Cable vs DSL Rollout (aka why NTL are brilliant/useless)

crawler

Sponge Bob wrote:

Technically the NTL network is superior to ADSL2+ Already with a Docsis 1.1 system and capacity for up to 40mbits down as compared to 24Mbits down . ADSL2+ is alrwady kinda nowhere in comparison Blaster99 . Lord only knows what Chorus deployed though

DOCSIS roadmap
DOCSIS Ver 	 1.0 	 [B]1.1 [/B]	 2.0 	2.X 	 3.0
[B]Mbps/channel[/B] 	40 	40 	40 	40 	200
Gbps/node 	5 	5 	5 	5 	6.3
Upstream bandwidth
Mbps/channel 	10 	10 	30 	30 	100
Mbps/node 	80 	80 	170 	170 	450

The next upgrade is to docsis 2 or higher

the lord tells me it's a mix of stuff for Chorus - Motorola, Terayon (out of CMTs business now, part of Arris I think) and Cisco. Mainly Docsis 1.0.

To end the cable V dsl stuff - cable is better if :-

1) it is the higher capacity variety ( up to about 850Mhz or 900Mhz+)
2) The amps at the DP's are two way ( obviously)
3) Low noise floor ( cable plant is norotiously full of noise)
4) properly planned with frequency stacking etc

twisted copper is simple - coax plant is difficult.

Coax can carry more data than twisted copper because of physics. it is also sheilded. DOCSIS 3 will channel bond various 6.4Mhz channels together to create an uber data channel. the CMTs for DOCSIS 3.0 is actually a modular CMTS which is also multimedia capable allowing MSOs to use all the frequencies for data and to deliver all services over IP - then depending on the type of Coax ( see above ) you have capacity/frequency available for data transmission (you need to take out bits though as at the low and a few other frequencies, noise is too bad and you also get harmonics)

Some clever people also managed to do wireless docsis 2.0

Anyone like to challenge me on this??

Now then...

Blaster99

Sponge Bob wrote:

This is getting really really tiresome . Cable BB involves getting fibre out to the housing estate and using cable to the house . Therefore the fibre is nearer to you than the fibre used to provision DSL , the UK cable typically has 1 fibre serving 50 copper houses , in Ireland its probably 1 fibre for 100-200 houses .

That fibre can drop 5Gbits into that pool of houses , the nodal bandwith in the Docsis table I suppied earlier . Not all 200 (say) houses have BB , assume that 15% of them do , meaning 30 houses share the nodal bandwith delivered by fibre.

You do the math if you want but I fear you would rather keep digging

I have no problem with the math, but I have a problem with the mentioning of other countries whenever you do an example. I know cable networks are built correctly in other countries, because I have worked with most of those cable companies and they did broadband (and digital TV) a million years ago and planned their networks accordingly.

My understanding is that in Ireland, NTL's network is not fibre to the curb except in Tallaght and Coolock, ie the places where NTL dug up everything about five years ago and then gave up. The present strategy, I believe, is to use the existing long cable loops, hence the problem. But I'm willing to be corrected without the Dutch examples ideally.

Sponge Bob

Blaster99 wrote:

The present strategy, I believe, is to use the existing long cable loops, hence the problem. But I'm willing to be corrected without the Dutch examples ideally.

well the present strategy may handle about 5mbits , after that dunno . The market will recentre on 5Mbits this year like they all did 2mbits last year after Smart launched .

The nodal pool after the Disintermediategration (© 2006 Sponge Central ) from fibre is an unknown unknown to me. I suspect that some fibre runs and further decontention may be needed to get beyond 5Mbits in the wild . I do know that, long runs or not, NTL have managed to get a stable acceptable 3mbits package ...at a good price.. out to the consumer .

paulm17781

I really, really hope that they havn't been so short sighted as to go to a max of 5Mb. I wonder if that is why I was only getting 4.5 when we got the 10Mb upgrade...

crawler

Sponge Bob wrote:

well the present strategy may handle about 5mbits , after that dunno . The market will recentre on 5Mbits this year like they all did 2mbits last year after Smart launched .

