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The Internet

New Look at ADSL2 153

Posted by CowboyNeal from the getting-connected dept.
genrader writes "broadbandreports.com just posted a news article which had an interesting story about the new ADSL2, which should be approved in 2003. They say it should be backward compatible with current hardware. It seems pretty interesting. ISP-Planet has the featured in-depth look at it, so you might want to see if it is of any intrest to you."
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New Look at ADSL2 More

New Look at ADSL2

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  • Does this really matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06, 2002 @01:51AM (#4824719)
    Sure, ADSL2 is faster, but how many of us are running our DSL lines at close to the max speed now? I can do 3+ Mb/s on this line, but only get to use 640 Kb/s. New technology that allows me to go faster, yeah that'll come in handy! If it worked at a much longer range it might be useful for some who are out of range now, but it really isn't much of an advance there either. So why should we care, this is like getting excited because Macs are shipping with a gigabit ethernet port when your office is running on a shared 10 mbit hub!
    • Yeah it does.

      Whereas YOU may not benefit, this may be just the thing that small businesses/SOHO's need to sway them from having to get one of those T# lines! And the savings should be quite substantial for those who either dont need or can't afford the extra bandwidth. Plus a dedicated line sure beats the 'ol cable modem!
    • Granted I only have 786K SDSL, but I use 100% of my up and down bandwidth 99% of the time, and would welcome a doubling of this if the price was right.

    • Re:Does this really matter? (Score:4, Funny)

      by rupe ( 118491 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @02:31AM (#4824896)
      640 Kb/s should be enough for anybody.
    • You may get some benifit if your DSL is anything like mine. In my case, I only pay for 768K, but my ISP supports 1.5M. There were times when I was using Gozilla (it's been a while) that the meter would start at 1.5M and then slowly average it's way down. Ocasionaly, if I set the refresh high enough, I could even see the bandwidth alternating between above 768K and 0K. So in conlcusion, if you only download a small file (80KB in your case), it will come faster.
    • It does mean that the ISP can afford to dispense more bandwidth (excess supply means lower prices, after all, doesn't it?) at the same price (and will do so to keep competitive with other ISPs, see Intel vs AMD)...

      So more bandwidth *is* good

    • It definately does matter. But it isn't just about the bandwidth:

      Many people live near but not near enough to exchanges to get DSL, and ADSL2+ will give extra reach over the phone lines. Maybe you'll still be happy with your 512K or whatever, but hopefully there'll be more people that can enjoy the pleasure of xDSL then.

  • Oh nice.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by the unbeliever ( 201915 )
    Will Telco's be rolling out more and more central offices or remote dslams? Not a lot of people live within 8000 feet. Just more broadband solutions that aren't going to be available everywhere.
    • Well it increases coverage to a 225,798,656 square foot range from a 200,960,000 square foot range. Thats over 25 million square feet of additional coverage.

      On the other hand, 25 million square feet is only an additonal square mile of coverage.

  • Doesn't look too promising (Score:5, Informative)

    by nekdut ( 74793 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @01:52AM (#4824725) Journal
    The increases in performance and range are pretty minimal. An additional 50kbps and 600ft of range isn't all that impressive, although the fact that it is backwards compatible with some existing hardware is semi-promising.

    Anyway, here's some extra info on ADSL2, or G.bis that i dug up:

    http://www.aware.com/products/DSL/gbisadsl2.htm [aware.com]
    http://www.convergedigest.com/Silicon/siliconartic le.asp?ID=5435 [convergedigest.com]
    http://www.dslprime.com/a/adsl21.pdf [dslprime.com](sorry about the pdf)
    • I agree that this is a big yawner. I was out of range of the central office until about 10 months ago when I got DirectTV DSL. Apparently there is some kind of DSLAM installation that they do outside the central office. That's a much better way to get more DSL coverage - 600 feet is nothing. That's less than 3 or 4 houses I would guess. And with my downlink speed at 1500kbps, I wouldn't notice if they went up to 1550kbps.
      • 600 feet is nothing. That's less than 3 or 4 houses I would guess.

        A 600 foot radius increase is only "3 or 4 houses"??? Do you live in rural Texas and you're looking for ADSL for the ranch? Where I live I'd guess that a 600 foot radius increase would equal about..well I can't even contemplate it right now. I'd guess well over 1000.
        • I live in Austin TX, not rural, but it's in the hills. The streets run along the tops of the hills in my neighborhood. In between the streets there's at least 1/4 mile of valley where there are no houses. So, the radius increase in my neighborhood would only get you about 3 -4 houses further along the street.

          But you're thinking of the increase from the *phone companies* point of view. From their standpoint, you are right that a 600 foot increase from their CO would bring a shitload more houses into their customer base.

    • Apparently you can bond up to 4 channels to get more bandwidth. It would be beneficial if one's willing to pay the price for such a setup.

