Welsh Scientists Radically Increase Fiber Broadband Speeds With COTS Parts 72
Mark.JUK writes "Scientists working under an EU funded (3 Million Euros) project out of Bangor University in Wales (United Kingdom) have developed a commercially-exploitable way of boosting broadband speeds over end-user fibre optic lines by using Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OOFDM) technology, which splits a laser down to multiple different optical frequencies (each of which can be used to carry data), and low-cost off-the-shelf components. The scientists claim that their solution has the ability to 'increase broadband transmission by up to two thousand times the current speed and capacity' (most UK Fibre-to-the-Home or similar services currently offer less than 100 Megabits per second) and it can do this alongside a 'significant reduction in electrical power consumption.'"
But we won't get it because... (Score:4, Insightful)
... BT are bloody useless!
Re:But we won't get it because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider; The identical fibre with this new tech is all of a sudden 2000x times less efficient than it could be. Do you think you'll be charged 1/2000 of the current rate if it's implemented and you elect not to use it?
(I realise there is more to this, like switching overhead, backbone speed, contention etc).
Re:But we won't get it because... (Score:5, Informative)
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Now they charge you a line rental even if you use a different ISP (as if they could rent that specific piece of wire to anyone else).
This part I don't actually object to - they're still on the hook for fixing the wire if it breaks, which could cost them hundreds, even thousands. Plus there's provisioning of electricity for boosters and such.
Of course, with the talk of 100mbit and up services I can't help but wonder if at that point whether the switches themselves would be the bigger chokepoint.
for our Welsh /.'ers (Score:3)
"Scntsts wrkng ndr n fndd (3 Mlln rs) prjct t f Bngr nvrsty n Wls (ntd Kngdm) hv dvlpd cmmrclly-xpltbl wy f bstng brdbnd spds vr nd-sr fbr ptc lns by sng ptcl rthgnl Frqncy Dvsn Mltplxng (FDM) tchnlgy, whch splts lsr dwn t mltpl dffrnt ptcl frqncs (ch f whch cn b sd t crry dt), nd lw-cst ff-th-shlf cmpnnts. Th scntsts clm tht thr sltn hs th blty t 'ncrs brdbnd trnsmssn by p t tw thsnd tms th crrnt spd nd cpcty' (mst K Fbr-t-th-Hm r smlr srvcs crrntly ffr lss thn 100 Mgbts pr scnd) nd t cn d ths lngsd 'sgnfcnt rdctn n lctrcl pwr cnsmptn.'"
I keed, I keed!
Here's the actual Welsh translation via google:
Prifysgol Bangor yng Nghymru (United Kingdom) wedi datblygu ffordd fasnachol-ecsploetio'n o roi hwb cyflymder band eang dros linellau ffibr diwedd-ddefnyddiwr optig drwy ddefnyddio Is-adran Optegol Amlder orthogonol Multiplexing (OOFDM) technoleg, sy'n rhannu'r laser i lawr i amleddau optegol lluosog gwahanol (yr un gellir ohonynt yn cael eu defnyddio i gario data), ac isel-cost oddi ar y silff cydrannau. Mae gwyddonwyr yn honni bod eu datrysiad y gallu i 'gynyddu trosglwyddo band eang o hyd at ddwy fil o weithiau y cyflymder presennol a'r gallu' (y rhan fwyaf DU Ffibr-i'r-Home-neu wasanaethau tebyg ar hyn o bryd yn cynnig llai na 100 megabit yr eiliad) ac mae'n gall wneud hyn ochr yn ochr à 'gostyngiad sylweddol yn y defnydd o bÅer trydanol.' "
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Technically they're Openreach's lines, Openreach was created by Ofcom so BT would be separated from the lines in the same way that other providers are. When I was working there we were working with the in house software to cripple it so BT didn't have better access to the hardware than other providers and the job was relatively well done. BT still had some advantages in that you could still just walk down the corridor and speak to whoever was in the exchange but for the majority of people who dealt with cus
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Is there a way to post £ without it getting slash-mangled?
Use GBP instead, I've got fed up typing £ (pound sign on a UK keyboard) and seeing it coming out looking Scandinavian.
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No, that's a very myopic short term view. If you don't pass your savings on to your customers, you will lose customers.
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Not if you have a monopoly or a de facto monopoly shared with only a handful of large competitors who all share a mutual interest of making massive profits. Then you pass the savings to customers very slowly, reluctantly giving in bit by bit in tiny incremental improvements. By the time you've passed along the full savings you've already made additional advances that garnered you 10 fold more savings than what you've passed on.
