Thanks, Rich. Nice to have someone with detailed knowledge around! My concern remains though is really with the 50% per annum growth he asserts. Surely all this dark fiber and multiplexed capacity has its limit somewhere. At 50% pa, in 5 years you need 5 times (+406%) what you have now in capacity, in 10 years you need 38 times (+3744%) what you have now. Clearly, either his growth rate is horribly exaggerated or we'll crash into that limitation of capacity sooner rather than later.
-- -Rob de Santos -----Original Message----- From: Richard Cuff [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 6:37 AM To: [email protected] Cc: Shortwave programming discussion Subject: Fiber optics, bandwidth, and cloud computing (was: Re: [Swprograms] OT: Future of Digital Radio) However, the capability of fiber networks to add bandwidth is significant, because the effective capacity of fiber to carry bandwidth has increased dramatically since that fiber was put in the ground / in the water. Primary reason for this, best as I know, is that we can distinguish between narrow wavelength differences of light that is transmitted along the fiber -- smaller differences than were capable when we first laid the fiber down. The principle is Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing -- or DWDM. As a result, there remains a significant inventory of "dark fiber" available. This is cable that was put in the ground, but never "lit up" to carry data traffic. As a result, while bandwidth isn't unlimited, we have, collectively, a huge capacity to add traffic ("bandwidth") to the cable that is already in place because the capacity of the fiber to carry traffic has magically grown. There is a very active "aftermarket" for this dark fiber among investors, speculators and telco firms. Google, for example, has been buying up dark fiber in order to establish super-high-speed, private connections between their data centers in order for them to offer "cloud computing" delivered applications. Now, look at the technologies being used to bring this bandwidth closer to home. Companies have been developing many clever ways to send high-speed traffic down copper wires, which have enabled most of us to install high-speed Internet connectivity to our homes while using the same copper wire that was originally envisioned solely for analog voice and video traffic. So it costs less for Verizon to implement FIOS than it was initially envisioned. You've happened to wander into a technology and market space that I study for a living... Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA USA On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 10:26 PM, Rob de Santos <[email protected]> wrote: > The analysis by Cringely is a fascinating one but I see several weaknesses in > his argument. > > First, bandwidth is not unlimited and cannot increase by 50% per year for very > long. Physics tells us that either you make the pipe bigger or eventually you > will run out of room. Making bigger pipes is very expensive. _______________________________________________ Swprograms mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.
