Michael, John, and everyone,
ADSL is a "last mile" technology. (actually usually limited to the last
18000 feet same as ISDN, although ISDN hooks to a SEPARATE digital network
not the one used for voice, at least at the jumping on and jumping off
points).
ADSL does require a special modem to allow the high speed data stuff, but
regular phones continue to work at phone frequencies and are filtered out
(a Plain Old Telephone System aka POTS filter at the telco switch building
does this)
ADSL is actually possible within a highrise building for instance, and
could connect to via some other high speed technology to at what the telcos
call the "demarkation point". In the case of Sprint this is mostly their
same old (and newer) fiber optic network.
It appears from some brief study of the Sprint press release
(http://www.sprint.com/sprint/press/releases/9806/9806020584.html) that
they are doing "voice over-IP" (provided by Cisco in this mix). (they get
Quality-of-Service [aka QoS] charateristics from ATM over SONET, and all
those layers sound like horrendous overhead, but they also claim that Dense
Wave Division Multiplexing is going to give them 34 million voice call or
17 times
the capacity of the combined peaks for all of AT&T, MCI and Sprint by the
year 2000 on just ONE "pair" of Sprint fibers ... er, I think maybe the
publicity guys aren't technical enough to know you don't need pairs when it
comes to fiber. )
Anyway, they take about a device that acts as a meter, but before anyone
interprets
this as the beginning of metered data over the internet,
the whole "metered" thing is a matter of doing voice over IP. If
you don't measure the useage in some way, you end up having granted flat
rate use rates (that is, "no more long distance charges at all" ... not a
Nirvana that Sprint would be seeking of course, which was the "promise" of
Internet-telephony a few years ago, but without QoS we never got there).
So the "meter" may well be just a "timer" of the voice-into-IP
encapsulating mechanism (flat rate worldwide calling? I doubt that one) or
it may "ping" (test) the roundtrip time to the desitination, and time the
call, and VOILA, everything is back to "normal" under long distance
companies' visions of happiness and world peace, except that they have
already admitted that long distance via these methods will cost 70% less.
Now 70% less than what? 70% off AT&T/Sprint/MCI daytime direct dial
tarrifs? Probably, and thus they will start charging about what my
discounter charges now, a flat US$0.10/min for all US calls, with no
monthly service charge.
As to "charge by the bit" there is mention of "on-demand" bandwidth, that
says that rather than paying flat, high throughput data rates even when the
line is idle, you pay for peak useage. Since this has always, well for
several years anyway, been the rate structure that BBN offered for internet
use (BBN is now a unit of GTE) Sprint is merely coming into line with the
Internet technology and innovation leader. Voice calls will not exceed
minimal data rates, so long distance will not cost more.
But overall, the prospect of nearly universal availability of "Integrated
On-demand Network" bandwidth from Sprint ... on the scale of "wonderful"
this is nearly "two-derful" news, in my opinion.
BTW this is being offered via Broadband Metropolitan Area Networks (BMAN) (
which are essentially SONET rings) to businesses, first, and eventually to
consumers and SOHO's later, via some forms of Digital Subscriber Lines
(xDSL, ADSL, RADSL, HDSL, SDSL, etc.).
As usual more the most people wanted to know, with lots of interpretation
and a little speculation on my part, and few warrantees, but I hope it was
helpful to some of you.
-- Stafford "Doc" Williamson
President
WinfoTech Corp.
creators of MAQUE -- streaming video service for the internet
http://maque.net
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael A. Stone [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 1998 7:13 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: WC:>: Sprint plans upgrade
>With all due respect to Mr. Stone, who has enlightened me on numerous
>subjects in the past, I think John is correct.
entirely possible.. i've been known to be wrong before. ;-)
as far as i understood S/ADSL, i thought it was primarily an
endpoint-to-endpoint data transmission technology, roughly like a standard
modem.. just much faster. i'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the
routing, switching, or channel-allocation protocols the telcos use
internally.
the last time i saw the multi-device/single-line thing offered, it was
being done with ISDN (which i think the telcos still do use.. but i'll
agree that it's dead as a consumer technology), as a side-effect of that
protocol's channel-allocation capacity.
actually, having taken a look at the Sprint press release:
http://www.sprint.com/sprint/press/releases/9806/9806020584.html
and noting that this "ION" system has been designed in cahoots with Cicso,
i'm guessing that it's a new protocol suite descended from ATM. the
release specifically states that ION will run on an ATM backbone, and ATM
also supports channeling. it has a very powerful & flexible channeling
model, in fact.. much more butch than ISDN's. it defines a channel as a
logical abstraction, rather than a physical pair of wires like ISDN does.
IIRC, in fact, ATM also uses a master/slave device model to support
clusters of terminal devices (phones, modems, etc) running through a single
channel. the press release mentions a partnership between Sprint & Radio
Shack, which would suggest that this new system will still have a master
box coming out of the wall. but i do hope they've found a way to put all
the routing & channeling hardware in a single box, rather than forcing
everyone to buy ION-compatible phones, faxes, & modems if they want to get
in on this.
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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