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Networking The Internet IT

World-First VDSL2 Demo Gets 500Mbps Data Transfers 110

pnorth writes "Ericsson has achieved data transfer rates of more than 500Mbps in what it said is the world's first live demonstration of a new VDSL2-based technology. The demonstration achieved data rates of more than 0.5 Gbps over twisted copper pairs using 'vectorized' VDSL2. Vectoring decouples the lines in a cable (from an interference point of view), substantially improving power management, and reduces noise originating from the other copper pairs in the same cable bundle."
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World-First VDSL2 Demo Gets 500Mbps Data Transfers

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  • by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @10:26AM (#27224875)
    Now I know what will be deployed around here 300 years from now. I can't wait.
  • Too bad the US will never see it.
    • >>>Too bad the US will never see it.

      You're probably right. In many urban areas across the U.S., they are skipping DSL entirely and going directly to FiOS (fiber optics). Also, the U.S. is no more "behind" than the European Union. Overall they both average around 6-7 Megabit/s. In fact many U.S. states are faster than EU states:

      1 - Sweden (11 Mbit/s)
      2 - Delaware (10)
      3 - Washington (9)
      4 - Netherlands,RI,NJ,MA (8)
      5 - VA,NY,CO,CT,AZ,Germany (7)

      If you live in Delaware, Washington, New Jersey, Massa

      • Hey those are interesting numbers. Where do they come from? I'd like to see where my country (Australia) comes in - though I'm thinking top 50 is a bit much to hope for.
        • Top continents (rounded to the nearest whole integer):

          1 Europe and N America - 6 Mbit/s
          3 Australasia - 5 Mbit/s
          4 Asia - 4 Mbit/s
          5 S America - 2 Mbit/s
          6 Africa - 1 Mbit/s

          Australia by itself is 5 Mbit/s so comparable to France or the UK.

    • P.S.

      >>>Too bad the US will never see it

      I still think DSL is the answer to getting highspeed internet to isolated locations like Wyoming or Idaho or Montana. The copper lines are already underground or in the walls of the farmhouses. All the telephone company needs do is install the DSLAM for any customer that requests an upgrade (as mandated by a new law). Even if the wires are relatively poor condition, they should be able to handle 1000 kbit/s speeds, which is far superior to current dialup ma

  • Ericsson has achieved data transfer rates of more than 500Mbps in what it said is the world's first live demonstration of a new VDSL2-based technology.

    That should improve their mobile phone business a lot!!!

    What?? a cable trailing behing me you say?? I have no idea what you mean!

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by zwede ( 1478355 )
      Ericsson is not in the mobile phone business. You're thinking of Sony-Ericsson which is a different company (spun off from Ericsson yes, but now independent). Ericsson makes network equipment. Switches, base stations, etc.
    • by ivan256 ( 17499 )

      Don't count on it. There won't be enough cable to trail...

      The operating distances are too short to matter for most of the US (geographically speaking), and drop non-linearly to less than 10% of max performance when the distance is doubled.

      They should ditch this crap, and give people the fiber that we already paid for. Tarring and Feathering for CEOs of US telecom companies that even think FTTN.

  • by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @10:32AM (#27224973) Homepage Journal

    "Where the technology does have great applications is among Fibre-to-the-Building deployments in commercial areas.

    "You might have fibre connected from the DSLAM to the basement of an office building," Goodwin said. "You can then run bonded VDSL2+ up into all the other floors.""

    Apparently it's cheaper to roll out fibre to the home these days for new installs and the existing copper to the home is insufficient for last mile where there is fibre to the street (junction)...so looks like it's great for business use or specific regions which fit into some window of installation where they put in redundant copper to the home with fibre to the street.

    • Not only that, but you can use the existing cable more than likely already in the building.

    • >>>Apparently it's cheaper to roll out fibre to the home these days for new installs and the existing copper to the home is insufficient for last mile where there is fibre to the street (junction)...so looks like it's great for business use or specific regions which fit into some window of installation where they put in redundant copper to the home with fibre to the street.
      >>>

      I wish I understood what you just said.
      This must be some kind of advanced grammar
      that follows rules different from

    • And in the future after you've invested in this technology that approaches the limits of copper, you'll find that your neighboring building isn't finding any such limit because he did what you should have done: drag the damned fiber optic cable.

      He'll save money too because he'll be working with commercial off the shelf equipment available at NewEgg. As his speeds go up to 100Gbps per strand you'll be standing there with your copper in your hand going "lol wut?"