    • Range increase may be more promising. (Score:5, Informative)

      by CharlieO ( 572028 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @05:44AM (#4825507)
      Speaking as one of those in the UK sitting pretty much on the wrong side of the limit of the 5.5km restriction we have on British Telecom's ADSL implementation, the range increase may be more promising.

      I'll hit the maths a bit -

      Asssuming all the lines radiate directly out of the exchange so you can assume the range limit proscribes a circle with the exchange at the center (you can tell I'm a physicist can't you?)

      The range increase talked about in the UK is 5.5km -> 6km of cable length. Now compare the areas of these 2 circles.

      5.5 x 5.5 x 3.14 = 95 km squared (approx)
      6.0 x 6.0 x 3.14 = 113 km squared (approx)

      So this gives an extra 18 km squared coverage. If we assume one household per 100 metres squared (not unreasonable in the UK) then this bring 1800 homes in range of broadband.

      Of course in the real world things will vary, but I've seen figures from BT suggesting 6km will bring 97% coverage of the population.

      The irony for me is I live 30 miles from London, 4 miles from the end of the runway of one of our major airports, 3 miles from one of the major motorways and yet my broadband options are the same as someone on a remote island, no ADSL, no cable, just my trusty 56k jalopy...
      • Instead think of them in a larger scope.

        Many Telcos are starting to roll out evironmentally hardened DSLAMs that they can pole or slab mount to serve areas that have demand but are too far from an existing DSLAM.

        If a Telco can now reach a larger subscriber base without rolling out as many remote DSLAMs, that results in an increase in available infrastructure dollars, which could translate into fast or a greater number of remote DSLAM rollouts. I can also increase DSLAM rollouts by increasing revenue per DSLAM, since a given DSLAM can now service more customers, which might in turn make more DSLAM rollouts more affordable for Telcos.

  • 2x the fun! (Score:4, Funny)

    by AltImage ( 626465 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @01:53AM (#4824731) Homepage
    Great one more thing for the telcos to screw up. I'm sure that ADSL2 means 2x the wait and 2x the cost. I'm already looking at my calendar and setting aside a week to wait for them to show up. I'm sure they'll have to make twice as many trips out for line tests and the techs will be twice as ignorant of the technology involved. In Soviet Russia, I bet they get it installed quicker.

  • Ooh, I can't wait (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 06, 2002 @01:53AM (#4824733)
    Look - new, faster stuff that won't be available in my neighborhood!

  • 10 Mbits per bonded pair (Score:2, Informative)

    by t0qer ( 230538 )
    The result is a far greater flexibility with downstream data rates:

    20 Mbps on 2 bonded pairs
    30 Mbps on 3 bonded pairs
    40 Mbps on 4 bonded pairs

    So basically you get 10Mbps per phone line tops over the 1.5 we max out at now.

    • Something Screwy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <jim@mmdCOWc.net minus herbivore> on Friday December 06, 2002 @02:00AM (#4824766) Homepage
      I just signed up for a 12Mbit line here in Tokyo.
      (I'm upgrading from 8Mbit - the 12 is actually a cheaper plan.)

      Regular DSL, IIRC. Used the 30 year old wiring in my place, no problem.

      Even on the 8, I've had Internet downloads stream in at better than 1500K.

      A year or two ago, Japan was *way* behind in internet access - I was using ISDN (cheap here) and I was a bit of a rare case. Most people used dialup.

      So what's really holding DSL back over there? I'd bet the reasons were more economic than engineering.

      Just a thought,
      Jim

      • The fact that current dsl equipment effectivly maxes out at 12kft is what's limiting it right now.

        Most people are not close enough to the office, so they have to create a remote, which costs a lot of money. If not enough people are in an area slightly too far from the central office to warrant a remote... well... they'll get no dsl.

        We don't have japans super-high population density for the most part. THat makes tech rollouts MUCH easier for japan than for the US.
      • if you live in suburbia, or downtown wherever, you're good to go. the problem is that somthing like 20% of the population lives outside of suburbia, but somthing like 5% of those people "in the country" are still close enough to the repeater that it's not a problem. dsl and cable internet, everyone in the DFW area (texas) (who has kids) i know has it, sans the older people in their 60's

  • Comments From the Article That Sum it All Up (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LuxuryYacht ( 229372 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @01:54AM (#4824738) Homepage
    "The real problem is that the guys in charge have so very little motivating them to implement new and better things..."

    "Why bother?
    Do we actually think for a moment that US telcos will adopt anything decent? Please...if it's not a patented US currency printing press or a customer cornholing machine...they won't be interested."

    And even better...

    "For example, on longer phone lines, ADSL2 will provide a data rate increase of 50 kbps--a significant increase. This data rate increase also produces an increase in reach of about 600 feet, which translates to an increase in coverage area of about six percent, or 2.5 square miles."

    Wooohooo...a whopping 50kbps, 600 feet...WOW...totally worthless! In about a zillion years they'll have enough range to reach me at 60,000ft from the nearest CO. Hell, telcos can even measure their copper runs accurate to 600ft. I'm serviced at my office at an actual copper length of 19,200ft...while Verizon originally estimated under 15,000ft.

