.

    Color me impressed.

    • Re:Wow (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Roto-Rooter Man ( 520267 )
      Impressive, yes, but I wonder. Something like this doesn't seem too scalable. As more and more data gets pushed around the country, I'd rather have an infrastructure able to handle it, rather than forcing everything down 50 year-old copper wires.

      This could be a could method for getting cable out to rural areas, but in the end it really slows down the push to upgrade the country's telecommunications system with new and better hardware.

    • Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bofkentucky ( 555107 )
      It ain't vaporware, unless the truckload of nextlevel head-end equipment we unloaded Wednesday was all a dream. If you live in between and Louisville, KY and the Tennesse line on I-65 and you use one of the Co-ops Brandenburg Telephone [bbtel.com], Duo County [duocountytelephone.com], South Central [scrtc.com], North Central [nctc.com], or Logan telephone [logantele.com], and live within 19,000ft of the CO, you can get dsl, video, and phone over the same pair of copper that your telephone comes in on now.

  • SPELLING! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Max von H. ( 19283 ) on Saturday February 02, 2002 @01:12PM (#2942214)
    An Iowa ISP is existing copper phone lines to provide digital cable and DSL access.

    C'mon. If this sentence makes any sense, please tell me 'cause I've missed something.

    If /. wants credibility, its editors should at least consider proofreading their stories. Yeah, I know, you need a brain for that ;)

    /RANT

    /max
    • So I guess they shouldn't expect a christmas card from you huh?

      Of course someone with a brain would also realize the first line in the story was the submitter's real words, hence the quote marks. While I'm sure /. could have put in [trying to use] to make the sentence clearer, they are not obligated to. In fact, I know I would hate if they edited all of my submissions...

      And just so you know, /. has more credibility then they could ever need.

      </flame>

  • Glass Overrated? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Saturday February 02, 2002 @01:14PM (#2942232) Homepage Journal
    No, glass isn't overrated, but often overnecessary. We ran a backbone for at a college on copper and were already going what some consutant told us we could only do on fiber.


    A friend from HS has worked for a number of companies on products to get the most out of copper and another friend works for Pacbell and says, basically, the closer you live to the switch, the faster you can go. Not good news for rural folk, but copper is actually already pretty fast with the technology that can squeeze more out of it without the massive expense of running glass into everyone's house.

    • Copper is definitely cheaper. For a last mile solution, it will probably be the only feasible solution for the next 10-20 years. But for serious bandwidth, fiber is the way to go.
      I don't think there is anything to compare to Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) in the copper world.
      • Copper is definitely cheaper. For a last mile solution, it will probably be the only feasible solution for the next 10-20 years.

        Copper is cheaper because it is already there... The most expensive part of cabling is digging trenchs, errecting poles, etc. This is why so much effort has been spent in working out ways to send different signals down cable originally intended for telephones.
    • To the home, glass isn't the alternative to twisted pair, coaxial copper is. Coax still has better range than twisted pair (six-tenths of a mile is not that far). OTOH, twisted pair is cheap--and it's everywhre. Gotta love that.
      • Depending upon the qualities of the copper laid at the time and how it was routed and whether or not rats or anything have chewed on it, it can do pretty well. I'm about 1/4 mile from the switch, but something has gotten into the copper in this relatively new building and it's not the best.

        Oh, to be in a subdivision where they're laying the latest and greatest right now...

      • Coax still has better range than twisted pair

        That depends on a lot. If the maximum voltage you can put over the twisted pair is regulated by the FCC, then yes, you'll be able to push a signal farther down the coax.

        Meanwhile, the telephone companies have been running long haul T1 links for decades.

  • 6 tenths of a mile from neighborhood DSLAM? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Saturday February 02, 2002 @01:16PM (#2942239)
    That's about 3100 feet by my math. I think the need for so many "washing-machine sized boxes" may make the economics of this somewhat prohibitive in truly rural areas or even McMansion-style suburbs where you may only have 2-3 people within a 3100' radius.

    Anyone know what the topology requirements are like for CATV+Cablemodem schemes? I'd presume more restrictive than vanilla analog with periodic amplifiers, but is it as tough as a 3100' radius?
    • The typical RF cable network requires 2-way amplifiers and can span about a 1 mile radius from the fiber->rf conversion node. And our equipment isn't washing machine sized - it can be lashed to the cable itself.
      • The typical RF cable network requires 2-way amplifiers and can span about a 1 mile radius from the fiber->rf conversion node.

        I was under the impression that the span of an RF cable TV data link was limited more by the attenuation and the noise level than by cable distortion.

        So to a large extent it's the number of splitter ports and house drops, plus a smaller contribution from the radius of the cable, that is the critical factor.

        This would mean that equipment which produces a one-mile radius segment in an urban area might produce a much larger segment in a rural area. You wouldn't get QUITE the same number of houses when they're a tenth of a mile apart as when they're almost touching. But you wouldn't be limited to a half-dozen houses per conversion node, either.

        Now I could be wrong for particular RF cable tech. (For instance, some products might not be able to handle the increased time delay without losing their collision control.) But I'd expect that in general the selective-and-otherwise attenuation in the cabling would be compensated in the normal manner and the amplifiers, so the branch could be extended in rural areas until the noise ate the return signal.

        • I was under the impression that the span of an RF cable TV data link was limited more by the attenuation and the noise level than by cable distortion

          I thought that this was the same thing - the cable propagates different frequencies at different speeds - hence the distortion, but this is more correctly termed attenuation. Better cable gives more range and better shielding combats noise.