    • by afidel ( 530433 )
      Hmmm, perhaps this will make AT&T's Uverse offering useful after all depending on what kind of throughput it can achieve over the distances to the average remote shelf. I still wish they would roll things out like Verizon did with true fiber to the home.
  • Wee bit limited (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Brian Stretch ( 5304 ) * on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @10:33AM (#27224985)

    FTA: "It showed aggregated rates of above 0.5Gbps at 500 metres, bonding six lines."

    So if you happen to have six unused lines lying around and happen to be within half a kilometer of the fiber node and nothing else goes wrong you could get 500Mbps. Realistically you won't be that close to the node, you won't have that many spare lines, and for the sake of a "consistent user experience" (hi AT&T!) you'll get the same craptastic service that someone at least 1km out with at most two pairs would get.

    But some PHB will decide to deploy it because his spreadsheet says that FTTH is too expensive, even if it is a one-time expense, and marketing swears that most people can't tell that their upstream is slow and their HDTV channels have been recompressed into mush. The only people who would notice are the ones who'd buy high-end service tiers if they didn't suck...

    • The node however, will still only have a T1 uplink to the internet
    • by TheLink ( 130905 )
      If they're bonding six lines and all that, I think an important question is: "What's the latency?"
    • by wimg ( 300673 )

      In Belgium, VDSL2 connections are always hooked up to the closest street cabinet, which is usually less than 500m away. At that point, your connection moves on to fiber to the first node (usually 1 o 2 per small town).
      Bonding six lines is a bit tricky though, as most houses have only 2 pairs connected. Though I wouldn't mind getting those 2 bonded ofcourse ;-)

      FTTH is not just expensive, it's impractical, since it means opening up not just the streets, but entry points into each house (or worse, appartment b

    • by Jay L ( 74152 ) *

      So if you happen to have six unused lines lying around

      I built a suburban house in VA in 1996, and in MA in 2000. Both times I asked Verizon to run a new 5- or 10-pair cable (roommates, faxes, spares, all that stuff we no longer need), and both times they were happy to oblige. Sounds like that's an unusual experience?

    • I'm afraid a company full of PHBs beat you to the punch [att.com]. Pity, too; they've monopolized my area.

  • And the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @10:33AM (#27224997) Homepage Journal

    It will just be throttled.

  • People keep complaining about the US...

    But frankly, the Japanese show us how fast and cheap it can be. And what do we have? 25MBit downlink is considered the best you can get without selling your first-born here in Switzerland.

    It's nice that humankind as such is able to transmit data like that, but unless the populace gets to enjoy that technology at a reasonable price, I don't quite see a point in getting excited.

    • Not to mention how many of our ISPs block inbound connections including ssh and http(s). They may build it, but we won't need it when it arrives.

      • Not to mention how many of our ISPs block inbound connections including ssh and http(s). They may build it, but we won't need it when it arrives.

        Is that a problem in Europe? I've run a SSH server for over a year now along with a simple website for my IP address. I've never heard any complaints, any e-mails, etc. The most I would expect is for them to tell me to upgrade to a business account if I want to run services like that.

        • by Shakrai ( 717556 )

          I've run a SSH server for over a year now along with a simple website for my IP address. I've never heard any complaints, any e-mails, etc. The most I would expect is for them to tell me to upgrade to a business account if I want to run services like that.

          I wouldn't try to run a website on my residential connection but I've run SSH for years and never heard any complaints. Of course I keep it firewalled off and only open it up using port knocking [wikipedia.org], so unless they are illegally wiretapping my connection they have no way to know that I'm running it anyway.

        • I'm not sure who has problems with using SSH (unless they're using some cheap service) because I have BT which isn't the greatest but the modem has built in dynamic dns support and built-in presets for various servers. So my Ubuntu machine is set up so I can ssh, remove desktop or acess my tomcat server from anywhere.
      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        Not to mention how many of our ISPs block inbound connections including ssh and http(s).

        Only on the cheapest residential tiers. Once you upgrade to "business class" service, these blocks disappear.

        • Not true. At least where I live, every single ISP has network-wide blocks on FTP, SMTP, SSH, POP and WEB. Even the business cable at our office is crippled, so we use non-standard port numbers for remote access.

          It's friggin' weak sauce, but that's what happens when you let a telecom get too big.

          • Not true. At least where I live, every single ISP has network-wide blocks on FTP, SMTP, SSH, POP and WEB.

            So no-one in your country can receive email or host your own web server? Not even large companies and government departments?

            I call bulldust.

  • Yawn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dmomo ( 256005 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @10:34AM (#27225007)

    It's blazing fast for dsl, but it's still dsl. You might find a way to make a snail slide along at 3 mph. That'd really shake up the racing-snail community, but don't think you'll be entering that snail into a horse race any time soon.

