Cable Could Get FTTH-Esque Leg Room With EPoC Could Offer Symmetrical 10 Gbps Over Coax The debate for cable operators has long centered about when and if they'll ultimately have to deploy fiber to the home as coaxial cable starts to run out of leg room. For most carriers this has yet to be a problem (particularly as upstream bonding gets established), and a new standard may help them delay that move a little longer, if not indefinitely. A new Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard dubbed EPON-over-Coax (EPoC) is just getting developed, and could offer symmetrical 10 Gbps speeds over hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks. The standard however has numerous architectural hurdles to leap before creation, including to OFDM or not to OFDM: EPoC could begin to steer cable away from its traditional QAM modulation schemes, and this part of the discussion is expected to be among the most hotly debated as engineers mull ways to modulate Ethernet on coax efficiently. One idea that will get much attention is orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a scheme popular in the wireless world that could help cable pump out more bits per hertz than they do today with QAM, says Shane Eleniak, vice president of advanced broadband solutions at CommScope. If all goes well, the standard could take about three years to complete, which in IEEE's world likely means 2020 or so.
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 | | | Game over for DSL IF cablecos can make it work AND find enough cash to make it widely available. Major carriers could then be free (forced actually) to skip wireline based access altogether (xDSL, FIOS) and focus on the real money maker- wireless. | |
|  | cramer
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC
kudos:5 | Re: Game over for DSL What's stopping DSL (twisted pair) from using OFDM? Other than the usual vested interests in DMT, QAM, and CAP. | |
| | |  maartenaElmoPremium
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA
kudos:1
 ·AT&T U-Verse
 ·DIRECTV
| Re: Game over for DSL said by cramer:What's stopping DSL (twisted pair) from using OFDM? Other than the usual vested interests in DMT, QAM, and CAP. Phone line architecture is a LOT different. You have 1 line that runs from a local box to your house. Cable has a "fat" line running along a lot of houses, with taps to each house. The thin twisted pair cables have a lot more problems with interference then the much thicker and much better shielded cable lines.
Ever wondered why it is that when a cable company says "we now offer 30 Mbps to Fresno, CA" that this means they can offer it to EVERY HOUSE that wants it in that city, and not to "every house withing a certain distance and line quality which has to be determined by a tech visit"?
The complete architecture of cable is completely different. Yes, it is more shared then DSL type technology (although when you cable gets to a VRAD, DSLRAM, or CO it is just as shared with DSL), but they already have the technology to broadcast massive amounts of bandwidth over those cables, over multiple frequencies, so the sharing isn't even an issue any more.
Cable networks have a lot more future in them, a LOT more then copper DSL.
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"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" | |
| | | | cramer
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC
kudos:5 Reviews:
 ·AT&T Southeast
| Re: Game over for DSL Sorta... the now-offering is because they upgraded the hardware covering the entire area. They don't upgrade one CMTS and then start advertising DOCSIS3 availablility. Also, there are a number of instances of cablemodem service being installed where there isn't enough signal for it to work correctly; the difference is, the cableco will do something to fix it. Ma Bell won't do crap -- your line is your line, live with it. (note: that's less and less of a problem these days as node sizes have been shrinking over the years, and modem technology has greatly improved.)
Thinking more about it, OFDM could maybe help reduce noise from neighboring pairs. However, since the modems cannot see each other, it would be a very complex system to manage. It starts to look a lot like a PON then. | |
| | | | | | said by maartena:said by cramer:What's stopping DSL (twisted pair) from using OFDM? Other than the usual vested interests in DMT, QAM, and CAP. Phone line architecture is a LOT different. You have 1 line that runs from a local box to your house. Cable has a "fat" line running along a lot of houses, with taps to each house. The thin twisted pair cables have a lot more problems with interference then the much thicker and much better shielded cable lines. Ever wondered why it is that when a cable company says "we now offer 30 Mbps to Fresno, CA" that this means they can offer it to EVERY HOUSE that wants it in that city, and not to "every house withing a certain distance and line quality which has to be determined by a tech visit"? The complete architecture of cable is completely different. Yes, it is more shared then DSL type technology (although when you cable gets to a VRAD, DSLRAM, or CO it is just as shared with DSL), but they already have the technology to broadcast massive amounts of bandwidth over those cables, over multiple frequencies, so the sharing isn't even an issue any more. Cable networks have a lot more future in them, a LOT more then copper DSL. Unfortunately the up/down split sorely favors downlink speeds. Fixing this would be a very expensive proposition, and at that point it would probably make more sense to just replace the lines with fiber. | |
| | | | etaadmin
join:2002-01-17
Dallas, TX
kudos:1 | said by maartena:Phone line architecture is a LOT different. You have 1 line that runs from a local box to your house. Cable has a "fat" line running along a lot of houses, with taps to each house. The thin twisted pair cables have a lot more problems with interference then the much thicker and much better shielded cable lines.