It all comes from the counter-productive mantra that it isn't good enough to main
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Would you really be that interested in a 1000x increase in last mile speed, even if it meant that NONE of your actual applications (except maybe bittorrent) were going to go any faster at all? I would rather see them invest in the backbone than trying to out-do a 100mbit last mile which is probably pretty freaking hard to saturate as it is.
Just sayin'
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I would be immensely interested in high-speed last mile because:
Two customers of the same ISP could transfer files at ridiculous speeds. Bittorrent and other P2P services would automatically take advantage of this, upon seeing one peer with insane bandwidth. The technically inclined would make good use of this, storing backups off-site once ample last-mile bandwidth is there.
Edge-network caching services like Akami would now mean many popular websites will be super-fast, not just slightly lower latency...
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Well, maybe. But I saw a documentary on when McDonald's started super sizing meals (no, not "Supersize me") and when you first had the store, staff, equipment, procurement, cleaning etc. delivering extra fries actually cost them very little. I imagine it's quite the same for an ISP, to take my own as an example for 22% more in cost I get 140% more bandwidth compared to the tier below mine. So if delivering super fast broadband is dirt cheap they'll want to push me to another crazy fast tier for money I didn
Where is end-user fiber optics the capacity limit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where is end-user fiber optics the capacity lim (Score:4, Funny)
What is this 'fiber' you speak of? Sounds like an interesting tech.
Re:Where is end-user fiber optics the capacity lim (Score:5, Funny)
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TFA is pretty useless and doesn't indicate what sorts of fiber this works on, or why it is different from other OOFDM-related work; but is there any reason to suspect that a technology that improves fiber transmit rates wouldn't help the CO backbone link speed as well?
Given the, um, vigorous state of competition in the broadband market, it isn't clear that that will matter much; but if they have some new secret sauce that makes transmissions over fiber faster it would, naively, seem to be something that co
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TFA is pretty useless and doesn't indicate what sorts of fiber this works on, or why it is different from other OOFDM-related work; but is there any reason to suspect that a technology that improves fiber transmit rates wouldn't help the CO backbone link speed as well?
Given the, um, vigorous state of competition in the broadband market, it isn't clear that that will matter much; but if they have some new secret sauce that makes transmissions over fiber faster it would, naively, seem to be something that could be added to any part of the network carried over fiber.
Maybe it won't because tossing in a router that is capable of processing 1000x more packets is NOT going to happen with "COTS" parts? Fiber is only as fast as the hardware on either end. These are little strands of glass barely wide enough to feel, if doubling/tripling/1000x'ing bandwidth were as simple as tossing a few more in the trench don't you think they would have done that already? Gracefully processing the light at either end is the hard part.
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I suspect that if the technology is really 'commercially viable', it could also make it cheaper to upgrade backbone links too.
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It would certainly help if the tale I was spun about my slow broadband was true. According to the droid I spoke to. there was no point in installing more equipment into my local exchange because they were bandwidth limited on the link from that relatively local exchange to the main backbone, and it would mean laying new fibre, which would take a long time and be very expensive. If they can suddenly speed up that link by 10x, let alone 2000x, then the cluster of villages served by that exchange will, in an i
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Well, it means they can charge you the same for using less fiber and power.
So what they'll do is all new laid fiber to the endpoint will use this technology, inorder to save money, charge you the same, but they'll leave their 100kbps backbone, so that they can claim it's the pirates clogging the pipes.
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Currently, for most places in the UK, the bottleneck for fibre-to-end-user is the copper cable between the end-user's house and the cabinet down the street where the fibre terminates.
Already using it! (Score:1, Funny)
First Post!
Great, but will it be useful? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure ISPs and others would be keen in upgrading their infrastructure to make the theoretical speed really available to home users, sadly...
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That doesn't mean they will actually pass the increases to customers.
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Not sure ISPs and others would be keen in upgrading their infrastructure to make the theoretical speed really available to home users
I wonder how this [broadbandbreakfast.com] and this [techcrunch.com] happened then?
Though USA needs to do away with regional monopolies/cartels.
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Thanks for the input, get your point but was really just saying what others have subsequently done better - the theoretical speeds of 'broadband' are already often far in excess of the speed that you can actually download at.
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the issue is backbone connectivity/BW limit. if this works for backbone connections as well, then end users can finally atleast get what they are actually paying for already.
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Why fancy doing some research do you?