    • When a company I was with in Calgary, Alberta, Canada was rolling out DSL a few years back, they ran into an interesting problem:
      The local telco would not play nice, and would not let us co-locate in a given neighbourhood c.o.. (Seems our new technology was going to seriously undercut their $$$ T1 and ATM business. Go figure.)

      The solution? We bought HOUSES near the c.o. for our equipment! (This was technically inelegant because it added to the loop-length, but it was cool because they gave rent-free housing to select staff).
      So, local regulations and big telco helpfulness can have a big impact on the economics of a DSL-type rollout.
      .
    • The 'washing machine sized boxes' are remote cabinets. Each of these contain rectifiers, batteries for power backup, and the DSLAM. The copper plant was already in existence. The new expense involves running fiber to these cabinets and some rearrangement of copper plant to terminate into the cabinet. A similar expense is incurred by CATV/coaxial systems. The higher bandwidths required for digital channels and more 2-way communications limits the number of coax amplifiers that can be in tandem. A traditional CATV company must run fiber optic cable further into its plant, not unlike what this telephone company had to do. Also, limiting the coaxial distribution to one amplifier makes the coaxial serving area only 2 or 3 blocks square, so 3100 feet doesn't appear so bad. The DSL solution also allows standard telephones to work without having to go through additional boxes that may have to be powered by the customer. I have personally looked at most of the local loop alternatives. One of the biggest obstacles that always comes up is the electronics required; how much it costs and how to power it. The fiber to the home solution offers the most bandwidth, but is limited by the cost of electronics and the powering options. In this solution the customer almost certainly must provide the power for their equipment and including backup means that it must include an UPS that the customer would be responsible for. Service providers would be cautious about being responsible for all those remote UPS systems. Fiber to the curb shortens the length of copper (twisted pair or coax) but actually makes the powering scenario more complicated. It is not cost-effective to run AC power to every pedestal and powering from a remote cabinet requires parallel copper as well as fiber to the pedestal. This solution also places a large load on the battery plant at a remote cabinet. These batteries now have to power remote equipment and the resistive loss of the copper plant feeding the remote electronics increases load to the point that one entire cabinet may have to be devoted to housing batteries. Of course, one could take the approach of some CATV companies and not provide backup power. In a competitive environment, this could be a mistake. Another issue that always must be a consideration is whether the provider is incumbent, or a new entry. The existing assets must be considered, as well as the skill sets currently in place in that company. Since every one of these architectures has its trade-offs it is hard that only one solution is optimal. The service offerings that a provider wants to deliver is also an important consideration and the main reason why there are pros and cons for each. As a closing note to my comments, the solution that Clear Lake Telephone Company chose probably makes very good sense for them. They no doubt could have lowered their cost by using an ADSL solution giving them greater range, but would have had to delay their market entry as the technologies needed for an ADSL solution slightly lag the VDSL solution (thus the 3100 feet). Although more costly, it also gives them a bit of future proofing against new requirements. Transporting an HDTV signal, for example. Since an ADSL solution cannot carry even one HDTV channel, VDSL capability would have to be added.

  • Distance limitation? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bunyip ( 17018 )
    To receive the service, homes must be no farther than sixth-tenths of a mile from the neighborhood box.

    That's not very far.

    I live in town (Southlake, TX) and can't get DSL, can't get a modem to work at more than 28.8. Too far from the phone switch. The only consolation is the cable company, now if they could only define customer service.

    • "That's not very far."

      6/10 of a mile is plenty for neighborhood boxes. How large do you think neighborhoods are here in Iowa? (That's where I'm from). Clear Lake is by no means a large town.

  • Well the TV part is fairly uninteresting. It's easier just to get satellite. And broadband internet over copper lines - isn't that what my adsl is using right now?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by PtM2300 ( 546277 )
      A local ISP in hickville, Wisconsin also carries this service, and has been doing so for quite some time. Find out more at http://home.wctc.net/dsl/index.html

  • Old news (Score:5, Informative)

    by debrain ( 29228 ) on Saturday February 02, 2002 @01:18PM (#2942251) Journal
    New Brunswick, Canada, has a phone company, nbtel (www.nbtel.nb.ca) that has offered digital cable television over twisted copper pair for a couple years now. (They call it Vibe Vision, an extension of Vibe, their DSL service) The biggest drawback to the deployment of this technology in Canada is the retroactive laws and regulations of the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission) which is, to say the least, behind the times. Nevertheless, this is as much news from a technological perspective as USB, unless you're confined to an American analysis.

    (Not to sound inflammitory, but 'tis true.)

    • Actually, the biggest drawback to VibeVIsion is you can only have it on a maximum of two televisions in your home at once. This is due to the bandwidth restrictions of current DSL.

    • "CRTC (Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission)"

      And there was me thinking "CRTC" stood for Commision for Restrictions and Thought Control.
      • And there was me thinking "CRTC" stood for Commision for Restrictions and Thought Control.

        Actually, to quote the old Air Farce gag, it's the rt. And it you say the CRTC has no cents, that's what we've been saying all along. :-]
    • Actually NBtel falls under the Aliant [aliant.ca] umbrella, and Aliant is rolling out VibeVision [vibevision.com] in Nova Scotia and NB currently.

      In Halifax NS, we have two full-featured high-speed choices: telephone, television and Internet over DSL, or the same combination over cable. Whatever works best for you.

