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Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 18:26:23 -0600
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From: Tony Kimball <alk@Think.COM>
To: dennis@etinc.com
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199603200011.TAA04161@etinc.com> (dennis@etinc.com)
Subject: Re: ADSL
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   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.

99.9% of that bandwidth is going to go to VOD.  Me, I just want to
push the bottleneck out of my house into the ISP premises, then I'm happy.
If the ISP is inadequate to my needs, I'll shop for another ISP.

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

Never touch the stuff.  Allergic to paper.

   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......

SDSL is symmetric.  If you feel the need for 4Mb uploads you can
either wait for SDSL to be competetive or run dual ADSL.
In most of USWest country, it's still cheaper than ISDN, although
doubling the hardware and lease costs does push the payback out
from a few months to a couple of years.

And yes, it would be rather silly to run ADSL on a serial port.
It's already silly to run ISDN on a serial port, at least if you want
to run anything else at the same time.  For a NetStation, it might
make sense.