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Not DWDM, this is something else. (Score:5, Interesting)
which splits a laser down to multiple different optical frequencies
No no no thats just WDM for DWDM. Imagine a piece of glass fiber with prisms on each end and separate red, green, blue, etc lasers and detectors. They (can) operate completely independently. You can do the same thing with RF and NTSC signals... its call old fashioned analog cable TV.
OOFDM is like hyper close packed DWDM and usually made out of different tech. Some games are played to eliminate ISI and crosstalk, assuming the gear is working properly, perfectly linear, etc. Maybe a cruddy analogy would be kinda like two voice signals in one DSB carrier, or another cruddy analogy is its plain ole DSL FDM except coordinated so the FDM slices don't/can't interfere with each other and the leading O means its optical.
For RF this is "old" stuff like from the 90s. For optical this is pretty impressive and new. Same concept just a couple orders of magnitude higher frequency.
The wikipedia article is not so bad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_frequency-division_multiplexing [wikipedia.org]
low-cost off-the-shelf components
HA HA yeah maybe thats in the grant proposal as a goal, or its low cost compared to installing another length of fiber... Its not gonna be low cost as in I could do it in my basement using parts from an old laser printer, or you'll be buying a fiber "ethernet switch" using it for $9.95. It is probably going to be lower-cost compared to any previous design, which IS cool.
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I suspect they are actually doing some kind of fiddling in the electrical domain and calling it FDM, while the laser is still either On Off Keying or maybe Phase Shift Keying. Since DP-QPSK transmitters and receivers still cost about as much as a luxury car they're hardly COTS.
Gareth Edwards (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch exceeds the maximum packet size and causes the router to c*@
! n o
c a r r i e r
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Well, at least I can pronounce the place name ;-) but of course we impose such limita..... .....tions on packet lengths that saying something out loud - or using carrier pidgeon (al.... .....beit with a broken leg after that message ;-) ) might be more reliable
Doesn't increase speed - increases capacity (Score:2, Insightful)
The speed of light is the speed of light. :)
Would love to know how they made it faster
Yes the effect is improved throughput - ie transfer rates or download/upload speeds, but the packet speed isn't improved at all.
When we can introduce a photon into one end of a piece of fiber and have it instantaneously come out the other end, we'll have *speed* improvements.
Until then, we're only increasing capacity.
That is all. EOL
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Because latency is fixed by light, then there is only one type of speed. I don't see the confusion
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Makes you wonder what the point of so-called broadband is, doesn't it? We might as well have stuck with our 14.4 kbps modems.
Yeah but ... (Score:3)
But since this was done by a Welshman, nobody will be able to decipher the packets.
I kid, I kid.
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LOL, took some googling, but I think I get "Sir, you're being a douche for sure".
I can't imagine why the Welsh have a reputation for being indecipherable. :-P
I met some Welsh guys on vacation once -- the younger guys I could follow, but the older guys might as well have been speaking Klingon their accents were so thick. Nice guys though.
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Well, I tried to put it together from a couple of fragments, but I read "Syr, yr hyn a ddywedwch" as "Sir, you're being a douche" almost verbatim ... so maybe it's then followed with "... but are probably correct".
It's not often I get told what for in a language I don't know, so I'm a little rusty and not quite the cunning linguist I used to be. ;-)
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Ddywedwch means "say" not douche!
"yr hyn a ddywedwch" -> What you say
"yn debygol iawn" -> very probably
"wir" -> true
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LOL ... I tried phonetically mapping it to English, and Ddywedwch seemed to map to the oh-so-common "douche" one sees on Slashdot.
But then, I never claimed to speak Welsh. Some days, English is enough of a chore :-P
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LOL ... "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt [lipsum.com].
OK don't even attempt to match Welsh phonetically to English is the lesson here. :-P
Perhaps this will make our grandchildren happy (Score:2)
First of all, here in the Netherlands the roll-out of fiber to the home seems to be moving at a snail's pace. My impression is that our local telco giant, KPN, who work together with Reggefiber to install fiber optic cabling, is only interested in doing this for new neighborhoods. I once asked what it might take to change their minds and was told that, if I was to survey my neighborhood (around 1,000 homes) and gather signatures from at least 40% who would be interested in such a connection, then they woul
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COTS - HOWTO please? (Score:2)
throw something up on ehow at least, eh? I've got a private fiber to try this out on.
poor little me doesn't have a copy of Nature Photonics from May 2011.
2020 (Score:1)
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In other news (Score:2)