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Date:      Tue, 19 Mar 1996 19:11:49 -0500
From:      dennis@etinc.com (dennis)
To:        Tony Kimball <alk@Think.COM>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ADSL
Message-ID:  <199603200011.TAA04161@etinc.com>

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>   Date: Tue, 19 Mar 96 12:27:29 MET
>   From: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de>
>   Cc: hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers)
>   X-Mailer: xmail 2.4 (based on ELM 2.2 PL16)
>
>   What is ADSL?  This is the first time I've heard of it.  Are the
>   speeds you mention without compression?
>
>Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line.  See Dan Kegel's page at
>http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~dank/isdn/adsl.html
>
>   > ISDN is obsolete.
>
>   Is ADSL available everywhere?  Does every ISP who supports ISDN also
>   support ADSL?  Can you use it for telephones and faxes?  If not, you
>   can't make that claim.
>
>ADSL is available everywhere, because all it takes is a pair of wires.
>If your ISP won't support ADSL, you will be needing a new ISP.
>Yes, you can use the same line for POTS and Fax.
>
>There is not a great deal of correlation between technical obsolescence
>and market share, and I can say what I like because words mean what
>I tell them to mean:)
>
>ISDN was obsolete before it ever got started.  How long will people be
>willing to pay for a 115kb link once commodity 2nd-gen ADSL modems
>give them a link at 1-8Mb for the same price?  No, a factor of 10-80
>in performance, the opportunity for real videoconferencing and VOD
>is just too much weight for ISDN to bear.  PairGain modems come out
>in June, and the Willtel CAP offering comes out in October.  You may
>argue about the relative obsolescence of ISDN today, but come
>Christmas time, any further arguments will be silly.

And how many "dial-up" users will be willing to pay for 1-8Mbs of backbone
bandwidth? It seems unlikly that many ISPs will have the backbone 
bandwidth to allow all of their customers to enjoy these speeds at ISDN
like prices. ISPs will need a roomful of Cisco 7000s, which should make
the price just about unreachable for almost anyone.

You've been reading Network World again, haven't you?

Dennis

BTW: ADSL is largely monodirectional (like 240kbs in one direction and 1.?? 
meg downstream). In any event, you'd better crank up the crystals on those
16550's boys.....~~~~~.whoooosh......


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