    Wow!
    It's good for a total of 8,000 feet! Instead of screwing around with short length technologies, why don't they develope something that has far better range .. like 15-30 miles from the telco ...
    • It sounds like you are living quite a bit from telco loops, so have you considered SATTELITE net or maybe [if your area has it] cable? Cable can get quite a decent bandwidth..only drawback is if a whole ton of people log on...it tends to get a **bit** slow. Stattelite is relativley constant and you can eliminate the upstream dialup if you get one od those bi-directional decoders/providers (not available everywhere), though if you live in a stormy/coudy/snow prone area it may not be exactly a good option.
  • If this adsl2 and adsl2+ are implemented it'll give both lower costs ( lesser power requirements ) and greater flexibility to the providers. That's good for both the companies and the consumers , as lower costs give them the opportunity to expand into less affluent / easy to serve areas.

    Plus the ability to provide faster service to closer customers , and the ability to bond channels together to get higher bandwidth for business customers ... well heck , who needs a T-1 when you can get superior bandwidth for less ?


    I for one am excited that the technology is maturing.

  • ADSL2 Length (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tempelherr ( 559964 )
    The new ADSL2 Standard has the ability to double downstream data rates up to over 20mbps, yet the new standard only increases the reach by 600 feet? Sure the downstream increase would be nice, but it doesn't seem like you are reaching much of a new market. Is the change over to ADSL2 Standard mandatory? If not, then it seems like the companies would want to be wary about investing in the changeover since it is still really limited on the distance from the central location.

    What will the costs be, as compared to the old standard? One would think that coming up with this new ADSL2 standard would be allow them to increase their range more than just 600 feet, which unfortunately leaves me off the list of getting any broadband in the future.

    Is there someone who could shed some light as to why the limitations on the ADSL2 standard have barely been increased?

    • Some Handy Links (Score:3, Informative)

      by CharlieO ( 572028 )
      This is going to be a bit long but bear with me, I hope I can explain it a little.

      The fundamental limit of high bandwidth technologies is due to the physical nature of copper wire.

      Any digital signal is essentially a composition of a series of sine waves. Don't worry if this doesn't make sense - what happens is that the sharp 'edges' of a digital pulse are effectively very high frequency. So although it is conventient to think of a digital signal having a single frequency that is effectively the data rate, its not actually true.

      One of the properties of copper wire is that different frequencies travel at different speeds in the wire, and get attenuated (lose power) at different rates.

      Now we combine these two thoughts and what happens is that the well defined pulse get smeared as the frequencies that make them up seperate as the pulse goes down the line, and misshaped as attenuation kicks in. At some point this smearing will make it impossible to reconstruct the pulse. Also every single joint in the cable causes reflection of the siganl to some point.

      In a transmission system this is not a problem, as the great thing with a digital signal is we know it only has two states - 1 or 0 - so we can regenerate and clean up the signal and transmit it again. This is what repeaters in undersea cables do (even fibre has to have these, but at much greater lengths than copper). But to your house there is no point in the cable to put a repeater - if the signal can be read when it gets to where you are then it works, if not then it doesn't.

      Now in reality digital signals are not transmitted as a single stream of on/off pulses, but encoding systems are used that turn the signals into ranges of tones - which is why when you listen to you modem you here a range of tones, rather than a single one.

      All of these techniques aim to minimise the effect of the smearing due to the different speeds the different frequencies travel, and to make the signal more resiliant to noise issues. But at some point either the pulses will become so corrupted they cannot be recognised, or the signal to noise ratio will get so bad that they can't be distinguished from noise.

      Generally the problems get worse as the frequency goes up, and in data terms this is roughly the same as baud rate. This is why faster DSL rates are only available nearer the exchnage.

      The reasons why ADSL2 isnt a great improvement is we are hitting fundamental limitations of copper wire transmission systems as used for analogue telephones (and it is analogue in the local loop no matter what the exchnage is) and tweaking the encoding techniques is not bringing great increases.

      Remember with normal modems we hit the limit at 36Kbaud due to the fact that normal voice is limited to 0-4Khz - a bit of clever engineering managed to boost this to 56Kbaud on the downlink because you avoid one of the anti aliasing filters in the exchange.

      So modems are limited to 4Khz and Shannons Law tells us the maximum data rate we can do at 4Khz, and 56Kbaud modems are damn near the limit.

      ADSL is carried as a piggy back signal on your analogue line - below 4khz is the normal voice signal, above 25Khz is the ADSL signals. There is no 'hard' upper limit to ADSL due to filters like there is for voice, but there is a 'soft' limit where the problems discussed above mean its not possible to get reliable transmission.

      Current ADSL is pretty close to those 'soft' limits - ADSL2 tweaks it a bit to get more in and increase the range.