The nodal pool after the Disintermediategration (© 2006 Sponge Central ) from fibre is an unknown unknown to me. I suspect that some fibre runs and further decontention may be needed to get beyond 5Mbits in the wild . I do know that, long runs or not, NTL have managed to get a stable acceptable 3mbits package ...at a good price.. out to the consumer .

"disintermediategration" ???

Not all nodes fibre fed - some are coax....houses per node varies.

Blaster99

I suppose the worry that I have in the back of my mind is that NTL's network will be oversubscribed along the lines IBB's. Ultimately both technologies suffer the same limitations, in that you're sharing the same sector with lots of users. But so far NTL is clearly delivering the goods and hopefully they will continue to do so and if 5Mbps becomes the norm, that'd be great.

Sponge Bob

crawler wrote:

"disintermediategration" ???

Thats my newly minted special word to describe everything this year . :cool:

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

NTL has never been at the forefront of BB packages, so we'll see if that will change with UPC.

I think that is very unfair, NTL has very much been at the front. They have been offering 3m/300k for €45 for the last 12 months. 3m/256k from Eircom cost €107 during that time and will likely be about €54 next month.

There were also one of the first companies to break away from the whole 128k upload speed crap that was only available on DSL.

And they were the first company to offer entry level always on BB for under €30 - 1m/100k for €25

Eircom has been trailing them by at least 12 months.

Yes, Digiweb and Smart have also being doing a very good job.

Blaster99 wrote:

Or perhaps even more importantly, where has ADSL2+ gotten in terms of speed and availability by the time the NTL BS wagon reaches its destination. TV you can get in lots of different ways.

There are some major problems with offering TV over ADSL2+

With ADSL2+ most people will get about 12 - 14mbit/s, now a standard definition TV transmission will take up about 4mbit/s. So what happens when a person wants two separate TV's in their house, well it will use 8mbit/s, how about a third TV, that is 12mbit/s (with nothing left over for standard internet access) or what about my situation were we have 4 TV's, >16mbit/s, it can't be done!

And then what about High Definition TV, it will use around 10mbit/s for just one TV stream using MPEG4.

IPTV over DSL just doesn't have the scalability of cable and satellite TV. Interestingly Verizon, the largest DSL provider in the world has recognised this and has decided to skip ADSL2+ and VDSL altogether and is instead going from ADSL straight to Fibre To The Home as they have recognised this problem.

Sponge Bob

bk wrote:

With ADSL2+ most people will get about 12 - 14mbit/s, now a standard definition TV transmission will take up about 4mbit/s. So what happens when a person wants two separate TV's in their house, well it will use 8mbit/s, how about a third TV, that is 12mbit/s (with nothing left over for standard internet access) or what about my situation were we have 4 TV's, >16mbit/s, it can't be done!

Good point about the 16mbits bk.

And then what about High Definition TV, it will use around 10mbit/s for just one TV stream using MPEG4.

are you sure about that figure ? it seems a bit high for me for a HD 720p or 1080i stream but I could well be wrong .

bk

Sponge Bob wrote:

The nodal pool after the Disintermediategration (© 2006 Sponge Central ) from fibre is an unknown unknown to me. I suspect that some fibre runs and further decontention may be needed to get beyond 5Mbits in the wild . I do know that, long runs or not, NTL have managed to get a stable acceptable 3mbits package ...at a good price.. out to the consumer .

Just to point out, on the night when we all got the 10mbit/s upgrades accidentally, I was easily getting > 9mbit/s very consistently and from the thread it looked like every NTL customer was trying to download the entire interenet to try out their new speeds

So it does look like it is capable of it, however as you say I'm sure there are areas that would need more backhaul and less homes per node.

crawler

Sponge Bob wrote:

Good point about the 16mbits bk.

are you sure about that figure ? it seems a bit high for me for a HD 720p or 1080i stream but I could well be wrong .