    All fun aside, I suppose this is useful to a lot of people, and a great tech achievement. I'm just pretty confident that by the time it's consumer-ready, there will be much faster alternatives in place.

    What is the role DLS today in the broadband world? Is it merely a bandaid for places with no other options, or something more that I am missing?

    • by epdp14 ( 1318641 )
      I live in an area where I have two choices: Comcast and ATT DSL. I don't feel like paying $80 a month for Comcastic service and speeds... so the $45 a month for direct dsl at 6mbs isn't a bandaid, its the best choice. The cable conglomerates need competition. If that competition comes from FTTH, dsl or any other technology so be it, but cable is not the answer.
    • Re:Yawn (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CXI ( 46706 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @10:48AM (#27225179) Homepage
      What is the role DLS today in the broadband world? Is it merely a bandaid for places with no other options, or something more that I am missing?

      Around here, cable internet is absolute crap due to all the students sucking the bandwidth dry. I don't care what they claim to provide speed wise, it was always slow. The connection would also just disappear for over an hour at a time most nights around 10PM. DSL doesn't provide the theoretical rates of cable, but what it does provide is a fixed rate and the phone company, as much as they suck, sucks a lot less than the cable company when it comes to reliability.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by causality ( 777677 )

        What is the role DLS today in the broadband world? Is it merely a bandaid for places with no other options, or something more that I am missing?

        Around here, cable internet is absolute crap due to all the students sucking the bandwidth dry. I don't care what they claim to provide speed wise, it was always slow. The connection would also just disappear for over an hour at a time most nights around 10PM. DSL doesn't provide the theoretical rates of cable, but what it does provide is a fixed rate and the phone company, as much as they suck, sucks a lot less than the cable company when it comes to reliability.

        You make a good point. I use DSL as well and I generally don't have the problems with unpredictable slowdowns or outright downtime that most of my friends with cable Internet are experiencing. True, they do have higher maximum throughput but I'm satisfied with the speeds I experience and especially with the consistency. Additionally my ISP does not block any ports and does not cap or throttle my connection, which is also nice. I know people often dislike DSL but really, the benefits of a dedicated conne

      • True that. I'm a network engineer and during the course of troubleshooting, I'd start pinging something and forget about it. 40,000 pings later, I'd have dropped about 400 pings during my cable-modem days. I switched to Verizon FIOS and when I'd do the same thing, I'd have dropped ZERO packets.

        Likewise, we're using a VOIP solution in our house and when I was doing the cable-modem thing, for some reason, my ATA would lock up and I'd have to power cycle it at least once per week. When I switched to FIOS, the

      • Yeah! The rascally evil students are wasting all the bandwidth on things like youtube, games, iTunes and Netflix movie downloads, etc. Perfectly illegitimate uses, the cable company should cut them off.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by LordKaT ( 619540 )

      DSL is for:

      -People who don't care how fast their connection is so much as that the connection is up and running

      -People who want a generally fast Internet connection that provides a reliable amount of bandwidth

      -People who don't want, or can't afford, to put up with download caps

      -People who are not serviced by a cable company (rural farmers, people who don't live in a big city, etc...)

      -People who want a static IP address without buying into a business package (depends on the DSL providers, of course)

      -People w

    • You know, people keep saying this as if the experience in their local area is the same everywhere. It's not. The maximum available (from the one single cable provider) bandwidth in my area is 6Mb/s, at $60/month. I've used it, at peak times it drops to around 1Mb/s, and the upload never exceeds 2Mb/s. My DSL service (I have a choice of three DSL providers; I use the smallish local one) is 10Mb/s, and I routinely download at a stable ~900KB/s - 1MB/s, which is around 80% of max. DSL's role (in my area) i
    • I take your point, but please remember there are some countries -- or at least regions of countries -- where DSL lines are the only option. Most of South America falls in this catagory.
  • That's a blu-ray movie download in 10 minutes.

    They're missing the tightly integrated monitoring/filtering scheme that will have to exist before the MAFIAA lets deployment occur.
    • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @10:57AM (#27225319)

      Well lets go back in time to get a perspective.
      We are talking about Average Home use not corporate high end use.