  • Say what you want about the midwest... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by brink ( 78405 ) <jwarner@cs.iuSTRAWsb.edu minus berry> on Saturday February 02, 2002 @01:24PM (#2942272) Homepage
    and Iowa in particular, but I am consistently amazed by the technology that one can find in various parts of that state. You think (or at least I tend to think) of that region as being relatively podunk and booney-ish, but you get stuff like this and it really strikes me as incongruous with the image of the midwest as being "just farms and stuff."

    For example, Cedar Falls did something along the lines of running fiber around the entire city, installing various access points, and providing dsl (or maybe it was cable) as a municipal service. Then there was that old slashdot story about using grain silos as wireless repeaters and such. Furthermore, I just discovered that my home town of Readlyn, Iowa (population ~900 (yes, nine hundred)) now seems to have 640k/640k dsl for $50/month!

    Personally, I think it's fantastic that this state seems to have this very forward-thinking attitude to technology, in general.

    Go Iowa!

    • Are you kidding? What do you think people do when they're not farming? They watch satellite TV and surf the 'net!
    • I live in Iowa, just outside the city of Davenport (part of the Quad Cities, big area).

      Maybe I haven't seen the parts of Iowa that actually have decent technology, but Davenport seems pathetic. The thing that really annoys me, is we've got Cable, DSL, and recently 2.4Ghz Wireless, but they're all IN town.

      I don't understand the logic in putting wireless in an area that can currently get cable or DSL, and yet theres large places outside of town (near my house) that only can manage 26.4k dialup.

      Then again, satellite is another option but I've never heard one good thing about it (latency and all, ack).

      A few months ago Iowa Farm Bureau sent out letters announcing that FB members could get low cost high-speed internet access.. two months later, turns out its 56k dialup for $15/month.

      Maybe I'm just ignorant but I'm starting to hate this state, any attempt to advance in technology and everyone tries to fight it because it will cost them an extra $1 a year in taxes.
      • the people of your state don't want to foot the bill for you to get the infrastructure to get high speed internet access. Perhaps you can afford it if you organize enough customers near your house to be able to afford a wireless relay.
        Blaming the state for not wanting to plunder its residents to aide you is irrational; there isn't much gain to the majority by making high speed internet more common where most people don't live.
      • Maybe I haven't seen the parts of Iowa that actually have decent technology, but Davenport seems pathetic. The thing that really annoys me, is we've got Cable, DSL, and recently 2.4Ghz Wireless, but they're all IN town.

        What's the topography like between you and the wireless head-end in Davenport? Do you have line-of-sight to it from, say, a tower or roofmount at your location?

        If so, go get a 24 DB 2.4g dish and mount it high enough to "see" the head-end. Then borrow a townie friend's box or sweet-talk an installer long enough to check whether you can "hear" it. If it works, subscribe!

        Or just skip the hardware hacking and ASK the ISP if they can hit your location from their base, perhaps with an optional oversize antenna at your end, as part of their normal service.
        • Ah, I forgot to mention I live in a geographical hole. They came out to my house and stuck an antenna up 30 feet in the sky, apparently they got no signal.. :(

          Klowner
          • Ah, I forgot to mention I live in a geographical hole. They came out to my house and stuck an antenna up 30 feet in the sky, apparently they got no signal.. :(

            Are there other buildings nearby in the direction opposite the head end that aren't in the hole? You can use those as mirrors - especially with a high-gain directional antenna.

            If not, you can always install a tower taller than the hole is deep. B-) If the budget and zoning don't prohibit. B-(
    • my home town of Readlyn, Iowa (population ~900 (yes, nine hundred)

      Isn't Readlyn the town with a sign that says

      Population: 899 smiling faces and 1 grouchy old bastard

      Betcha the grouchy old bastard is the business man that dreamed up the goldmine of a captive audience that will pay for high speed Internet access because there sure ain't much else to do in Readlyn. :)

      Re: Cedar Falls Utilities' high speed Internet service, the reviews that I've heard basically lean towards 'CFU is finding out that apparently high speed Internet is slightly more complicated than electricity'...IOW, relatively dismal.

      However, I'm with you all the way on inventive attitudes in rural small towns. Iowa Network Services (mentioned in this article) was my first dialup provider in my hometown, in conjunction with the rural telephone cooperative (that's their gimmick). But they're about 6 years too late to bring digital cable and high speed 'net to my hometown. When I moved away in '96, 7 Mbps cable and digital cable had been available for a few months. This is in a town of ~5000 people.

      The trick is, if you have a small enough town, everybody's 3100 ft from the CO. :-P Or at least maybe a reasonable distance for typical SDSL. Eat your hearts out, suburbia.

      Now, if they could just do something about the unforgiving subzero winters and annoyingly hot and humid summers...
      • You are correct! Well, almost. This is the actual sign: http://www.thom.org/gallery/signs/IARLreadlyn/ [thom.org] I think the grump died a few years ago, actually.

        And you're right. There isn't much else to do there... you can only cruise the 0.5 mile strip so many times, you know. After that it's basically drinking or watching television.

        As far as Cedar Falls goes, I hadn't heard that it was sucking. I ran into a friend last year who had it and he was really enjoying it. That's sad that things are sort of goin' downhill.

        My mom and brother are still using NetINS for their dialup. They are so ready for dsl, it isn't funny. Small town CO distances rock!

      • I am the Network Administrator for the Cedar Falls Utilities "CyberNet" service. Thanks dirtkilla for the props!

