Ken, All,
During the Late Eighties, the BOCs were faced with a growing dilemma in dealing with their large corporate customers, and in staving off some of the emerging CAPs. The issue surrounded that of providing dark fiber. To hedge their positions, Corning came out with a device known as a "bandwidth limiter" which consisted of an in-line passive optical element that inserted a pre-set amount of dispersion onto the strand to which it was attached, in order to limit throughput to, say, 200 Mbps. My, how times have changed. Or have they?
Recently, we've discussed a similar, although less elegant, means of establishing bandwidth limits in the last mile by CableCos and their aspiring Internet charges and subsidiaries. Granted, the motivations are not quite the same, but the overall effects are.
I recently called these measures 'throughput curfews'... perhaps 'rationing' would have been a better choice of word.
I was going to post a series of articles from an SCTE List thread that personify, IMO, what is going to be in store for this sector for a sustained interim period, perhaps a long one, if they don't do some immediate re-segmenting of their coax and fiber plant, and improve their means of allocating router and switch resources. But I thought better of it before hitting the enter button.
If anyone wants to view this thread, send me a PM. I thought that this way, as opposed to spewing contentious material here on the baord, without the benefit of the original authors present, would be more prudent. And less litigious ;-)
Best Regards, Frank Coluccio |
