Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Internet

2 Terabits of Bandwidth 68

Posted by CmdrTaco from the faster-porn dept.
Pondscum writes "that Ciena has a new press release about Multiwave Corestream which will deliver up to 2 terabits of bandwidth. " I'm getting annoyed reading all these articles about X gigabit and terabits of data when I still connect with 1 channel of an ISDN line.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

2 Terabits of Bandwidth More

2 Terabits of Bandwidth

Comments Filter:
  • I would if I could, but cable modems are not available in the majority if the United States. You seem to live in one of the few areas in which they are available.
  • I highly recommend getting either a cable modem or a DSL line, whichever you have in your area. Bandwidth is bandwidth, as far as I'm concerned (especially if it's cheap ;-)
  • The technology the article describes is optic fibre backbone bandwidth. This will never be in our homes. But it would speed up the Internet or in fact the Abilene project (Internet 2)
  • I did not expect to see such hate filled comments on an article about bandwidth. I mean sheesh, make due with what you have! If you can get something better, do, but don't get sore about other poeples fortune.
  • Preach on, bro. I live in Fairbanks, Alaska, and its hard enough to get a decent modem ISP up here. Things have been getting better thanks to the OC48 they installed (www.alaskaunited.com), but us getting adsl is far off. While this may make us seem backwards, let me assure you, we're more advanced than alot of states are. We just need better telephone companies that feel that we'd like something better. But until then, People like me all over the US dont need to be told we're fools for having modems.
  • 2 terabits per (second?) is uh, cool... but is there going to be switching technology that will let such a channel be shared in the next decade? If it can only be used in gigabit-sized frames, it's not nearly as useful. Does anybody know what the current state of the art is in switching and routing latency?

    Meanwhile, we can all hope aliens will drop by with an "indistinguisable from magic" solution to the last mile problem. ;)
  • Don't be a podantic dude! Here in Bedrock if someone asks what speed your lan is it is generally ok to reply "ten megabit" or "hundred megabit" or "it depends upon the user load -- It's slower than a slug on a piece of sandpaper today!" The "per second" is understood by most "normal" nerds. I say "most" because, ....er, well, this message is here isn't it?

    Fred

    Live long and prosper!
  • Posted by d106ene5:

    Quit your whining - the faster the backbone is, the faster your downloads will be.

    As for business with T1's - they can upgrade anytime they want. Most urban centers have access to bandwidth far exceeding T1 capacity. OC3 should be available in any urban center.
  • Yah yah I hear all this shit about getting cable or ADSL. Let me tell you something wear I live its 56k or ISDN period. That's it. There is no cable or ISDN. There's T1 but that's outrageous. Since I'm not financialy independent moving isn't really an option and neither is going to college (generally gotta complete high school first right?).
  • Stop whining Taco. I'm pretty satisfied with the cable. I get speeds upwards of 100k/s and that's enough to surf the web and play Q2 with no lag.
  • If you've ever had more than a ISDN connection you would not have to ask this question.
  • That only 6% of elligible customers actually make use of the cable modem option can be seen as a good thing, given that the bandwidth of the connection is largely dependent on the number of users. If the service became more popular and widespread the cable companies might have to expand their services, but I'd be worried about their response time. I've had bars on channel three and static on channel 19 for the past three months and they aren't exactly springing into action about that one if you know what I mean.

    As for the telcos and T1 prices, I've heard from family members who work for our phone company (Bell Atlantic & Nynex) that they have no interest in marketing data services to the private residential sector. Hence the horrid pricing (at least in my market) on ISDN and xDSL services, not to mention the sky high fees for T1 connections. Old phone company joke: What does ISDN stand for? It Still Does Nothing. This reluctance to cash in on a huge market can only hurt the phone companies in the long run. As it stands now I can get cable modem bandwidth that is comparable to, and in some cases exceeds, T1 service for about $30 a month. Compared with the $959 monthly charge for a T1 it's chump change.
  • Then again if it's 2TeraBauds, its becoming interesting... How many bits per moment?

    Just kidding.
    Jimmy
  • I found an interesting paper on telecommunications policy here [mit.edu]. It's rather depressing.

