Bob Metcalfe, the father
of ethernet, and founder of 3COM has an opinion in Infoworld on the new UAW standard and MVL. I've posted it below:
Compaq, Intel, Microsoft back the wrong standard for fast Internet access
Get used to cim as shorthand for Compaq, Intel, and Microsoft. The big threesome is increasingly in cahoots, most recently on a consumer standard for asymmetric digital subscriber lines (ADSL). They have formed a Universal ADSL Working Group (UAWG at uawg.org).
In 1980, Digital, Intel, and Xerox (DIX) formed a similar working group on the Ethernet standard. Eighteen years later, Digital is almost Compaq, Intel is Intel, and much of the Xerox that did Ethernet is Microsoft. CIM is really the same old vast right-wing conspiracy.
Like DIX, CIM agrees with me. I know I've been harping, but dial-up telephone modems limit the usefulness of personal and network computers. So, CIM proposes a consumer standard for using telephone wires to bypass telephone switches and thereby to increase Internet access speeds by a factor of 25.
Unlike DIX, however, CIM is proposing the wrong standard.
CIM jumped off on the wrong foot by following the Bell telephone monopolies in choosing ADSL. Why has CIM forgotten so soon that Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, GTE, SBC, and US West screwed them on ISDN?
I have not had media relations with US West, but take a look at uswest.com for the announcement that drove the hasty creation of UAWG.
CIM seems to believe they need the Bells to get ADSL. But, as a first step toward their demonopolization, Bells should be prohibited from offering ADSL. Instead, they should offer reasonably priced unbundled telephone copper wires to competing Internet service providers.
CIM is endorsing a slower flavor of the ADSL that is popular among the clueless and conniving Bells. Problem is, ADSL barely works, and slowing it down doesn't help much.
ADSL was developed back when the Bells were promising to deliver, ha, video on demand at 7Mbps. Therefore, ADSL was based on "discrete multitone technology" using high frequencies, high power, and high delay. High frequencies to run at 7Mbps. High power to overcome high-frequency attenuation. And high delay to give complex digital signal processors time to correct high-frequency distortions.
Unfortunately, ADSL doesn't work in the field as well as in the lab. ADSL's high-everything technology "crosstalks" among copper pairs in the "binders" carrying telephone lines in bulk to telco central offices.
Now, we have various slower flavors of ADSL. Universal ADSL from CIM is the latest of these, at 1.5Mbps downstream and 512Kbps upstream. See aware.com about Aware's UAWG-compatible "ADSL Lite."
Trouble is, slowing ADSL bit rates doesn't much fix the crosstalk.
The same day CIM announced UAWG, Paradyne announced, not another ADSL, but multiple virtual line (MVL) technology, for shipment in March. Recall that Paradyne, recently spun back out of AT&T, is a 28-year-old modem maker, now among the largest ADSL manufacturers
If only CIM had been aware of Paradyne before naming UAWG. I hope its not too late for CIM to consider MVL instead of ADSL. Paradyne says MVL will be an open standard.
MVL was designed from scratch for plug-and-play symmetrical operation at speeds as fast as 768Kbps. MVL operates in low frequency bands, just above your plain old telephone service, with which it does not interfere. MVL's lower frequencies, lower power, and lower complexity avoid the problems plaguing ADSL.
MVL runs along a single telephone pair out 24,000 feet from a central office. It adapts to wire characteristics, in 64Kbps decrements from 768Kbps. Paradyne says MVL operates much faster than ADSL on telco wiring in the field -- for example, symmetrical 512Kbps at 22,000 feet.
MVL has two other features CIM needs. First, it is easily installed on a single existing telephone pair (minus the loading coils) to serve analog telephones and digital computers all over the house in a MVL local-area network. Second, and this is probably why conniving Bells prefer ADSL, MVL can be used to carry a second, digital telephone line on the same pair.
Let's hope that UAWG will forget the A in its name and start evaluating MVL. Because we need CIM digital subscriber lines to be as successful as DIX Ethernet. Or, has CIM grown too much like IBM in 1980? Is CIM about to propose the modern equivalent of IBM's losing Token Ring?
Technology pundit Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet in 1973 and founded 3Com in 1979, and today he specializes in the Internet. |