        I think that we are doing a pretty good job here in Cedar Falls. We started this system using first generation cable data products and ran into a lot of problems in the beginning. We think that we have it figured out now though. Sure, it is more difficult than electricity, but then everything is more difficult than electricity. I'm sure that by the time data communications is as old as electrical delivery is now, it will be as, if not more, stable.

        We are continuing to invest in our infrastructure (this includes the Residential service, the Business service, and our 60+ miles of our own fiber backbone within the city).

        Before we started our telecommunications utility, the only providers in town were dialup (TCI had 36 channels of cable TV). We built our network - competively priced our services. We aren't in it to make a profit - but to make sure that we can keep financing our operations and offer additional services for our customers.

        If you are a customer of CFU - and you are having problems - let us know! We pride ourselves on our service which we feel is far better than Mediacom. Most problems can be resolved same day or next. You don't have to wait a week to get a service tech if you have our services :)

    • When smaller is better (Score:3, Insightful)

      by swb ( 14022 )
      There was an article in the Minneapolis paper a few years ago (when even ISDN availability in big cities was sketchy) about how advanced many small towns and rural communities were in terms of telecomm infrastructure. One of the examples given was a 2 or 3 location drugstore business that had high speed data connectivity between all the stores for inventory, POS and billing systems at a rate a small-town business could afford.

      The reason? Small-time telcos didn't have the big-time infrastructure, economics and profitability issues that big time telcos did in providing services like this. There are some economic constraints (probably cost-prohibitive to extend a lot of technologies to dwellings outside of towns), but the local guys could react and add services much faster than the big boys.

      Makes me wonder what would happen if you could buy a telco exchange in a populated area from a major carrier and make it a stand-alone phone company. You could potentially offer newer services because you weren't having to overcome the central infrastructure inertia that the big ILECs have to deal with.
    • One thing that helps Iowa out is that it has not one but *three* high speed infrastructures. INS built one, the government built another (on the grounds that it would connect schools and government offices; Iowans are big on education). I can't recall who has the third network (anyone?). These networks were built by people who didn't really talk to each other and as a result there is a lot of bandwidth to be had in Iowa.

      I'm told that McLoed USA got their start in Cedar Rapids, IA by obtaining the use of one of these networks early at really cheap rates and running telephone calls through it.

      Another thing to consider is that Iowa has more local telephone cooperatives than every other state in the US combined. At the end of the article it is claimed that this technology probably works best for smaller telephone companies; on the basis of this statement Iowa seems like an ideal place for its adoption.

      • Hmmm...I'm in/from Iowa...Iowa City...
        I remember when the trucks came through and around the smaller town I came from that were running fiber...Somehow, I thought "being connected" would have happened sooner....Most of that fiber hasn't been lit yet, though, so I moved to a bigger city...

        ...Now here I am in a college town on a fairly limited cable line, whilst meanwhile, in the small town I grew up in, the local Power company has basically put the cable company out to pasture by opening up their own Cable tv and internet service... My dad picked up the service with a small computer I built for him...And CRIMINEY! He gets Stellar Bandwidth, and doesn't even know what to do with it!

        At any rate, yah...in the smaller towns, people have a tendency to DO this stuff that would cost mega-bucks in a bigger city....It's kinda nice...I mean, who would think of building a trebuchet in their backyard in Chicago? (Yes- you can get away with that kind of thing here!)
    • I used to work at that very ISP while in college, Cedar Falls Utilities [cfu.net]. They offer cable modem access on an entirely Linux system, along w/ the traditional utilities services. Props to my old boss/sysadmin that got me into Linux.
    • Indeed. I graduated from a small high school in SE Iowa, by Iowa City. 400 kids, K-12, all told. And the school has had a T3 and two T1's since 1996. What does the school do with those pipes? Not much of anything. They just sit and collect dust while the school board wonders why it is that the budget is always shoestring. But, yeah, Iowa does usually have pretty damn good internet technology, unless you're in the Quad Cities area. I'm going to school in Sioux City now and I can tracert to my high school in four hops. That's pretty quick, and its all fibre from my desk to the router. Who could complain? Mr Jonathan Green Esq

  • Suburban technology - only 0.6 mile is copper (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday February 02, 2002 @01:28PM (#2942290) Homepage
    The system used by Clear Lake and Iowa Network requires high-capacity fiber optic cable to get the cable TV signal to Clear Lake, where it's sent to more than 80 washing-machine size boxes in neighborhoods.
    ...
    To receive the service, homes must be no farther than sixth-tenths of a mile from the neighborhood box.

    This sounds like a "fibre to the hub" scheme. There have been a number of systems like this proposed, but the technology hasn't been popular because you have to install those "washing-machine boxes" all over the place, then rewire the whole outside plant to connect to them. DSL is an easier retrofit from a telco perspective.

    It's not at all clear what the best way to architect the outside plant of the future is? Copper from the CO to the home? Fibre from the CO to the home? Fibre from the CO to neighborhood routers, then coax to the home? Fibre from the CO to neighborhood routers, then fibre to the home? Fibre from the CO to neighborhood routers, then twisted pair to the home? All of those have been tried.

    And remember, all that outside stuff has to work under all weather conditions, during commercial power failures, and stay working for decades.

  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this exactly the technology needed to support video-on-demand? The only addition the phone companies would need is 50,000 VCRs (or more likely a digital equivalent).
    • Who needs 50000 VCRs when you can store all these movies on Hard drive? All the phone company has to do is setup a terabyte+ storage solution clusters and store the videos on there digitally. If it were on vcrs, then only one person could watch a movie at a time. But digital video solution allows random access allowing more people to watch.