Absolutely correct!
Besides the channel spacing for IEEE 802.11a is a whooping 20 MHz wide which is roughly 11.5 MHz more of uverse's TOTAL bandwidth of 8.5MHz.
Other obstacle for uverse is the sub-carrier modulation that can be any of the following BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM or 64QAM.
Good post! | |
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| | plat2on1
join:2002-08-21
Hopewell Junction, NY | DMT = OFDM | |
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| | | DSL has been dead for awhile, telephone wire simply doesn't have the spectrum over the medium copper, to compete. | |
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Reviews:
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| So I researched this for 30 minutes, seemed interesting... my conclusion is that it's probably not going to be widely deployed.
First, the 10Gbps Symmetric to an individual home is a pipe dream. This would involve cranking up the base frequency over the coax media way above what the plant will tolerate. You might as well dig it all up and start over with fiber.
Second, there are lots of alternatives that are less disruptive to the current HFC plants, in terms of increasing capacity and speed.
All that said, I think the future of coax-to-the-home is bright, there's lots of headroom left for increasing capacity and speed to the home, no matter what the details are of the architecture and protocol layers. I think cable companies win long term.
Wireless will be too expensive and never fast enough compared to wired.
Re fiber vs. cable, the only ones who've invested in heavily in FTTH are Verizon (I'm talking USA here) and they have cratered on their rollout. AT&T with their FTTN has a shot, if they can use their coming-up-from-the-bottom strategy to fund an eventual brownfield FTTH buildout, unlike Verizon who went for the FTTH buildout up front and ran out of money.
But the cable companies have an inherent advantage because their coax plant to the home is ALREADY IN PLACE. And it's EVERYWHERE that matters. I don't see how, unless they royally screw it up, they don't win. | |
| | | | Re: So I researched this for 30 minutes, seemed interesting... "Wireless will be too expensive and never fast enough compared to wired." This is not what Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are betting on. The fact is that wireless is already fast enough for most things, cheap enough for many things, and it is portable. It is not as reliable, but as we have seen people are willing to forfeit a lot of performance and quality for ease of use and low cost. | |
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| etaadmin
join:2002-01-17
Dallas, TX
kudos:1 | said by MyDogHsFleas:First, the 10Gbps Symmetric to an individual home is a pipe dream. This would involve cranking up the base frequency over the coax media way above what the plant will tolerate. You might as well dig it all up and start over with fiber.
»adslm.dohrenburg.net/uverse/inde···Itemid=6 | |
| | | | | Re: So I researched this for 30 minutes, seemed interesting... Very interesting link! Thank you!
So I'm no RF engineer, but help me interpret this. It would still not get anywhere close to 10Gbps right? | |
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| | | Verizon ran out of money? Who are you, their accountant?
lol
Verizon ran out of money, he said. | |
| | | Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: So I researched this for 30 minutes, seemed interesting... said by ITALIAN926:Verizon ran out of money? Who are you, their accountant?
lol
Verizon ran out of money, he said.
Well, I read the news. Verizon made a business decision to stop FIOS deployments. They didn't literally "run out of money" as a company but they realized that the costs were higher than the returns they could get for the same money elsewhere. | |
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| | Shared Keep in mind this is 10 gbps shared among the 100+ users on a node.
This is also a tad depressing. It means we'll essentially never get FTTH. | |
| | maartenaElmoPremium
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA
kudos:1 Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
·DIRECTV
| Re: Shared said by sonicmerlin:This is also a tad depressing. It means we'll essentially never get FTTH.
I could care less if my internet and/or television is delivered by copper or fiber. It's not the material the cable is made of that counts, it is the quality of the picture and the speed of the product. If it works with copper, well.... why not? Because it doesn't sound as "flashy" to your friends?
