On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, C Falconer wrote: > Well we're on 512/128 cable, and its just "okay" We have traffic > peaks at lunchtime of course, but the limiting factor is 5 Gb data > caps. > > There is no cable plan with more than 5 Gb at 512 Kbit. It seems > that cable is targetted at home users, and businesses should be on > frame relay or SSR.
Hi Craig, Yes, I think it really is supposed to be for residential customers. I do not know the exact situation here, but I remember some cable modem and ADSL projects I worked on back in Europe. ADSL can technically deliver much higher rates than the ones sold to residential customers; somewhere between 7 and 8 Mbps downstream, and some 800 kbps upstream. The technical problem here is that telephone cables from the local exchange (where the ADSL subscriber access multiplexer is located) to the kerb-side connection boxes (or mushrooms?) are normally bundle cables containing some 50 (or even more) twisted pairs, one for each phone line. If you are using higher ADSL rates than the "residential" ones, it only works correctly if there are not too many of these connections (i.e. only one, or very few) on one such bundle cable. To find out how many really could be accommodated, you have to make cable qualification measurements for every individual case, which is quite costly. Some Telecoms offer this service for business customers, but at a considerably higher price than most residential customers are willing to pay. If you want to guarantee correct functionality without qualifying cables, you have to live with the low "residential" rates, or convert to a satellite-based service, but I would expect that they are a bit dearer than ADSL. Cheers, Helmut. +----------------+ | Helmut Walle | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | +----------------+