    • No (Score:3, Informative)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )

      In TV over DSL, the channels are multicast. This saves a MASSIVE amount of bandwidth on the backplane of the network, and the servers that output the channels. For example, the NBC server has to output only one NBC stream, for 5000 customers. This is all at around 3 Mbps. Now say just 20 people want to watch Star Wars on a given night, using VOD (Video on Demand). Since its VOD, they won't all be choosing to start the movie at the exact same time, so you're running 20 seperare 3 Mbps streams, for a total of 60Mbps. Now multiply that by 10 for the 10 other movies you ar eoffering this month, and you'll see the traffic demands start going through the roof. And also don't forget you have to maintain regular TV at the same time.

      The problem with VOD isn't storage, thats simple. Its the bandwidth required for delivery to X customers at once.

      • The problem with VOD isn't storage, thats simple. Its the bandwidth required for delivery to X customers at once.

        I was under the impression that copper wires used dedicated bandwidth from the CO to the house. Is this not the case?

      • Now say just 20 people want to watch Star Wars on a given night, using VOD (Video on Demand). Since its VOD, they won't all be choosing to start the movie at the exact same time, so you're running 20 seperare 3 Mbps streams, for a total of 60Mbps.

        Why not fix VOD to 15 minute intervals for stuff that's high demand? that way, you have a maximum of about 8 concurrent streams for a given movie.

  • dsl (Score:1, Redundant)

    by djroute66 ( 43321 )
    Maybe I didn't get enough sleep last night...

    But DSL is just a twisted pair using already existing copper wire, on old telephone infastructure, so this is nothing new.

    Maybe the digital cable part is new, but not the DSL part.

  • Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)

    by HunterZ ( 20035 )
    I knew someone who lived out in an outlying community who could get excellent connect speeds on his 56k modem due to mostly-copper wiring between him and the phone company. Myself, who lived in town, couldn't even get 28.8kbps most of the time due to the numerous conversions that the data was forced to go through due to sloppy design by USWest/Qwest. I'm so glad I'm spoiled by a shared T1 nowadays, or else I might still be pulling my hair out (my brother, who still lives there, finally got cable modem from AT&T, who bought out our local cable company a few years back - ironically giving us the choice between Phone Company A for DSL and Phone Company B for Cable!)
  • I admit I don't know everything about datacom, but how is this different from DSL?

    Is the video compressed to MPG and then uncompressed by the cable box?

    I thought there was a limit to the amount of traffic on copper due to attenuation and cross talk?

    And what is the effective bandwidth of the connection?

    I guess I'm looking for a more technical description of the how and what. Can anyone provide?

    • Re:How is this different than DSL? (Score:4, Informative)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <[slashdot] [at] [keirstead.org]> on Saturday February 02, 2002 @02:07PM (#2942475)

      Yes, our ISP here in NB Canada has been running digital TV over DSL for 2 years now. You use a digital set top box, simmilar to cable. I worked there for a time and this is how it works. The TV streams are encoded into MPEG-2 at the head end of the ISP, and sent over DSL to your set top box, where they are decoded and displayed. One channel uses around 2.5 - 4Mbps, which is well within the 6-7 Mbps limit for a 2 km DSL loop. The channels are multicasted over the TCP network to minimize bandwidth needs throughout the city. When you change channels, the set top sends a IGMP join request to join the multicast stream for that particular channel, so you only recieve one MPEG stream at a time. The downside is, because you only have 6-7 Mbps to work with, you can only have a maximum of two set tops in your house at the moment, though they are working on new compression technologies and DSL technologies ot get this up to three.

    • Bandwidth for DSL is indeed limited due to attenuation and xtalk, but the attenuation is correlated to line length. So, if you lived next-door to the CO, you might be able to get 12 Mbs, 9 Mbs if you were a mile away, 7 Mbs at two miles, 2 Mbs at 3 miles, etc.

      What they are doing here is two things:

      1) The data channel: Taking adavantage of the fact that the line is somewhat capacitive, and thus acts a low-pass filter. This means that lower freqequency bins will have a higher signal-to-noise ratio, meaning that they can carry more data without incurring errors. These bits in these low-freq. bins can be used to form a channel with little or no forward error correction, thus keeping the latency down, making it suitable to use for web-surfing, ICQ, and Counter-Strike.

      2) The video channel: Common sense says that latency isn't a concern with video. You're not intertacting with it in bi-directional manner, so it really doesn't matter whether you get the image 16ms or 512ms after it was formed on the other side.

      But we do need bandwidth. In this case, the high-frequency bins, which normally couldn't carry (as) much data length without incurring errors, can be used to carry the video channel. Since latency, as explained above, doesn't matter, gobs of forward error correction can be applied. This forward-error correction can be translated into extra dB of SNR, since if there is an error, it can always be corrected so long as certain criteria, adhering to the work of Claude Shannon ,are met. With this mystical extra SNR (coding gain), more data than usual can be encoded into these high-frequency bins, witht the expectation that any errors will be corrected and that nobody really cares what the latency of their TV is.

      Technical enough? :)

      Tim
  • According to PacBell, this was the reason that DSL was created in the first place. Interesting that it took this long to be used for what is was intended...
  • Well being able to pay my phone, broadband internet access and cable services on one bill already exists and it's called "AT&T". Just a reminder of what may turns wrong.
  • I know TELUS in Alberta tried providing cable service. They even had given prototype boxes out to a test group of subscribers (including the internet help desk, that's how I know.) It was a great picture, but they had so many problems and lack of interest that the shut it down.