    While communications technology improves at an amazing rate, the Bell companies are stuck in the 19th century. Their primary goals appear to be increased profits through elimination of skilled union jobs, investment in anything but their core business, and maintenance of the status quo in services and pricing.

    How difficult would it be to bypass them? I'm thinking of something like the Ricochet [ricochet.net] radio modems, except at much higher data rates.

  • seeing as how at least in connection rate soemthing per second is basically the standard form of expression I would think so
  • come on.. what about those of us who can't afford isdn, and don't have cable or adsl in our area? huh? HUH? quit your bitching... i miss my ethernet... i won't be whining when i get back to college =)
    switched 10 megabits to fddi to oc3 baby!

    stu =)
  • Wow, network technology that doesn't seem like fluff. Not like the exobit over powerlines. But it seems like we are going to be able to progress in the future of networking and get out of the age of 26.4k connections. My cable connection is good enough for me right now, but hey this will help out in the back bone area, which here in the US does need major updrading.
    I ate my tag line.
  • i'll deal with 2 t1s and a 100 meg switched ethernet. there aren't that many students, and 200k/s on a bad day is fine by me.
  • Just reading about this kind of bandwidth makes me jealous.

    I am awaiting the arrival of 2way low orbit satellite links.

    I would just about kill to have even a stable 28.8 capable telco line. But I like living out in the boonies and the infrastructure just does not exist.

    Be happy for what you have.

    I am happy I don't have to worry about carrying a hogleg so I don't get mugged in some rat infested city.

    Da Unicorn (941) ;=>
  • You can't measure bandwidth in terabits; that's like measuring a car's speed in miles. Surely they mean 2 Tb per second?
  • I agree.....In my area ( obviously not a "target market area" ) I still do not have anything higher than the infamous 56k ( hehehehe )....and no definate time when anything else will become available.

    I too am weary of the talk of higher bandwidths at reasonable costs.

  • Well, at the risk of being overly pedantic, bandwidth is measured in _frequency_. The unit of Frequency is Hertz (Hz, formerly known as cps)which is one cycle per second, and to omit the words 'per second' is quite valid. You have an electricity meter in your house that measures 'kilowatts', but it is really mesuring the rate of power consumption over a given time, an hour in this case.
    Of course in these days of advertising hype, I agree with you in that they _should_ specify a time, otherwise it could just be their marketing dept. saying "... Er, so how can we make that number BIGGER?..."

    Cheers,

    Graham Cattley
    Electronics Australia Magazine

  • Hell, its more like "ten". Once you're on the topic of networking, I rarely hear the kilo/mega/gigabit part.
  • I agree. You people out there in the world need to get more bandwidth. No one is going to deliver a magic connection that gives 2TB over your power lines. Cable and DSL is the only way to go right now.
  • Actually, someone may well be preventing him from buying a faster modem, if not buying one, at least putting it to use. In my area, ISDN is not available. Neither is DSL or Cable. The ONLY thing available is a lousy 24k max over bad analog phone lines. Not that that gives anyone a right to be rude, just pointing out that what you were saying may not be entirely doable.
  • Well hell I bought a faster modem - a 56k - and I only ever connect at 45333... Even then I'm lucky to get download rates in excess of 3kb/s due to net congestion.
    What other options? ISDN? costs about $450 to get connected - no thanks.
    No ADSL/SDSL here, no cable modems,
    There is Tele2 radio connection at 128kbps but your limited to 200Mb/Month transfer...(!)
    So for now I will stay with my modem. But better backbone tech will let me actually use all my 45333 bps (hopefully)....
  • Wow, that SUCKS big time!!! We need out "own" phone-company-less network.....I wish the wireless market were more mature....like using part of the upper HAM frequencies or something......maybe someday, huh?
  • Seriously, I havent seen T1 prices change very much lately.

    Take a look at Band X [band-x.com]. They act as a trading BBS for buyers and sellers of long-haul and international voice and data bandwidth, and are moving into providing a settlement mechanism whereby a voice or data switch does the routing once a contract is made. They also produce a number of market indices which show that world-wide comms prices are halving every 12 months, and within Europe they are halving every 6 months.