      The bad news is its not going to get much better on copper wire - the modem limit was due to filtering, but ADSL is down to basic physics.

      Explanation of the local loop technologies - mostly found via ADSLGuide [adslguide.org] (These guys do a great job of keeping on top of UK ADSL issues)

      The Last Mile [gla.ac.uk] - personal site, but a good heads up. Significantly shows the bandwidth limits as related to the type of wire the signal is transmitted down.

      The Trouble With DSL [potaroo.net] great well written article that summarises some of the technical and practical issues with DSL.

      ADSL Techincal Summary [rad.com]

      DSL Source Book - PDF (registration required) [paradyne.com] - very good for technical geeks.
      • But to your house there is no point in the cable to put a repeater - if the signal can be read when it gets to where you are then it works, if not then it doesn't.

        There are places you can put a repeater. On a very simple level you just need to pull the pair out of the binder and hook it up the a reapeater. The problem comes down to cost. MOst people don't want to pay alot for the service. Using standard hardware you can get out 18K feet and we have even had some luck out to about 22K feet. Really depends on plant. Using a special shelf and repeaters on the line you can get out over 30K(my dad bugs me about this everytime I go over to his house -- he is 28,400' away from the RLS that feeds his house). The problem is each repeater you put on the pole can only server 1 line. And they aren't cheap. So it winds up costing the telco a couple thousand dollars to get DSL out to your place, and then you won't want to pay the extra money. It is all about ROI. If the company isn't going to make their money back, why would they go and do the build?
        • You are of course right - I should have been a little clearer.

          There will probably never be repeaters in most local loops because the analogue voice circuit probably doesn't need it because the local loops are deployed so they are not needed, and consumers are not going to pay the costs of installing it. If you can pay that cost you may as well go get the leased line anyway.

          Here in the UK a lot of cable is also underground to street cabinets - in this case physically you can't get anything else in there.
  • will happen first: DSL2 will be rolled out or they'll be able to decide on a freaking nomenclature for it?

  • Clueless commenters and meaningless links (Score:5, Informative)

    by hoegg ( 132716 ) <ryan.hoegg@NoSPaM.gmail.com> on Friday December 06, 2002 @02:00AM (#4824761) Journal

    First of all, the story at broadbandreports.com is nothing but a short blurb about the story at ISP-Planet.

    Second, the people who posted comments didn't read it. Not sure what the original author meant by a 50kbps increase, but earlier in the article he mentions a doubling of the frequency used resulting in a doubling of the downstream bandwidth. That's significant to me.

    • VDSL holds a bit more promise [howstuffworks.com], I think.

      My ADSL was converted to VDSL last month. I live in Korea, and this county doesn't have the issues that consumers in the US are forced to endure. The telco's in the US are still trying to squeeze pennies out of legacy communications infrastructure...I don't see any change coming soon.
    • I think I'd prefer high-speed DOCSIS cable. I can't wait for the next version of thd DOCSIS spec. I'm seriously tired of SBC already, and I was tired of Pacbell before that. (SBC Pacbell - All the unfriendliness of SBC with all the incompetence of Pacific Bell!) As bad as AT&T is, I like dealing with them more than dealing with the phone company, and their internet service (which has no (or at least much longer) range limitations due to the use of fiber AFTER the head end instead of before it which costs a lot more) is much better than pacbell in every way; speed (Most new SBC/Pacbell ADSL installations in cities with crappy copper are only 768k) and the usenet server come to mind, as bad as netnews.attbi.com is, it's way better than pacbell's.

  • Limited Use (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SmartGamer ( 631767 ) <sgamer@swbeMONETll.net minus painter> on Friday December 06, 2002 @02:02AM (#4824776) Homepage
    I can't see that this would be all that useful. While a very cool upgrade for the sake of very cool upgrades, how is it all that great?

    My DSL connection is very high speed. I feel no net slowdown when listening to Shoutcast Radio on a 128Kbps station; even though I'm eating up 1/4 of my downlink, only rarely does it actually have an effect.

    The slowdowns are at the other end. The servers are overloaded; its their T3s that need to be upgraded. Although 500,000 hits in the period of an hour would swamp anything, I suppose.

    So while this idea has merit, a whole bunch of other stuff would have to improve too if this is to be particularly useful.

  • New Paradigm (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DrLudicrous ( 607375 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @02:04AM (#4824783) Homepage
    The message board on dslreports.com didn't seem to high on this, and neither do we. Not suprising, I supposed, but do think about this: it's a baby step. You all are looking for some brand spanking new paradigm in broadband technology. That is not going to happen overnight, at least not in the forseeable future.

    I mean honestly, I am sure that someone here can explain why DSL is fundamentally going to be limited as far as bandwidth and range goes. Copper is a very lossy media, and we already have better stuff out there like fiber optic, and even fiberless communications versus mutliplexed wavelengths (eg Lucent) or even things such as wireless LAN's (although with a more limited range).