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"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" | |
| | | | | Re: Shared yes,i'm getting 100 terabytes per second over a barbed wire fence.but no respect. | |
| | | | | | Re: Shared said by kwi340 :yes,i'm getting 100 terabytes per second over a barbed wire fence.but no respect.
I lol'ed  | |
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| | | | said by maartena:said by sonicmerlin:This is also a tad depressing. It means we'll essentially never get FTTH.
I could care less if my internet and/or television is delivered by copper or fiber. It's not the material the cable is made of that counts, it is the quality of the picture and the speed of the product. If it works with copper, well.... why not? Because it doesn't sound as "flashy" to your friends? You don't seem to understand the up/down split in coax is mostly in stone. The asymmetry has actually gotten a bit worse with new tech like DOCSIS 3. | |
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| DrDrew
join:2009-01-28
Apple Valley, CA
kudos:6
1 edit | said by sonicmerlin:Keep in mind this is 10 gbps shared among the 100+ users on a node.
This is also a tad depressing. It means we'll essentially never get FTTH.
Why depressing? The most common FTTH is FIOS, which in GPON form is 2.4 Gbps download speed coupled with a 1.2 Gbps upload speed split between 32 users, moving to be 64 users.
FTTH is really vague and doesn't usually mean a dedicated fiber link between the CO and home.
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If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes. | |
| | | Reviews:
 ·Millenicom
·AT&T Southeast
·Verizon Wireless..
| Re: Shared From Wikipedia:
FTTH (fiber to the home) is a form of fiber optic communication delivery that reaches one living or working space. The fiber extends from the central office to the subscriber's living or working space.[2] Once at the subscriber's living or working space, the signal may be conveyed throughout the space using any means, including twisted pair, coaxial cable, wireless, power line communication, or optical fiber.
From the Fiber To The Home Council:
What is FTTH?
Fiber to the home (FTTH) is the delivery of a communications signal over optical fiber from the operator’s switching equipment all the way to a home or business, thereby replacing existing copper infrastructure such as telephone wires and coaxial cable. | |
| | | | DrDrew
join:2009-01-28
Apple Valley, CA
kudos:6 | Re: Shared said by davidhoffman:What is FTTH?
Fiber to the home (FTTH) is the delivery of a communications signal over optical fiber from the operator’s switching equipment all the way to a home or business, thereby replacing existing copper infrastructure such as telephone wires and coaxial cable.
Your point?
FTTH could be 1 fiber from CO to home with no splits or it could be split hundreds of times, it could be dedicated or shared, depending on how it's designed and built.
FTTH is a concept. It doesn't indicate what equipment, architecture, or bandwidth is being used or available.
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If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes. | |
| | | | NWOhio
join:2011-10-25
Toledo, OH | and Wiki is NOT a reliable source. | |
| | | | |  Xioden
join:2008-06-10
Monticello, NY | Re: Shared said by NWOhio:and Wiki is NOT a reliable source.
Yea, it's too bad they don't reference their sources or anything... | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Shared said by Xioden:said by NWOhio:and Wiki is NOT a reliable source.
Yea, it's too bad they don't reference their sources or anything... "They" are you and "they" (you) can write anything. | |
| | | | | | | Xioden
join:2008-06-10
Monticello, NY | Re: Shared said by fifty nine:said by Xioden:said by NWOhio:and Wiki is NOT a reliable source.
Yea, it's too bad they don't reference their sources or anything... "They" are you and "they" (you) can write anything. Which is why you look at the citation and judge for yourself, just as you would for anywhere else. Uncited information tends to get removed fairly quickly. | |
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| | | | said by DrDrew:said by sonicmerlin:Keep in mind this is 10 gbps shared among the 100+ users on a node.
This is also a tad depressing. It means we'll essentially never get FTTH.
Why depressing? The most common FTTH is FIOS, which in GPON form is 2.4 Gbps download speed coupled with a 1.2 Gbps upload speed split between 32 users, moving to be 64 users. FTTH is really vague and doesn't usually mean a dedicated fiber link between the CO and home. No one's moving to 64 per node. And in a couple years XGPON at 10 gbps will be standard. Beyond that is 40, then 100.
Cable is shared among 200+ users on one node, and the download/upload split is far more severe than in PON. | |
| | | | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | Re: Shared said by sonicmerlin 
Cable is shared among 200+ users on one node, and the download/upload split is far more severe than in PON.
