Topic: Disturbing news regarding America's internet

[Jack Morris]

http://biz.yahoo.com/special/broadband05.html

America, still the high speed laggard

http://biz.yahoo.com/special/broadband05_article1.html

[Iceman]

Shall we compare the physical size of these nations....hmm, what a trend!

[Nemesis]

Shall we compare the physical size of these nations....hmm, what a trend!

Some of these nations. 

But that rationale only carries so much weight: Canada is a big country, too, and it doesn't have nearly the geographic advantages of a country like South Korea. Yet nearly all Canadian homes can get a broadband connection, according to online marketing trade publication eMarketer.

                                                                                                                 

[Jack Morris]

Good point Nem, Canada sure isn't small, and their rural areas are probably a LOT harder to get to than rural areas in the USA, (Everglades and Louisiana swamps excluded of course)!

[Bonk]

And the east coast leads the field! (I've been on 5mbit cable since 1994  )

...starts singing... Oh Canada... 

[Iceman]

good point, but to that I say...


Isn't most of Canada's population fairly condensed, relative to their area?


edited for typos.

[Bonk]

good point, but to that I say...


Isn't most of Canada's population fairly condensed, relative to their area?


edited for typos.

That's true... mostly huddled up together for warmth beside the American border! 

Population denisty in my province is pretty low however, Nova Scotia has been a leader because of the unique cable businesses that existed prior to the advent of broadband on cable. 

Its funny, because two years before it came out, I had envisioned renting some channels for use as a TCP/IP network with  boxes to convert the signals for ethernet cards... later I learned no channels are necessary, just low-pass filters as the network information (@10mbit) is at much lower frequencies than the TV and radio data on the coax... Gigabit will require its own fibre or coax, I dont think it will run on a TV coax network without interference...

[Javora]

Its funny, because two years before it came out, I had envisioned renting some channels for use as a TCP/IP network with  boxes to convert the signals for ethernet cards... later I learned no channels are necessary, just low-pass filters as the network information (@10mbit) is at much lower frequencies than the TV and radio data on the coax... Gigabit will require its own fibre or coax, I dont think it will run on a TV coax network without interference...

Wow, interesting read Bonk.  Thanks.

One question though, does this mean that Cable is facing a 10mbit limit on Internet speeds on a single cable?

[Bonk]

One question though, does this mean that Cable is facing a 10mbit limit on Internet speeds on a single cable?

Not really sure to be honest, I'd have to look up the frequency ranges of cable television signals and various net speed requirements.

I'm guessing that 100mbit may work but gigabit likely will not... I'm curious now, I'll try and look it up when I get a chance.

If gigabit is too fast for the use of simple low pass filters on a cable network, maybe that is where my original idea of running on tv "channel(s)" might be required/work?

[Javora]

Not really sure to be honest, I'd have to look up the frequency ranges of cable television signals and various net speed requirements.

I'm guessing that 100mbit may work but gigabit likely will not... I'm curious now, I'll try and look it up when I get a chance.

If gigabit is too fast for the use of simple low pass filters on a cable network, maybe that is where my original idea of running on tv "channel(s)" might be required/work?

I'm curious too, please post when you find out.  If there is a limitation, then it would explain why data companies (including cable) are pushing hard for wireless data.  Thanks again Bonk.

[Capt. Mike]

I think you'll find about 100mbit will be about the limit, at least without repeaters every 100 yards..coax drops too much power too quickly...fiber would be good, single mode for distance, and multimode to the house, in fact, there are fiber modems that can be used up to the computer...biggest problem there is if you have a laptop, connecting and disconnecting when you move it..those connectections need to be immaculate at the ferrule, or attenuation can kick in and give you an intermittant signal...

Pretty much the only bandwidth limit on fiber is the modulation speed and multiplexer abilities.

Mike

[Bonk]

I think you'll find about 100mbit will be about the limit, at least without repeaters every 100 yards..coax drops too much power too quickly...fiber would be good, single mode for distance, and multimode to the house, in fact, there are fiber modems that can be used up to the computer...biggest problem there is if you have a laptop, connecting and disconnecting when you move it..those connectections need to be immaculate at the ferrule, or attenuation can kick in and give you an intermittant signal...

Pretty much the only bandwidth limit on fiber is the modulation speed and multiplexer abilities.

Mike

Ah, attenuation as the ultimate limiting factor of usable frequencies on coax instead of interference with the TV signal had not occurred to me.  (Duh, of course  )


Doing a little reading.. this:
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/wiring/coaxcable.html and this:
http://www.hathway.com/bci/faq3.htm
are the most appropriate so far. Still don't know exactly what freqency ranges are free on cable networks (if any...). Curious to see where it all falls. TV broadasts contain huge amounts of information in analog form (huge...)

lesse, ~300 lines of analog signal per TV frame at ~60Hz ~= 18000 128 bit bytes per second ~= 2.3Mbit

well maybe not so huge... but if you ran 128 channels of it  (sacrificing some TV?) you gould get up to ~300Mbit or 0.3Gbit... hmmm... lots of digital media though... one could replace the TV content easily enough.

Bing!  I wonder if some kind of fourier transform (?) or simliar data manipulation could be used to encode network information in an analog signal...  back to the idea of using a few (128 ) pairs of TV channels for the job for a potential 150Mbit...? (oh, the cable modem and its terminus already do essentially this.) Perhaps 100Mbit is the practical limit... but bump the TV off the line...Reusing existing copper networks with new digital formats could be huge... or I could just be baked...lol.

[Nemesis]

good point, but to that I say...

Isn't most of Canada's population fairly condensed, relative to their area?

Rather like the U.S., along the coasts.  The U.S. populations greatest concentrations are along the two sea coasts, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi river valley.  Having 9 times as many people your condensed area is merely larger. 

Canada is most densely populated in Southern Ontario and Southern Quebec, the Maritime provinces (not including the Labrador area) and in the western provinces within 200 miles of the U.S. border.   Quite a bit larger than Japan and Taiwan (both of which ranked lower than Canada) with not nearly the population.  Even if you just included that area our population density is much lower than yours and that would improve our broadband percentage.

I suspect that it has more to do with the regulatory environment.  Cable companies fear (correctly) the entrance of phone companies into the cable market.  The phone companies fear the cable companies (may be allowed) to compete for local phone service.  Each seeks to expand their hold on subscribers by offering more services.  After all if  you could pay one bill for your phone, cable and internet account rather than 3 would you not consider it if cost were equal (or even slightly worse)?