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."
Yawn (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Blu-ray in 10minutes (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Bonding? Boring. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Yawn (Score:2, Interesting)
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 connection over a shared connection are not to be underestimated.
The few times I had to call technical support really weren't that bad either, especially not for a major telco. The folks I talked to still had the annoying habit of following their "script" too closely and disregarding the fact that I already tried basic obvious things (such as power-cycling the modem/router) before I asked for help. I realize their position and that they feel a need to do that because of the tremendous number of frankly incompetent/ignorant users who will incorrectly perform those basic tasks. However, when it's apparent that I'm at least as knowledgable as the front-line tech support person (whom I generally only call when the issue is on their end and so I cannot solve it myself), I don't consider it unreasonable to expect them to stop making such assumptions. Anyway, I just described front-line tech support in general and did not mean to give the impression that this is unique to my telco.