[/BQUOTE :A few posts ago, you said it was 100+.... are you just throwing things out just for the hell of it? .. or are you just one of those Wiki contributors,.. who are un-verified sources?
There are many systems, and nodes, where the count per node is at about 100 homes passed. There are some that have more homes per node passed but those numbers are changing and being reduced pretty quick.
Talking point examples don't do anyone any favors. Unless you have actual facts (and not many people here can claim that little badge of honor) then these kind of posts are pointless. | |
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| fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | What does it matter HOW it gets to you? that argument is a dead horse. If they could somehow get 10gb to the home via carrier pigeon and it was reliable, when it comes to you, it shouldn't matter one bit.
And who cares if it were to be shared by 100+ users on a node.. divided up that still a HELL OF A LOT of bandwidth far more than you have now.
Coax is far from dead.. the only thing dying with coax is the method in which signal is pushed through it.
Outside of the fact that fiber or other larger pipes are desired, what motivation is there for the carriers to dole out the money? People want the most and to spend the least. The economy isn't doing so hot these days either and until people wake up and smell the homeless to see what's really going on in the world around them, there isn't going to be any "recovery" anytime soon.. not for years to come. If cable can push out more to the consumer with the least investment, and it works, then more power to them. I could care less how it gets to me. Right now Comcast is serving me just fine at 22/5. | |
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| | Beware the marketing While obviously there are advantages and gains to be made. Remember your //average// cable plant to today is already pushing ~5gbps. Now ofcourse a large chunk of that is tied up in the video world because of broadcast nature commonly used by most operators (something 100% ipvid can solve/help with, and something that switched video helped with).
Where cable operators always suffer is the as mentioned above shared pool, 200 homes per node even higher even less. Then all those nodes combined in the distribution hubs. What FTTH and crew brought to the table was a ground up build putting the comparable node combining from 200 to 32 that in itself is a HUGE change from the cable world.
Now likewise companies have come along before with changes Narad I think was offering data but their deployment costs and requirements scared a number of operators off. Mostly because even today you can segment/combine/and change the ratios and still slowly and steadily grow your coax under the existing architecture without a ground up re-build.
Ontop of that you have companies today that are already moving further and offering dwdm out to the nodes allowing for even more segmentation of the existing plant with only minor overhead expense. Anything new to get massive adoption is going to have to re-use a large % of existing infrastructure, and likewise be able to operate in combination with existing at the same time. These criteria will greatly slow the development. | |
| FiberWolfPremium
join:2002-05-24
Morristown, TN | Caps? How come the 1st response is always? Well.. with the CAPS what difference will it make?
Lets separate the CAPS from the technology. One could argue that as long as the carriers keep CAPS, then they will be able to hold off innovation.
The fact is, the higher speeds will come. It is a matter of time. CAPS are only a stumbling block. | |
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See 8 replies to this post | |
 cdruGo ColtsPremium,MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:5 | EPON-over-Coax? EPON-over-Coax? Isn't that a little oxymoronic? It's not really a Passive Optical network if it's over coax. | |
| | Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA | Re: EPON-over-Coax? said by cdru:EPON-over-Coax? Isn't that a little oxymoronic?
Actually it means using the EPON protocol over coax. IOW the opposite of RF over fiber optic cable but maybe RFoG is an oxymoron too. | |
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Reviews:
·Optimum Online
·Verizon FiOS
| capacity Time Warner employees discovered this utilization of a hybrid fiber-coax marriage of wide bandwidth capacity way back in the lat 1970s when cable first began to broadcast 1/2 dozen channels. Figuring out exactly what to do with the bandwidth (interactivity) did not come easily or fast enough because like the rest of the industry there were NO applications for the product to use mega bandwidth. Computers & TV were barely squawking out pictures and sound-- compared wtih HIGH DEF. video and multimedia content we have today.
Cable companies still want to be "VIDEO SUBSCRIPTION COMPANIES" first and foremost, not a TELECOM/ISP.
**So, expect the innovations to come faster from FTTP/FIOS or some other fiber company faster than cablecos. There are at least 9 years of historical fact to back up this trend.
IMO, 100/100 megabits should be ready for prime time $65/mo THIS year, not 5+ years from now! Lets go!! | |
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So 10 Gbs and a 250 or 100 GB cap?