8-10Mb is about right for HDTV on MPEG-4 part 10 or AVC etc...differs slightly depending on size and overlay...

I need a big word for 2006.....hmmm...

Blaster99

When I wrote "TV can be had in lots of ways" I meant ways other than ADSL.

bk

crawler wrote:

DOCSIS 3 will channel bond various 6.4Mhz channels together to create an uber data channel.

Will there not be a EuroDOCSIS version of 3 in 8Mhz channels?

Do NTL not already use 8Mhz channels for PAL analogue TV?

Cheers

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

When I wrote "TV can be had in lots of ways" I meant ways other than ADSL.

Sorry I thought you were talking about IPTV, interesingly in the UK, BT is going to offer an integrated Freeview (DTT) box with ADSL modem in order to offer the triple play packages.

Blaster99

I suppose if NTL runs out of capacity, they could possibly dump the analogue TV and use that spectrum for broadband instead.

Is MPEG4 any better than MPEG2 or whatever it is NTL uses now? The picture quality isn't great whatever it is.

crawler

bk wrote:

Will there not be a EuroDOCSIS version of 3 in 8Mhz channels?

Do NTL not already use 8Mhz channels for PAL analogue TV?

Cheers

Without a doubt there will, less of an issue with channel bonding though as the CM can use multiple channels not just the 6.4mhz channel or 8Mhz channel today - remember, you dont actually need a new CMTS if you are clever (ahem - lads, you reading!!??) a DOCSIS 2.0 CMTs with a number of 8 X 2 channel and a new "extra" magic box to combine the channels will also do the trick, hence the "modular" aspect of the M-CMTS. 3 is an addition to 2 really - very clever additiion I might add.

Issue is the CM needs a silicon change to use channel bonding and scan multiple channels so all existing CMs and CPe will need to be changed.

I dont see a commercial release of 3 in Europe in 2006 - MSOs still recovering the investment in 2.0.

I am always suspect of people who know too much about this stuff BK - you ex "insert cabel co name here" ?

Good read here and very related http://www.cabledatacomnews.com/jan06/jan06-4.html

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

I suppose if NTL runs out of capacity, they could possibly dump the analogue TV and use that spectrum for broadband instead.

I believe there are tests of this sort of thing being carried out in Japan, were they use a large chunk of the frequency spectrum to deliver gigabit ethernet speeds over cable. They would then deliver all TV using IPTV. But it will be a very long time before NTL ever does this.

Dumping analogue TV wouldn't help until they introduce DOCSIS 3. You see at the moment they use a single 8Mhz channel (a single analogue TV channel is 8Mhz) for downstream bandwidth. DOCSIS 3 will basically allow them to bond multiple channels together to deliver faster speeds (just 4 8MHz channels will give you > 200Mbits/s), however it will require new customer "modems".

Blaster99 wrote:

Is MPEG4 any better than MPEG2 or whatever it is NTL uses now? The picture quality isn't great whatever it is.

This question is hard to answer. Almost all Digital TV delivered at the moment is encoded using MPEG2, this includes Digital Cable, Satellite, DTT and even DVD's. So picture quality is based on the encoding rate they use, it can be really good (DVD) or pretty bad (Freeview DTT) if they try and fit too many channels in the available space by reducing the encoding rate (and therefore the quality).

MPEG-4 is actually a standard that encompases a lot of different things and includes two different video codecs, AVC and Microsofts VC-1. Using MPEG2 a HD stream would use about 20mbit/s, using MPEG4 it would use about 10Mbit/s as the video codes are more efficient. However the pictue quality would continue to depend on what codec you used and what bitrate encoding you used and many other factors.

So if NTL changed to MPEG4 and kept the same number of channels then picture quality would probably improve, but if they tried to double the number of channels (in the same space currently available) then it would probably work out the same (but with more channels).

bk

crawler wrote:

I am always suspect of people who know too much about this stuff BK - you ex "insert cabel co name here" ?

