 djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
kudos:1
 ·Verizon Wireless..
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·AT&T U-Verse
 ·VOIPo
·PHONE POWER
2 edits | reply to Dogfather
Re: well... quote:
Cable providers have no trouble providing an equal share at the backbone connectivity level just like telcos don't.
They do have trouble at the nodal level
I don't buy it. I didn't buy it back when Pacific Bell was pushing the "webhog" ads, either. Back then this same argument was being made, when cable's caps were as low as 1500/128.
Cable companies are now offering 10x those speeds on pretty much the same DOCSIS 1 technology, and overall it's holding up quite well.
Think about how many nodes cover a city, and then think about how much backbone capacity it would require to fill all of those nodes, at 38mbps per node. And don't forget, you need a very big link from the cable plant TO the backbone provider that can handle all of that traffic.
Of course there will be some clogs at the node level in certian active neighborhoods. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. There's always going to be choke points in the network that require maintenance.
Time Warner's SoCal region seems to have more capacity problems at the city level than they do the node level, as made evident by the threads that crop up every few months.
-- Rob |
|
 DogfatherPremium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA
1 edit | Cable operators don't have problems if they dedicate enough channels to their HSI offerings.
It doesn't matter how many nodes cover a city, it's how many customers they're trying to serve with a node and how many channels they're dedicating to get that done.
It's no secret that there are markets with saturated channels otherwise you wouldn't see evening slowdowns in some parts of a city while the other parts run fine. And not every market has problems which is why I said they have problems on occasion.
I was a TWC 15/2 customer up until a couple of weeks ago and never had an issue, but I know people served by the same head end that did during the evening, particularly in upstream speeds and and occasionally latency.
And while cable systems for the most part are handling current traffic demands, cable operators can't continue ramping up speeds without providing an increase in node to headend capacity. |
|
 espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2
·Clear Wireless
| reply to djrobx
said by djrobx:Back then this same argument was being made, when cable's caps were as low as 1500/128. Cable companies are now offering 10x those speeds on pretty much the same DOCSIS 1 technology, and overall it's holding up quite well. Back then it was also very common to share the same downstream channel across a half dozen nodes or more. Over the last decade the MSOs have been pretty active in getting the number of nodes per downstream channel reduced, down to 1 DS in many cases. They've also added multiple upstream channels and performed physical node splits to get the number of homes per node down.
said by djrobx:Think about how many nodes cover a city, and then think about how much backbone capacity it would require to fill all of those nodes, at 38mbps per node. And don't forget, you need a very big link from the cable plant TO the backbone provider that can handle all of that traffic. That infrastructure is in place for many carriers.
Look at Comcast's network:
The CMTS hardware is connected to user/utility routers with GigE connections. The user routers connect to the aggregation routers with multiple 10GigE connections, and the area/aggregation routers connect to the core with multiple 10GigE connections.
Comcast's network is extremely fat in the middle, with Internet access circuits provisioned by demand (at significantly less capacity than what is available in the core) and the CMTS routers can't generate enough traffic to come even remotely close to choking the GigE uplink connections they have into the network.
For MSOs the congestion is in the last mile that connects the subscribers, followed by a distant chokepoint at the Internet access points. |
|
| Great so what you're saying is that is has nothing to do with the wholesale cost of traffic to their upstream providers and more to do with them not being able to offer the speeds and services they advertise to more and more customers without charging overages under the guise of collecting more money for "upgrades" (As if somehow what users currently pay does not allow a cable provider to do anything more than scrape by). If it truly is not related to the extremely cheap cost of wholesale bandwidth, then i suppose they will just implement a "free nights and weekends" sort of deal where they are unmetered, or unrestricted during periods of non peak usage right?
OR
Being somewhat knowledgeable in the way corporate america operates what is the more logical conclusion? |
|