      1992 9600bps 3 megs an hour
      1994 14.4k became the norm. 6 Megs and hour.
      1996 28.8k became the norm. 10 megs an hour (after 14.4k we rarely ever got full speed connection over the modem)
      1998 56.6k became the norm. 13/14 megs and hour that much more flaky.
      2000 Cable Modem/DSL started to enter the market. In my area peak speed was about 500kbs so about 225 Megs an hour
      2002 1mbs
      2004 2mbs
      2006 4mbs
      2008 8mbs
      2009 we are at about 10mbs/15mbs (with paying extra for 15mbs)

      So roughly we double in speed every 2 years. So I doubt we will see 500mbs for home use until...
      2010 16mbs
      2012 32mbs
      2014 64mbs
      2018 128mbs
      2020 256mbs
      2022 512mbs

      2022 Wow. All my predictions are seeming to fall in 2022 lately, Real Time Ray Tracing, Dukenukem forever, Now home use at 500mbs. 2022 will be a cool year.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        All hail 2022! And with these new DSl speeds, we will actually be able to stream in real time the new Duke Nukem Forever game, which will also have Real Time Ray Tracing! Huzzah!
      • by Shakrai ( 717556 )

        1996 28.8k became the norm. 10 megs an hour (after 14.4k we rarely ever got full speed connection over the modem)

        That wasn't my experience. Living in town with a fairly decent outside plant I had full speed connections most of the time on my v.34+ (33.6k) USR Courier modem. Occasionally it would connect at 31.2 but that was rare. Even when we lived out in the sticks I always got at least 26.4 but usually 28.8 or 31.2.

        On the other hand, v.90 was a joke. Even in town with the good phone lines I rarely got connections faster than 45k and they seemed to deteriorate to <28k as time went on. I actually had better l

      • 2010 16mbs

        2012 32mbs

        2014 64mbs

        2018 128mbs

        2020 256mbs

        2022 512mbs

        2014 + 2 =

        Answers on the back of an envelope, please.

        • Dag Nabit, When counting evens I always skip 6. 2,4,8, not 2,4,6,8. It must be all that binary in college.

        • ...2014 64mbs...

          Who wants to wait until 2014 to have speeds slower than what our Telecoms should have been providing by the year 2000?

          As of these years: these speeds should have been available as others in the world were offering them; thanks to government intervention that is to break the Telcom Monopoly / Oligopoly practices:

          2000: 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps ($55.00 per month)

          2008: 1 Gbps / 1 Gbps (less than $55.00 per month)

          if you did not already know this, you are not alone, now please tell everyone that you know about it so they will stop accepting the industry FUD and excuses on the issue.

          This is even more insulting once you realize that the American companies have been taking BILLIONS

      • by wimg ( 300673 )

        Just to compare (not meant to make you guys depressed), in Belgium :
        1997 : cable 10Mbps/768kbps (upstream limited to 128kbps) - ADSL 8Mbps/630kbps (limited to 1Mbps/256kbps)
        2009 : cable 25Mbps/1Mbps - VDSL2 17Mbps/512kbps

        Cable should move to EuroDocsis 3.0 by 2010, allowing for 200Mbps/30Mbps, but in reality they'll cap it, so they can gradually give customers more.

      • "2009 we are at about 10mbs/15mbs (with paying extra for 15mbs)" wtf??

        i'm on 100mbit/100mbit unmetered FTTH :)

  • Too bad that when the day this technology is deployed monthly bandwidth caps will probably be the rule. It would be nice being able to run a proper server at home (can't afford T1,and adsl here in Spain have very restricted upload capacity), without worrying about hogging your bandwidth with pr0n and torrents. We'll see how this goes.
  • by transporter_ii ( 986545 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @10:37AM (#27225051) Homepage

    A much greater distance from the DSLAM would be much more needed than the improved speeds. Many people in rural areas can't get anything and would be happy with 5 Mb down if they could just get it.

    transporter_ii

    • by adh72 ( 1161643 )
      I'd be happy with anything above 28k. It sucks living in a rural area served by AT&T. 1 county to the north a small phone company that serves primarily rural areas has DSL available to every home they serve. The also just announced that they are rolling out fiber the the home over the next 5 years to every address in their area. ATT will never do that because they only see profit margins while the small companies who provide the same services just sees profit.
      • Rural area, att/bell south. Lucky to get anything above 28.8 anymore, and they have no plans whatsoever to improve service that I have been able to determine from them. The last place we lived, which was way, WAY the heck more out in the sticks and up multiple dirt roads, was/is served by a smaller community telco and unfortunately for me but good for everyone else there, just when we were moving that little telco ran really decent thick underground copper to EVERY residence in their area that needed an upg

    • by akarnid ( 591191 )
      Perhaps the answer lies in DSL repeaters. We are starting to use them here in Iceland to serve rural homes that are between 5-10 km from the DSLAM. The plan is that these homes will be able to get 2 Mbps down/512 up which is way better than crappy old ISDN. I've seen DSL, throttled back to 512 kbps down on lines that were over 15 km long so it's not unheard of to see DSL on such long lines.
  • From TFA

    "Its speed is best over thye hundreds of metres," he said. "But beyond 1km you will find that ADSL2+ is actually faster."

