From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Jul 8 09:40:41 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id JAA16886 for hardware-outgoing; Mon, 8 Jul 1996 09:40:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zoo.toronto.edu (zoo.toronto.edu [128.100.72.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA16879 for ; Mon, 8 Jul 1996 09:40:38 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 12:40:16 -0400 (EDT) From: Henry Spencer Subject: cable etc. To: bbecker@flubber.futurecomm.com cc: hardware@freebsd.org, bsdi-users@bsdi.com In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hardware@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Maybe they are going to set two channels aside for everyone. If that > means sharing with 20,000 people then 6 megabits is not as good as a v.34 > modem... Just how many people you share with depends on how well the cable company does its job. They don't run all the cables in the city to a central point for video distribution -- it's done as a tree. The irreducible minimum area of sharing is had by putting the head-end data equipment at the lowest level of video amplifier, serving, I dunno, maybe a few residential city blocks or one big building. It is possible for the data equipment to be higher up in the tree, in which case the sharing is over a larger area. Almost certainly, most of the cable companies planning data services will start with the head ends fairly high up and move them down as volume grows. Bear in mind that what they are selling is high data rates. Their whole stock in trade is that they are better than modems. They'll move the equipment as far down as necessary to achieve that. Henry Spencer henry@zoo.toronto.edu