    The point is that what we need is something that is a complete departure from the paradigm of cable and DSL modems. That is the only thing that is going to allow us to ALL have broadband, and for the cheap, at very high speeds. I have no idea what it will be, though I think it will have to be some wireless technology. Until then, I think we are going to be stuck in this rut of a small number of broadband users who get to use a flawed and unsatisfactory system (except for those that just surf and check e-mail) due to speed constraints and whatnot.

    Any ideas of a new system, or how long one might take to engineer? I'm guessing around 20-35 years.

    • The problem isn't really in the engineering or design, but the roll out.

      The most significant bit of any telco's network is 'the last mile' where the copper leaves the exchange and gets to your office or home.

      There is one heck of a lot of these local loops, and replacing them with another media is no small job. So the solutions that will succeed and can be rolled out in a reasonable time and at a cost the consumers will pay has to be ones that can make the best use of the established transmission media that goes past your house.

      Now this means cable modems and ADSL.

      Wireless has its own set of problems if it is to become ubiqoutous - do we have the bandwidth when we are all sharing it - maybe we can have local sub exchanges that feed signal to our houses by fibre?

      I don't know the answers, but anything that involves replacing the media to every customers home is going to take a long period of time and money to roll out. Replacing the local loop physical media will not in anyway make broadband cheap, more likely the opposite.

      Right now you can get fast reliable connections by buying in a T1 leased line - but most people can't because you have to bear the cost of the telco installing the dedicated line yourself.

      We have plenty of technologies right now that can bring mega bit levels to your home - if we were starting from scratch.

      I'm not convinced that there is enough frequency spectrum to get mega bit broadband wireless to all. My money would be on a hybrid structure pushing the fibre networks further out to your house as and when networks are updated, and using local nodes and short copper runs like cable modems, or ideally push fibre into your homes in metropolitan areas, moving to wireless links where replacing physical transmission media become cost ineffective.

  • Small range increases mean BIGGER area increases (Score:4, Informative)

    by Lupulack ( 3988 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @02:05AM (#4824786)

    Remember your high-school geometry , area of a circle is pi(r^2)


    So the 6% ( ? ) increase in range translates to a more than 12% increase in coverage area. It's not as small as first it appears.
    • You wrote:
      Remember your high-school geometry , area of a circle is pi(r^2) So the 6% ( ? ) increase in range translates to a more than 12% increase in coverage area. It's not as small as first it appears.
      From article:
      For example, on longer phone lines, ADSL2 will provide a data rate increase of 50 kbps--a significant increase. This data rate increase also produces an increase in reach of about 600 feet, which translates to an increase in coverage area of about six percent, or 2.5 square miles.
      An increase of 600 ft, or 3%, in distance yields a 6% increase in area. You can work it out yourself if you add to the maximum ADSL distance of 17500 ft.

  • Wonderful. . . But (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jchawk ( 127686 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @02:08AM (#4824810) Homepage Journal
    Well this is all well and good, but lets keep in mind that dsl is expensive to roll-out, what is motivating the company I work for to go out and purchase this *new* wonderful equipment which is going to require upgrades at least in the DSLAM's / ATM switches, nothing is just "hook it in and it works", ever.

    It's wonderful that they claim these super fast speeds, but what's the point right now? My company already has equipment in place to offer a few megabit to the home user, but we don't currently offer speeds faster then 768/768. Why? Because the demand isn't there, period. A few geeks here and there, or maybe a business or two, but most business that need something faster then 768 symetric are going to go with another dedicated telco soltion such as a T-1, or a DS3.

    I'm happy that we have these wonderful systems, that promise super fast bandwidth, and I'm not saying I don't believe the speeds, I'm just skeptical that we're going to see them hitting the market anytime soon because phone companies aren't eager to roll them out, keep in mind they're all still trying to re-coup the costs to roll out the network in the first place.

  • What happened to usefulness? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is as ridiculous as AMD releasing processors in 66mhz increments in the days of 2ghz+ processors. I can't get DSL because I'm about 5,000ft long of the limit. I can't get wireless without having a HUGE antenna because of the tree line, and no one is offering peer-to-peer wireless yet (if that would even help). I can't get cable because AT&T INSISTS that their services aren't available where I live, despite me receiving monthly bills from them and my neighbor 30 yards away having digital cable. The only thing I CAN get, besides 22k dialup, is 144k IDSL for $140/mo. Screw that. I don't even live in the sticks/boonies.

    What the hell is going on? 50kbps and 600ft extra? And it's taken them how long to figure out a way to get that? Where's the innovation? Where's the "space-age", "21st century" technology? We can get a man to the moon and a robot to Mars, but we can't get a decent internet connection to ME!

  • So what??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nonillion ( 266505 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @02:15AM (#4824835)
    For me to take advantage of this two things need to happen.

