gpo, that's a fair question.
To be sure, at the present time the combined MSO/ATHM platforms represent the leading edge in the cable modem Internet access sector, if we're comparing them to anything else that exists. But the roots of today's celebrated cable modem architecture, along with the DOCSIS standards they are using, are already six years old or more from concept, and those concepts were predicated on a forty year old base technology which is still operating in the analog world. I could go on about analog, but you get the picture.
The increasing demands being placed on today's cable modem systems were never properly estimated ten years ago. That's almost a cliche now, where everyone is concerned not just cable, but it stands true, nonetheless.
The basic coaxial limitations which are geared towards supporting analog RF in the HFC design will choke this architecture in due time, if a Lightwire-like approach isn't implemented very quickly in many areas. And neither dsl nor wireless, nor digital interactive TV as it now stands, under the current architectural limitations of HFC, will help them in this regard, even if these collective alternatives do momentarily support some load shifting, eventually.
I suspect that there will be a continued adherence to the established standards and their attendant limitations with regard to bandwidth and feature extensibility, and a likelihood that the operators will more poignantly restrict bandwidth under artificial pretenses to each user in order to maintain margins without having to break their backs and be innovative, in much the same way that the telcos have done with their DS Zero voice framework over the years. You will kindly recall, again, that I stipulated two years out.
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In Internet time, two calendar years would ordinarily be a long ways off, equating to what we would normally consider the equivalent of ten years of change in earlier times. If, and that's a big if, they are free to evolve without constraints. Otherwise, two years come so fast that it will wind up hitting them like a truck.
One would have to project along the trajectories of historical bandwidth utilization curves in order to more fully appreciate what I've stated. I see a moment of reckoning sometime in the middle of 2001 where limitations will be felt most profoundly for the first time. In contrast, today service is actually quite good in most areas.
But not in all. Here's an account by someone living just outside the Dallas area being served by T who thinks otherwise. She is among the first users on the system she's on, and consequently has seen good times and bad, but progressively bad.
From another discussion I'm having elsewhere, on the Compuserve Communications Forum where I've started an ISP-cable modem equal access discussion thread:
She states:
Frank,
Indeed @home experiences are locale specific. I'm outside of Dallas, in a *very* residential area. This was one of the first places where @home started service. Most who have accounts here are the @home ideal customer. I'm the oddball of the bunch, and thus the loudest complainer. It still gets me nowhere. Our City has no concern about cable modem access service or nonservice (I've already tried that route) and I only know one other individual with cable modem access in the City, who tends to call me whenever something goes wrong. He says I provide more support and information than @home does. <lol> He is the example of the customer who when his service is down says "I'll do something else than call @home again just so that they check my settings." <sigh>
Regards,
I replied:
Dear xxxx, thanks for that information. I'm not aware of any specific triage or upgrades being contemplated for the Dallas-FW area, but I'll ask around. I believe you didn't reveal the @home MSO partner. Which one are you using?
In Fremont CA, where there has been some very embarrassing performance results over the past two years (because that is where the central @home facility is located) and in the Salt Lake City area, there are some aggressive activities taking place to reduce the number of homes passed per field node, along with some other head end enhancements to improve service.
In the latter (SLC), ATT is piloting their "Lightwire" architecture which would bring the number of homes passed down to between 50 and 75 homes, as opposed to 500 to 2000. Of course, the more homes passed per node the heavier the load on each segment (until resegmenting takes place), the result being a higher potential for congestion.
In the process of some of these Lightwire upgrades that I've mentioned, ATT is also eliminating all outside plant RF amplifiers between the optical nodes and the residences, leaving in place the black coax over the last thousand to several thousand feet to the home, only. They are coming so close, yet so far, from deploying pure optical here.
(Maybe another good thread to start would be one to examine the fiber to the home (FTTH) pilot that Bell South is undertaking at this time.)
I suspect that your area's profile reflects the hihger density model with >500 homes passed per node, and with considerably more "potentials" actually up and working than the newer deployments, but of course I have no way of knowing that at this time from what you've provided.
It's interesting that your @home service should be one of the first areas to go live. Any idea when that was?
It would be interesting to plot each of the locations by their @home conversion completion dates. And then showing latency stats plotted against each of those @home service innauguration dates. If it shows what I suspect it would show, i.e., "first in worst out," then that would serve as some level of empirical proof to what many have been forecasting about the future of cablemodem service. And that is, As the system subscriber numbers go up, the performance level goes down. Who is your MSO?
Regards, Frank
Her comeback:
Frank,
MSO is AT&T@home, pka TCI@home.
My area went live in July of 98. I've been a subscriber since then. My problem has not been the lower speed due to the higher number of users, but, rather, the complete lack of communication, and the outright lies by the MSO to the users.
I am one of those whose upload speed was throttled while they emailed me a message about "improvements" to the system, and not mentioning the upload change. I am aware of the Freemont fiasco. The difference between Freemont, SLC, and where I live is that I'm in a City of less than 200,000 whose City fathers don't care what the MSO does with cable here. We don't have a bunch of technical people using the system here. This is the ideal AOL type user target area.
Other than a glitch around the holidays a year ago, my service had been good up to May or June of this year. My mail stopped completely or was spotty in May and June and the bulk of my email was lost, necessitating my getting an outside web site that I've been using for mail ever since, due to their unreliable mail servers. It has gotten much worse since October. Recently, once or twice, I have had to use a dialup to do a 1mg download because I saw download rates in the 'bytes' (600 bytes per second) from cable.
To add insult to injury, calls to technical support can only solve settings problems, and they insist on checking my settings before they would even *listen* to the problem. They are unable to distinguish tech support on user software from network problems. I know for a fact that the major outage I had last week started prior to 1pm my time. However, according to *their* records, it started at 4:30pm my time. That alone shows me that they only record things as *they* see them, not as they really are.
Regards,
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Okay, the lady was still fuming over her latest bouts. But I have heard many similar accounts like this in fora that are not the gathering places of enthusiastic investors. And I've heard accounts just to the opposite of these, too, by new users who were elated to the point of extreme exstacy when they first tried their new cable modems. As an architect I'm forced to consider, however, that it's still very early in this game. I see the brick wall, and it's coming fast. In Internet time, that is. Comments welcome, but this time I'm putting shields up, just in case.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