    Which means that it will do nothing for the people who complain about speed now, either being unable to get broadband or only get a slow link. Actually it will probably make things worse for them as the web designers in "connected" cities decide that they can have high-definition video on their web-site front pages. Many people have to wait five minutes to see the existing flash pages.

    • From TFA

      "Its speed is best over thye hundreds of metres," he said. "But beyond 1km you will find that ADSL2+ is actually faster."

      Which means that it will do nothing for the people who complain about speed now, either being unable to get broadband or only get a slow link. Actually it will probably make things worse for them as the web designers in "connected" cities decide that they can have high-definition video on their web-site front pages. Many people have to wait five minutes to see the existing flash pages.

      If the problem there is infrastructure, it makes me wonder whatever happened to WiMax? Isn't that supposed to address exactly the situation you describe?

      One would almost get the impression that we dislike broadband which does not come from a government-regulated monopoly.

      • by Miseph ( 979059 )

        Look at it less as government regulated monopolies, and more as monopoly regulated governments, and I promise that you'll start to see a pretty clear pattern with these things.

      • If the problem there is infrastructure, it makes me wonder whatever happened to WiMax? Isn't that supposed to address exactly the situation you describe?

        One would almost get the impression that we dislike broadband which does not come from a government-regulated monopoly.

        No, we just like out TV better than our Internet.

        Some of the frequency blocks that were bought, in order to deploy WiMax solutions, are currently occupied until the changeover to Digital Broadcasting actually happens.

        Once that frequency ran

  • There is this portuguese company called "PT InovaÃão" that developed a far superior technology that holds 100 Mbps@5 Kms. Whay should they be working on improving bandwidth in a technology with such short range capabilities? If you get fiber that close, you might as well go all the way to FTTH...
    • The problem is that nobody can reach their website.

    • ...go all the way to FTTH...

      LMAO, When they give us true high speed bandwidth / Internet at around $55.00 per month, I will give them a chance.

      I am so sick of being behind the Japanese in potential for innovation due to sllllooooooowwwww high speed Internet speeds. They have had 100MB / 100MB since 2000 and are now rolling out 1 GB / 1 Gb for less than $55.00 per month.

      How can they offer these speeds you ask?

      Because they cut the crap, the government intervened and forced them to de-criminalize their telephone monopoly (as the

  • Bonding? Boring. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GiMP ( 10923 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @11:24AM (#27225749)

    VDSLv2 gives you 100mbps. Technically, they would only need 5 lines to reach 500mbps, but I imagine ther "500mbps" is actual throughput, thus the requirement of a 6th line to reach this figure. However, this is with bonding. They could have just as easily claimed 10gbps speeds, by bonding 20 lines. VDSL2 bridges are readily available and bonding isn't anything special. The summary, the article, and the whole press release is just bull.

    As for if this is good idea or not, it depends on the distance. This only makes sense for distances between 100m and 300m. Otherwise, there are better options. If your distance is shorter, run Ethernet. If your distance is longer, you're either going to lose performance or consider running fiber.

  • For the rest of us, we still are OOL.
  • Sweet! (Score:2, Funny)

    by shadedream ( 1225698 )
    Now I can exceed my "realistic" 20gb cap in ~40 seconds...
  • This is fraud because they bonded multiple pairs. Yeah I can run a hundred pairs of wire in parallel and get amazing transfer rates, but I can do that with current technology and transmission rates and it means nothing except that I can spell "parallel data transfer". Speeds should be measured by the single wire-pair circuit only! This used more wire pairs than most customers have coming into their houses.
  • Memo: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jawn98685 ( 687784 )
    From: VP of Marketing, MegaTelco
    To: VP of Operations, MegaTelco
    CC: VP of Research and Development, MegaTelco

    Gentlemen,
    Congratulations to the R&D boys who have come up with this wonderful new technology.

    Now, please make certain that this is kept under wraps for as long as possible so that we can squeeze as much money as possible out of our current customers who are paying for "special" data circuits. We'd like to continue to keep them bent over and taking it deep for as long as possible. We don't wa

  • Why are we spending money to attempt to squeeze more life out of an obsolete technology? Twisted pair copper is an absolete technology and it makes no sense to continue to use it as the infrastructure is aging and not very reliable in some areas. No wonder we are behind the curve of Japan when it comes to broadband and communications. They have already laid fibre that is capable of similar data transmission rates. I never liked DSL anyway, it is slower than cable. A much better investment, and our sitt

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