    1. My internet provider is going to have to remove the 1 gig a month limit (if real expects to download movies).

    2. Verizon is going to have to provide 1.5 m/bit or faster connection for the price of my current 768/128 k/bit connection..
  • What should we expect from cable? I mean ADSL wiring had a lower (6.3 MB/s??) theoretical bandwidth than cable (~10 mb/s). SO in theory shouldn't the speed of cable connection increase on the next revision...

    I may be missing something here....
  • Over here in the Maldives we pay ~USD45 to every 250MB for a 256kbps DSL line. When newer better technology comes in that price is going to sky-rocket. When are the enablers of technology going to start thinking about moderating that which they breed?

  • Useless... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CrazyDuke ( 529195 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @02:28AM (#4824887)
    Faster DSL is useless in the states until the telco's quit guarding and charging for broadband lines like it's their damn cherry. When that happens, ISPs might actually be able to afford to serve the "ulimited" service they claim without pruning off the people that actually use their share of bandwidth.

    Example? T1 prices 5 years ago where $400 to $800 a month and T3 was about $8000 a month. Now? T1 is about $400 to $750 a month and T3 is about $6500 a month on up.
  • One of the problems with DSL is the cost. With the decrease of cost, you have an increase in usage and an increase of encouragement to expand coverage.

    Hopefully ADSL2 may decrease cost for ADSL.
  • They say it should be backward compatible with current hardware.

    Yeah - they say that now while there is undoubtebly development cash around - who wants to bet it won't be once it's released?

  • This is useless to me (Score:2, Insightful)

    by eatenn ( 572604 )
    So ADSL2 and ADSL2+ offer more bandwidth... That's all well and good, but it doesn't make any difference to ME because my ISP doesn't even offer me an option (even a ridiculously expensive one) that approaches what today's ADSL standards allow.

    ADSL2 and 2+ are only going to further the gap between what is possible, and what my ISP offers. It's still a good thing, but I doubt it will benefit the regular Joe, at least not for quite awhile longer.

    Or I could be wrong. Whatever. I'm tired.

  • DSL providers still have to pay a lot of money for bandwidth (BW is like a rare jewel these days), so technology that allows us to connect faster isn't going to be implemented by most providers, and those that do will price it right out of range of being practical.

    The internet economy will continue to choke until this country / world is rewired at the core to make publishing on the internet once again available to everyone. Even the companies charging for bandwidth won't show profits until bandwidth is cheapened.

  • wow this is so impressive it's faster.....one problem though it does nothing for those of us here in my area becuase we can't even get normal dsl.....last mile bridged my foot /grumbling
    • you might be able to get IDSL, a former company that I worked for got it to me (free too isn't that grand) over a bridged line. Only 192 k/B but better than dialup by far.

      Of course if you have to pay for it, its pretty expensive, I think mine normally ran $110 a month.

  • The real source article (Score:4, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @03:27AM (#4825060) Homepage
    The article is a rehash of this white paper from AWARE [dslprime.com].

    All this stuff is down at the physical layer. There's no mention of the higher layers; apparently we're still stuck with PPPoE, a login mechanism, and client software.

    The big win with this thing will be the improved diagnostics, along with slightly better noise immunity and the power-save modes.

    • We're not stuck with pppoe on DSL now, that's just the way most people have chosen to do business. We're not stuck with client software either, if we're not stuck with pppoe.

      When I got DSL from pacbell, they were only doing static IPs (on the old alcatel modems) and there was certainly no pppoe involved. I assume that their business service (which is anything but business class) is still that way.

  • That's all very well and good.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doomrat ( 615771 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @03:30AM (#4825069) Homepage
    ..but still I can't get ANY form of broadband. And I'm not even living in the sticks - I live in a fairly large English town, which the government had the nerve to dub "IP-City", even though 90% of it lacks any form of connectivity above 56K. I know this is offtopic, but damn it, when I sit here with a connection which I pay more than broadband for, which also ties up the phone line and disconnects every 2 hours, I feel real mad and need to rant about it. Oh, and from my window I can see the BT lab where they develop new and exciting broadband technologies, and then fail to deploy them anywhere near.

    This is what you get when you keep on electing a government led by a snivelling weasel who won't do anything unless Bush tells him to first.
  • Okay, so ADSL2 may double the rate, but whats so gr8 about it anyway? The ISPs get have mostly got a fiber backbone and atleast the small ones pay by data traffic rather than by time, i.e, a fixed price per month. So effectively that translates into no price cut for an average consumer. I mean how many of us are really feeling constrained by the max rate of ADSL1? How many of us use that kind of bandwidth anyway?? So, yes, this technology maybe good for the ISPs but I dont think that the average Joe will notice any change.
    • The great thing about DSL is that it can run on some old cobber wires laid down by the phone companies once. You don't need get your whole front-yard digged up in order to get some fiber to your house. It would be a very big investment to get fiber on every last-mile - then it's much cheaper (both for the customer and ISP) to reuse the old cobber wires already down there.

