Stephen, thanks for the heads up by reporting the Lightwave story.
It appears to be more of the same, for the most part, but to some degree I'm happy to see Lightwave covering it. Although, I wonder how much diligence went into the decision to air it.
AHhaha hasn't posted here in a couple of days. About two weeks ago we had a private exchange via email whereby the doctor discounted the need for fiber on the drop side (on the CPE, or customer premises equipment side) of the connection. He stated that wireless and in some cases copper connections were all that were needed (if I'm not mistaken).
I've been grappling with this ever since, if indeed it is only RF modulation {AM} that proves to be the essence of SilkRoad's secret. For, many of the feeder connections that would traverse the longer spans are still individual streams which are each rated at the lower speeds of < 45 Mb/s (i.e., below T3). T1s at 1.544 Mb/s don't require fiber for in-house runs, nor do Fast Ethernet and FDDI (both being 100 Mb/s) in most in-building situations under 100 Meters.
Lower order connections could be satisfied with twisted pair, and coax could easily satisfy in-building higher speed connections up to T3 or higher. Beyond those speeds, fiber would normally be required, which is no different from the standards being used in the commercial building enterprise setting today for other applications requiring high speed LAN and internetworking connections.
AHhaha also stipulated that wireless was the short haul complimentary answer to the long haul SRSC link. Wireless LANs, and SRSC on the long haul, in other words. That would require RF LAN transceivers going into mixers which were connected to the SR devices.
But why introduce more copper and wireless solutions when fiber is so much "cleaner?" Because it's cheaper and because it's already there (where copper is the alternative), and because it's easier to administer (where wireless is the alternative).
Still grappling with this one, though. His argument only addresses the enterprise location solution, and not that of the carriers' requirements. And the problem that I see with the continued use of copper,in any event, is that it perpetuates the EIA/TIA distance bound model that is responsible for holding back much higher bandwidths in general, while at the same time imposes immense financial pressures on the enterprise due to the need for multiple environmentally conditioned closets on each floor.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