    Plus, I don't think this would expand the telecommunication territory. The Digital Cable add-on to the DSL line does not help the fact that if you are too far away from the central office, you still can't get a strong enough signal for DLS to be useful. I would suggest they fix that first before tackling digital cable, because frankly cable companies are kicking ass over both issues.

  • The future control of television lies here.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Saturday February 02, 2002 @01:48PM (#2942391) Homepage Journal
    Bye bye Tivo...

    If the cable provider stores every show, every movie, and all that on their end, and only streams into everyone's bandwidth whatever end users are requesting, you won't really need much at your end, not even a scheduled guide.

    That's how VOD will end up working. Targeted ads, the ability to queue up a movie in 1/2 hour or less, and allow others to watch it... Even download entire movies to a Tivo like receiver at your end.

    The upside of this is smaller shows that don't have a wide audience DO have the capacity to keep living if enough of an audience is willing to "pay-per-view" the show. I know a few shows I would love to have paid $5 or so a month for to keep alive, but because of bandwidth limitations, they would never have stayed on the air. Ideas like this will lead to a better programming structure I hope...

  • Uh, well, the map of telecommuting territory also requires a boss and/or company that understands one can manage software projects without physically watching people - sadly, too many managers come from the school of packers, and there are far too few mappers out there...software is not an assembly line.

    I have had broadband access for 2.5 years now, and I have yet to have a manager that would allow me to work from home. One manager at the last company (a complete dolt) came just shy of firing someone who said they would be working from home while their house was getting painted...the boss claimed that only hours worked at the office can count for any hours on a timesheet. Another time I was at a client where all the project managers consistently worked from home (laughable - they were all terribly incompetent, incompetency ran rampant at this client like no one's business - if I didn't witness some of the things I saw myself, there's no way I'd believe it if someone else told me it happened at a place they worked) and very rarely, in bad weather, would let their FTE's work from home - but NEVER, EVER their consultants. Needless to say, both of these companies are struggling to just keep their doors open right now, so maybe there is something to old assembly-line type management techniques vs. management that software is best done in - I think Peopleware should be required reading for anyone doing any software management at all.

  • DSL and cable tv (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sitturat ( 550687 )
    DSL is intended to run over our normal (existing) copper telephone lines (when the telcos roll it out in a big way).

    Optical fibre to the home is overkill. Copper can provide enough bandwidth for services like VoD and voice calls running simultaneously.

    So these people have cable tv and telephone service from 1 copper line? At least someone is using available tech to its maximum potential.
    • Optical fibre to the home is not overkill.

      For starters, fiber is cheaper than copper. Way cheaper. Cheaper than dirt, one might say: the expensive part about servicing homes is the digging required to bury the line.

      For that reason alone, most telcos are installing fiber to new homes. It costs bugger-all to toss it in the trench along with the copper, and provides them insurance that if they ever need it, it's there.

      That's not overkill: that's smart planning.

      • fiber is cheaper than copper

        This is a fairly extreme claim. Do you have anything to back this up?

        • The cost of fiber to the home was on-par with copper two years ago. [kmicorp.com] It can only have become cheaper since then.

          And I'm talking about laying dark fiber. No need to connect at either end: just the raw cost of the fiber itself, tossed in a trench that's being dug for the connected copper anyway. When the time comes that the fiber is needed, it's there, and it cost bugger-all compared to the cost of digging new trenches.

          • Since you base your claim on the cost being dominated by digging costs, I'd say that they cost the same - 2% or something. The problem is that the equipment is fairly expensive, fiber is touchy to deal with, and you probably won't need fiber to the home, ever.

            • Look, go do the research yourself, then. The equipment isn't any more expensive than with copper: that's why the article says the costs are on-par. And fiber isn't touchy to deal with: all the splicing issues were resolved eons ago, and a trained monkey could now do the work.

              In British Columbia, the local telco monopoly (Telus) has been laying parallel fiber to new homes for at least five years. In the USA, I'd be surprised if a single telco has had that amount of foresight: American telephony is always a good decade behind Canadian telephony.
  • NBTel has offered this service (called VibeVision) with their DSL service for quite some time now.

    Please see the following sites for more information:
    NBTel VibeVision [nbtel.nb.ca]
    iMagic TV, the company that developed the technology to do this [imagictv.com]

  • Old news ?? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Darkboy23 ( 556059 )
    Almost all DSL (actually ADSL) in the UK, is used over twisted pair (ie conventional) copper wiring.
    I've never even heard of anyone getting this over optic fibre, and alwats assumed it was the same in America (I guess I was wrong).
    I'm writing this over a BT (British Telecommunications (http://www.btopenworld.com/broadband/) ADSL line which gives 512Kbits/sec download and (on average) about 150Kb/sec upload (This is the 'A' in ADSL - assymetric), this costs me about £40/month (not cheap) - that's about $70.
    For more cash I can get download speed of 2Mbits/sec (!!) over the same old copper wire.
    Only prerequisites are:
    1) Your local exchange must be a modern digital exchange (rather than analogue) 2) You must be within 2 miles of the exchange (or was it 3?)
    All the engineer had to do when it was installed was to rewire from the front door (where the line comes in) to where the computer is (and this is only because the ADSL modem has a different shaped connector I believe) - then phone the exchange to get the techy there to flick a switch.
    This has been available for at least a couple of years now, and is pretty much mainstream.
    So this article isn't really news I'm afraid.
  • Well isn't this what Robert X. Cringely [pbs.org] was talking about in this [pbs.org] article?
  • I'm tempted to call them up, just to see if the receptionist either rattles off that mouthful or has the balls to say "Thank you for calling CLITCO, how may I direct your call?"
    • I seriously doubt you will get anybody in Clear Lake to say "clit." That small town is filled with insurance salesmen, bankers, and lawyers. I wouldn't expect to hear "clit" from any of the people in these professions. Although, it would be pretty cool if Johnny Cochran were to defend a client using the line "If the clit doesn't fit, you must aquit."