      You also seem to think a lot of what to use the bandwidth for. Right now I have a 512 kbps ADSL at my appartment, and I seldom use more than at couple of k/s for ssh, irc, email and so on. But when I use a lot (need to download software og other rather big files) it would be nice not to wait so long. 4 years ago i was still using some flatrate 33.6 modem connection, and in order for the Internet to evolve i think greater bandwidth is required for the end user (or a least fixed access).
      • No, my point is that most of us have 256 Kbps or 512 Kbps connections. The current ADSL standard is fast enough to support such speeds. And as the ISPs are paying for data traffic, i.e, per GB of data, dont expect that they will give you cheaper prices just because now they can support more data on the same cable.

  • Doing the math.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by pjrc ( 134994 ) <paul@pjrc.com> on Friday December 06, 2002 @05:00AM (#4825405) Homepage Journal
    The article says that the distance is increased by 600 feet, which translates into an additional coverage of 2.5 square miles, which is a 6% increase over the existing coverage. I'm having a hard time envisioning that, so I decided to do a bit a math, as a quick sanity check.

    Let's call the existing distance (not specified in the article), "r". So the original and new coverage areas ought to be (in terms of feet):

    orig_coverage = pi * r * r

    new_coverage = pi * (r + 600) * (r + 600)

    The difference between these is claimed to be 2.5 square miles. Since there's 5280 feet in a mile, the difference between these two is supposed to be:

    new_coverage - orig_coverage = 2.5 * 5280 * 5280

    So, putting these together, and multiplying out the (r+600)*(r+600) part, it ought to be possible to deduce the original radius: ....adding some parens to make it easier to read

    (pi * r * r) + (pi * 2 * 600 * r) + (pi * 600 * 600) - (pi * r * r) = 2.5 * 5280 * 5280

    So, luckily the r squared terms subtract each other out, so this little bit of math won't requiring using a quadratic equation. Subracting the constant, it turns into:

    pi * 2 * 600 * r = 2.5 * 5280 * 5280 - pi * 600 * 600

    Now for anyone reading this far who's good at basic algerba, I'm going to appologize for yet a couple more simple steps spelled out....

    r * 3769.9 = 69696000 - 1130972.4

    r = 68565027.6 / 3769.9

    r = 18187.5

    So it looks like existing DSL goes 3.44 miles, and this new one goes 3.56 miles, and the increase from 37.276 square mile to 39.776 square miles really is 6% (actually 6.7%).

    So it does really work out, and the existing DSL distance of 3.44 miles sounds reasonable.

    Of course, it's all a moot point if the FCC allows the cable and baby bells to lock out competition. The only reason almost anyone has DSL within a 3.44 mile radius is because AT&T started rolling out high speed cable. What this new DSL _really_ needs (other than a real increase in distance) is a competing technology/business and a regulatory environment that allows that competition instead of squashing it. How likely is that? Too bad there's no easy formulas there.....

  • Locomotive access (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah, but does this now mean that I can get connectivity for my model train ???
  • Obviosly the ONLY possible use for a fast connection is to download copyrighted movies so the government should require each user to get a hand-written permission slip from a movie/record exec. Think I joke? Just wait....
    • Obviosly the ONLY possible use for a fast connection is to download copyrighted movies so the government should require each user to get a hand-written permission slip from a movie/record exec. Think I joke? Just wait.... What about Uncopywrighted movies? Or worse, new versions of Linux? Every time I decide to switch Linux platforms or versions I have to dl 3 full cds. There are plenty of uses for fast connections besides piracy. (appologies if your post was sarcastic)
  • We should learn from Microsoft. It shouldn't me ADSL2... but ADSL2002. It's not just twice better, but 2002 times. :)
  • /.
    A minor improvement, great so what?

    My local municipal owned and operated cable company had Gigabit Ethernet available to business and local government.
    They used to have a one way cable platform for residential at speeds the same and under, priced above Bell (and Earthlink) DSL.

    Don't think that having more than one provider is going to break any barriers in competition.
    Most area's that could have multiple high speed providers don't. The Bells and the Cable Co's are dividing the marginal area's up, and choosing which high return (read big city) areas are worth fighting for.

    Gigabit, not 2.8 megabit, now there's something everyone should have.
    • correction to the first part of the previous message...
      They have Giga available to business (only business and Govt).
      They had 128+k (one way requireing the use of a phone line with cable) services available to residential but dropped it after Bell brought in DSL.

  • I for one am happy to hear any news about expanding DSL service area and raising bandwidth to the customer.

    That said, it is now time for the Bob-o-Matic gripe and brag:

    What is the problem, PacBell?!?

    Why does it take over a month to activate a DSL line (everything was self-installed within 10 minutes of receiving the package), and cost $50 per month for 384kbps down/128kbps up service?

    I am stationed in the Republic of Korea now, and my DSL service was delivered/installed/activated/tested within 3 days of my phone line activation!, less than one week after I first contacted Korea Telecom.

    Here is the real kicker: My combined phone/ISP service bill here is LESS THAN MY SLOW-ASS PacBell ISP service alone!