    Of course the telcos are not passing on this saving yet, but they will have to, otherwise ISPs and start-up companies will do it for them.

    Paul.

  • Er, nope... Baud and bps are NOT the same thing. 56k modems actually connect at 2400 BAUD, but through modulation and compression are able to transmit data at 56k bps (theoretically -- we all know in practice it's a little less).

    Linux
    -----

  • Having a terabit per second isn't meant to instantly drop the price of a T1 or T3. It's meant to facilitate the drop in those prices. I will be nice when all the backbones are replaced with much bigger pipes, then the overall data transfer cost will be oodles less than it is now. Eventually these savings pass on to you the customer, not right away, eventually. 28.8 and 56.6 connections are going to be around for a while yet. They are easy for local telcos to handle since they dont need any new hardware and the equipment is very inexpensive for the user. If telcos can backbones can squeeze more data into existing fiber networks they get very happy and end up lower prices on smaller pipe connections like T3's and T1's. It also helps to relieve congestion because of small pipes, now all the gamers dont need to complain about suzy hommaker watching TNN in real video.
  • Nobody is keeping you from buying a faster modem.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Um, this TB/sec optical deal isn't going to speed up your home or small business connection anytime soon. It's a backbone thing. I know a couple of people at Ciena, since I live about three miles away from their place and run into people who work there in bars all the time. But it sure would be nice to have an alternative to Comcast's "We're a monopoly so we can charge you $400 for a $120 cable modem and give you crappy customer service because we're the only people here who are ALLOWED to run CATV to your house, and if you don't like it, offer bigger bribes to your councilman than we gave him, ha, ha, ha" @home, also know as "the only high bandwidth game in town."


    Ah, well. Someday we'll have competition....

  • George Gilder, author of Microcosm, Life After Television, the upcoming Telecosm, and fee based newsletter Gilder Technology Reports believes one benefit is the elimination of most of the expensive switchs we currently are routed through. So while I continue to "make do" with bonded ISDN (128K) I anxiously anticipate the impending bandwidth availability. There is huge pentup demand for bandwidth (even by folks who aren't aware of it :-). The Gilder paradigm will change where we impute value in communications.
  • Posted by Bill, the Galactic Hero:


    The maximum bit rate per channel is OC-192 (9.953 Gb/s, or about 10 Gb/s).

    So 2 Tb/s would require 200 such channels.

    Assuming that the channel plan is a 100 GHz grid (0.8 nm/channel in wavelength), 200 channels would require 160 nm.

    This is beyond the bandwidth of standard erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (1530-1560 nm). Even if you went with L-band EDFAs you still wouldn't make it.

    So if the grid is 100 GHz, this is an unamplified system. The only way to make the system cost effective is to use is for point-to-point short-haul (100 km or less) transmission.

    If the grid is 50 GHz, the required amplifier bandwidth would be 80 nm. This makes it possible to use two-banded amplification, so it could be a long-haul system. But it's trickier to find good WDM components at 50 GHz which won't screw up a 10 Gb/s signal.

    In other words, they are probably targeting metro-area networks.
  • chill out, nobody is whining.. you know there are still those of us who dont have an option for anything more than 28.8 my isp doent even offer 33.6 or 56k, much less ISDN or anything faster.. we deal with what weve got, ya know? although.. heh what I wouldnt give for 10k/sec.. or low pings :)
  • That's the way it is always referred to. 10 Mbit/sec network connections are frequently referred to as "ten megabit" connections. Sure, it's not a wise abbreviation, but pretty much every network speed is rated per second.
  • Posted by MaldaSuX:

    I'm sorry about this, I thought I'd pressed Preview. I was trying to gauge how big a slashdot poting could be. But I must have pressed submit by mistak. Please knock this down to -1 or delete it.
  • Play nice. Your post isn't doing any better.
  • Obviously you've never had a bottle neck or were making a sandwich each time one occured.

Slashdot Top Deals

"The voters have spoken, the bastards..." -- unknown

Close