      By the way, Clear Lake (the lake) is pretty dirty, despite its name. But, it is maybe the only place in Iowa where you can operate a sailboat (thus the reason there are a lot of lawyers, bankers, and insurance salesmen). That is why, if you ever go to Clear Lake, you will see that every building in the town has at least one sailboat painted on it; you would think the town invented the fucking things.
      • What a fucking idiot! everybody knows that it is "acquit" not "aquit." Mod the above post down!!!
      • Excuse me while I beat you with a clue stick. He said call the receptionist. Receptions isn't exactly the same as an insurance salesman, banker, or lawyer. Regardless, if you doubt it that much, I'll drive the 10 miles to Clear Lake, and say 'CLIT CLIT CLIT' for ya.
      • Clear Lake is the only place you can have a sailboat? Oh no! Somebody call up the Okoboji Chamber of Commerce!!!

        Iowa makes the Slashdot front page -- isn't that one of those harbingers of the end of the world?

        Seriously, though, there's lots of boating in Okoboji and Spirit Lake and Storm Lake and several hundred man-made lakes all over the state.

        The local telcos have done lots with fiber -- they only have to wire a few thousand homes, and if they're replacing the infrastructure anyway... Makes for a very nice setup, if you can afford $50/mo. for DSL or cable (which is the big issue in widespread adoption of high-speed Net access in Iowa).
    • Actually us locals refer to them as CLtel. www.cltel.net

  • 'normal' phone wire is NOT necessarily twisted pai (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The title of the story needs to be changed. Most phone wire is straight, not twisted. Twisted pair wire can handle much more data than non-twisted. (remember physics?)

    Not that I'm a network engineer persay, but if you don't believe me, pull off your phone jack cover.
    • MOD PARENT UP!

      Normal phone lines aren't usually twisted. The word "twisted" does not appear in the original article. Who knows from where timothy got the idea that the lines were "twisted"?

      This is not some trifling detail -- there is a *big* difference between twisted and straight pairs at the distances phone lines typically cover. If this tech requires pulling new twisted-pair copper, then it's not very useful.
      • Telephone cables are twisted, from category 1 on up. There may not be much twist, but it's there.
      • OK, so apparently I need to take some or most of that back because the phone companies have been busy installing twisted-pair for some time (and adding more twists per foot).

        On the other hand, I looked in the basement and the feed into my old building (where it connects on an old wiring block to rubber-insulated wires) is definitely not twisted (or not twisted much), which explains all those voices on the line. Maybe it connects to twisted-pair outside, though.

        Maybe someone who actually works in the industry (and is not an armchair idiot like me) can set the record straight (or twisted) before I dig myself into too deep a hole.
        • You're not completely wrong. Real old copper was not twisted by design. There is a bunch of it out there still being used today. Think trunks. Bundles of 'pairs' but each pair was not twisted. You could have cables with hundreds of 'pairs', but all of the wires inside would be parallel to each other.
  • I've had cable over phone lines for about a year and a half.

    The 'box' has an incoming DSL line, an ethernet port, and 3 RF tv outputs to feed the TVs (plus SVideo and SPDIF for the 'main' tv). There are three UHF remotes that can be used anywhere in the house.

    The system is made by Next Level Communications for Qwest. It's ok, but a little sensitive to signal quality (read: any large electrical applicance in the house causes a small mpeg blip on the tv)

    The internet service is 256kbs or 1Mbs if you pay more. You don't get a choice of ISP.... it's Qwest or the highway.

    I wish I owned the box and could get info on the DSL protocols so that I could make my own PVR. The MPEG streams to the box are of good quality. The RF outputs quality is less than stellar. I guess that's just wishfull hacking ;)

  • SBC and the rest will effectively thwart this type of product on any large scale deployment.

    Fact remains, Judge Green *gave* the infrastructure to the 9 baby bells in 1984. They have combined into 3 incestuous bells and two waiting to be consumed. They won't sell cooper, period!

    Until the politicians are removed from soft money contributions, the former-baby-bells-now-big-bells will be able to stop competition and access to the local infrastructure.
  • Somebody tell the fucking-DMR that not everybody runs their fucking-browser at fucking-640 x fucking-480. FUCK!! Scroll, scroll, scroll scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, if they'd just let the text flow, it'd wrap to my window size. FUCK!! I hate that.
  • The tail end of the article mentions that subscribers can't be any more than six-tenths of a mile from the "box", which I take to mean a remote terminal of some sort. In that sense, what Clear Lake is doing is not that different from the remote terminal initiatives of the telcos. And, really, if you are only working with 3K feet of clean (i.e., no BTs or load coils) copper, a DSL connection could get pretty close to its theoretical max of 8Mbps, which is probably just enough to carry voice, data, and compressed video. I won't vouch for the quality of the video, though. :)
  • in 1992 I was working in Arlington, Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C. Anyway MCI was having a test in my neighborhod so I signed up. Hey I wanted the free T-shirt. Anyway for one month I had a new telephone socket installed and a new type of "cable box". For one month I had over 400 channels of cable TV and normal phone service (although it had so cool features that are commonplace today).