    Now, the brag: Kornet MegaPass Premium service is 8mbps down, and about 1mbps up, for (at most) 43,000 Won per month, or less than US$40. BTW I downloaded RH 8.0 from a Japanese mirror at an average of 26 minutes per iso. Also, I am known to fill the 60GB DeathStar in less than 4 days after it dies... Thanks, Kazaa-lite!

    • So you're saying customers of Kornet have readily available, cheap and fast connections? I guess it's little wonder why kornet.net is also one of the major sources of the spam I get. 2/3 of my spam is Korean, and most of that originates in kornet.net. It can't even read the bloody stuff - I've had to block all .kr emails. Perhaps you spread the word whilst you're there about how much folks out west hate the crap that comes from there?
      • What I am saying is that there must be an issue that is not being addressed such that broadband service in the US is rediculously overpriced and has deplorable customer service. While I am no telco/isp expert, I would say that US customers are taking it up the dirtpipe.

        I think I will ask around here to see if KT's ISP activity is subsidized by the government, or if it is so reasonable strictly because it is ubiquitous in pretty much every household. Either way, my perception as a subscriber is that their service is truly excellent, and a model for other providers to study.

        Now, to address your issue.

        I have been studying Korean language, history, and culture since before I had gained access to the internet that the Dear Leader's chingu Al Gore invented. Since then I have received no more than 10 spam emails from the Rep. of Korea. Even my kornet.net account is spam-free (knock on wood).

        My guess is that you should consider being more careful about sharing your email address with the Korean pr0n sites. Or with anybody, for that matter... Maybe a foe signed you up for a "pic of the day, delivered to your mailbox, free"?

        Also, another possibility is that Koreans in general don't seem to be all that privacy/security -oriented, just like people anywhere else in the world. I would bet that mail servers are commonly left unpatched or even not password-protected.

        Here is a snapshot of the mindset of Kornet subscribers:

        When I wanted to exchange my internal, PCI ADSL modem for an external model, I had to explain that it wasn't broken, just that I absolutely could not find Linux drivers for it. The techs I spoke with at the phone company were incredulous that 1. an American (caucasian) was speaking their language, correctly, and 2. that I wanted to use an OS other than Windows. In fact, one jumped at my offer to let him observe me install drivers for an ethernet card and set up networking/PPPoE in Red Hat. Apparently none of them had ever seen Linux, at least on the desktop, before. Short story is, the techs never see anything but Windows, and don't know what to do with anything else. That leaves me with a strong suspicion of what is running on their more important machines... And something about Korean culture leads me to believe that most OSes are totally unpatched.
  • Seriously DSL is a loser technology...I have yet to see the telco that can provide the same speed on DSL that I can get from my cable company on my cable modem. In New England where the DSL provider is almost universally verizon for the home subscriber (and even if its not it is since
    other providers are basically forced to use verizons lines and services), your also stuck with PPOE...which is a horible technology...I am on the VPN team at my company, and we have to tell users of verizon DSL to purchase a linksys router to even use the VPN software since the PPOE client and the Cisco VPN software conflict with each other.
    The only impending technology that will really get me excited is when someone (cable-co, or telco?) tells me I can get a fiber drop and a couple IPs to the home. Plug the fiber drop into my router and just be there all happy on the internet.
  • Now instead of being 58000 ft too far from the CO, I'm only 57400 ft too far from the CO. At leaps and bounds like this, by the time they get to ADSL97 I'll finally be able to get service. :)
  • The advance in technology isn't coupled with an advance in the method of delivery. It will still be administered by the progeny of Bell and, if they can find any way to screw it up, they will.

  • ADSL2 or ADSL+ or PLUS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bbc5 ( 68957 )
    I work for a telco. We run ADSL and ADSL+. Our customers negotiate and run full speed (all the pair can handle). To control the bandwidth they use, we shape their traffic as they enter and leave the network.

    As for the speeds of the two technologies . . . ADSL (G.DMT) will link at 6Kft or less and give anywhere from 60-80% of link speed. I am currently running on a 900kbps/7600kbps link and get 800kbps/6000kpbs of real throughput. ADSL+ will link at 900kbps/9000kbps or greater and will get 800kbps/8000kbps or greater. But, all these conditions are subject to proper pair qualification and distance limitations.

    Pretty much anything below 6kft will be wonderful. From 6-12kft there will be a 10-20% decrease in speed. From 12-15kft there will be a 20-30% decrease in speed. From 15kft on out we would switch the customer to G.Lite (1000kbps/4000kbps) which will run out to 24kft at some proportion of the rated speed. At 24kft a costomer will likely get 256kbps/512kbps . . . which is nothing to sneeze at. We have a neighboring telco which has a G.Lite customer at 27kft of 19 ga. copper running better than 256kbps/512kbps (although I have not heard any results of throughput tests on that link).

    Remember, not all telcos are created equal.

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