LOL, no I've never worked for any cableco, telco or ISP. I'm a software engineer who is just interested in BB technology.

crawler wrote:

Good read here and very related http://www.cabledatacomnews.com/jan06/jan06-4.html

Ummm, 15mbit/s, I wonder do people actually regularly get 15mbit/s, it is pushing the limits of DOCSIS 2. The Narad Networks out-of-band technology sounds very interesting, I most read up on it.

paulm17781

What sort of cable do NTL use now? 550 or 850 Mhz?

crawler

bk wrote:

LOL, no I've never worked for any cableco, telco or ISP. I'm a software engineer who is just interested in BB technology.



Ummm, 15mbit/s, I wonder do people actually regularly get 15mbit/s, it is pushing the limits of DOCSIS 2. The Narad Networks out-of-band technology sounds very interesting, I most read up on it.

Fair enough - I have worked for them all and know feck all about software engineering!

narad interesting, teleste interesting...few others interesting - all depends on the coax in the network though!

15Mbps is not pushing the limits really - but it depends how the network is proportioned and how many homes per node and what feeds the node and the noise floor etc etc etc etc....

DOCSIS is probably the most efficient use of spectrum (wired or wireless ) possible and is very happy about noise....we love it

Freddie59

Blaster99 wrote:

Why would I be jealous? I'm looking to disconnect NTL as soon as possible. A complete waste of money.

5 areas in a year, wow. I wonder what the opinion around here would be if Eircom only enabled five exchanges a year. I would be a little more excited if Smart came my way.

Yeah - a real waste. 1 Meg for €24.99 - 2 Meg for €29.99. Honestly - some people.:rolleyes:

Try pricing the same on Eircom and Digiweb.;)

Freddie59

Blaster99 wrote:

The fact that they charge €20-30pm for free TV doesn't exactly help either, but I've banged that drum enough in another thread. This is the primary reason I'm getting rid of them. I'd rather pay €25 to Eircom (or BT) for line rental as it's at least giving me some value.

Are you on something at the minute?

€19.99 per month for 17 TV and 18 radio channels. Another €10 (bringing it to €30) gives you another 100+ Digital TV and Radio channels.

Alternatively you can allow Eircom charge you €24 per month to have a device installed in YOUR home which generates revenue for THEM. And does shag all else except telephony (and overpriced BB).

Yep - great maths! :eek:

Freddie59

Blaster99 wrote:

Actually, that's incorrect. You need to make at least 961 minutes worth of calls to break even with the €10pm Blueface package, less and you lose. With the more expensive call bundles you will save money if you make an enourmous amount of calls, and will lose in all other cases. Particularly during months when you don't make lots of calls. Call bundles are generally to be avoided in my experience.

Eeehhhh......€10 per month for UNLIMITED calls 24/7 to Irish landline......and NO LINE RENTAL.......a saving of €24 per month........plus the convenience of picking up the phone day or night and knowing it will be no more than €10 at month's end.

I'm looking at a phone bill now from three years ago and it's €120 for two months inlcuing line rental. Yeah I really should go back there.....great value.;)

Hannibal_12

paulm17781 wrote:

I said I know of 5 areas, not that they updated 5 areas. Believe it or not I do not write down every area I read here. But I can name 5 people who recently couldn't get NTL BB and now can. Proof of roll out. Ironically I would imagine you are the sixth area I know of that was upgraded.

Well I for one cant get it. Have sent numerours emails about it and get the standard automated non response i.e. we are working to upgra......, the same I've been getting for a long, long time.
If they started to offer a 10mb package then I would get rid of eircon faster than a boyzone cd alas I cannot avail of it so I'll have to do without it.

paulm17781

Hannibal_12 wrote:

Well I for one cant get it. Have sent numerours emails about it and get the standard automated non response i.e. we are working to upgra......, .

I have no idea why you quoted me in that post. Presumably because you are not one of the 5 areas that I didn't mention by name.