    I only got to keep if for 30 days and then they stopped the test. This was before the whole cable/phone companies legal battles. At that time I guess they were allowed to test but then they sent a letter ending the test and explaining that they would not be offering the service in the near future.

    Anyway I cannot believe that the technology is finally getting to see the light of day.

    P.S.: Back in '92 NO INTERNET was offered.

  • The reality of telecommuting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Saturday February 02, 2002 @03:37PM (#2942814) Journal
    This technology won't affect telecommuting much. High speed internet access has had _some_ effect, but not nearly as much as you might think. Basically, it seems to get chopped down like this:

    1) Consider the number of people whose jobs can effectively be done remotely.
    2) Take the subset of those people who (a) want to telecommute, and (b) honestly know (or believe) that they can effectively work from home.
    3) Take from that group, the further subset who have managers which will _let_ them work from home.

    There are not nearly as many people who fall into category (1) as we're led to believe. Most of us need some sort of day to day interaction to get our jobs done. The number of people who meet all three criteria are remarkably small. If technology triples the number of people who have the potential to work from home, it's not going to make a substantial increase in the percentage of people who actually do so. It's more of a societal and work-structure cause, rather than a technological limitation.
  • I drive through Clear Lake every day on my way to work, funny to see that it made it onto /. Now.. the funny part is, this is just like Iowa news. "We've got the LATEST tech-toys out there", "State of the art", and "Brand new technology", well, they left out the part that Iowa is ghetto, and the only thing that makes it new is that its new to Iowa! Dur.. Anyways, enough bashing my home. Its funny though, I've watched mediacom bust their butts all winter to drop fiber into the ground, and now they get some real competition.
    • I don't know about that- having grown up near Clear Lake. Simply put, it is easier installing the infrastructure in a relatively large state with maybe 2 million people. It is cheaper dropping 100 miles of fiber through rural farmland than 2 miles through downtown (major US City). We had cable decades before a city like DC... the other issue was the nearest NBC was 70 miles away in smalltown IA.

  • My usual standpoint: Fibre optics is the only way to go!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The news about Clear Lake is exciting but certainly not new.

    The company I work for Myrio [myrio.com] has been delivering digital TV and VOD over xDSL for about 4 years.

    We develop the software for the telephone company to manage all the various aspects of digital video deployment.

    Much of that software has roots in open source [myrio.com]. We have contributed several enhancements and patches to the Linux kernel and updated and improved several drivers.

    There are deployments at many Independent telephone operators throughout the US. The ones I am most familiar with are:

    Livingston Telephone -- Livingston, Texas [livingston.net]
    CC Communications -- Fallon, Nevada [cccomm.net]
    CT Communications -- Champaign, Ohio [ctc.net] [ptsi.net]
    PTSI -- Guymon, Oklahoma

    If you are fortunate to live in one of these towns, you now have a choice for broadband services.

    The largest deployment is in Phoenix operated by Qwest. Very successful.

    The video technology is very similar to cable or satellite--MPEG-2. Depending on the aceess vendor and headend encoder supplier, the video is either MPEG-2/AAL5 or MPEG-2/AAL5/UDP/IP. This is a full-rate ADSL or VDSL application. Streaming MPEG-2 video over less than 2-3Mbps links, does not provide a cable quality experience--yet.

    There are some excellent [videotele.com]
    white papers at Videotele.com's website.

    Yes this all works just ask the subscribers.
  • Halstad Telephone [halstadtel.com] has been offering this service for a couple of years now. Basicially it is a DSL line providing streaming video. Not much different than each DSL subscriber running a Streaming Video player (such as Real Player)
  • This always confuses people. There are three closely related companies in Iowa: Iowa Network Services, NetINS, and Iowa Wireless. NetINS is the ISP, Iowa Wireless is GSM cellphones, Iowa Network Services (INS) is everything else.
    (Their webpage is www.iowanetworkservices.com,
    the ISP is www.netins.net).

    Also, this installation in Clear Lake is using VDSL (very high speed DSL) on the order of 25Mbps. It can handle three MPEG channels at once. Source: my dad (one of the high-ups at INS).
  • just what the topic says.. Ive seen the wireless TV+ internet service over the same equipment for more than a year.. is pretty sweet and price in line with regular cable.

  • As an Iowa resident, I have yet to see this, and I stay pretty current with what's going on around me. Heck, I'm smack dab in the middle of Iowa.

    Of course, none of this really matters since the wiring in our apartment building is too old and the original contractors just looped the extra wire causing way too much induction across the coil. Now I'm stuck with crappy Mediacom Digital Cable who's upload speeds (which I actually use) suck!

  • Still...

    Is fiber expensive or cheap to run to the house? I think it could be VERY cheap - if they use plastic rather than glass fiber optic lines.

    Think of that last 500-1000 feet - plastic fiber optic cable would be very cheap to install, and you would probably still get good bandwidth - no, you wouldn't be able to do a multi-mode, etc setup - but you don't need to - you only need a simple communication setup, and plastic fiber could give that.

    I am thinking you could probably get 10-50 Mbps over a plastic line - more than enough for broadband and cable, plus phone service.

    Am I missing something? I might be - this isn't an area I have any real expertise in - but it sounds like something that would work - what's to stop it?

Slashdot Top Deals

If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.

Close