New Whitepaper: Swimming Upstream -- The Case for Higher Speeds

by Ikanos Communications

Business and residential subscribers are constantly demanding more bandwidth. With the Internet, where a wealth of content resides on the World Wide Web, most of this demand has historically been in the downstream direction. And that will certainly continue. But what has changed is that users are now accumulating and generating copious amounts of content of their own.


Users, carriers and equipment vendors alike have a long history of underestimating the need for speed. The root cause is innocent enough: keeping costs under control. But the inevitable "forklift" upgrades are disruptive and costly, which is quite ironic considering the original impetus involved cost savings.


The leading technology for delivering higher bi-directional bandwidth is Very-high-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line (VDSL). VDSL was designed to take full advantage of a carrier's broadband infrastructure with its increasing fiber optic capacity to the node, curb or building/basement. And unlike other technologies, VDSL has the ability to deliver 100 Mbps symmetrical broadband bandwidth, which puts carrier services on par with LAN switching to the desktop. Significantly, no mass-market local loop technology has ever done that before.
http://www.convergedigest.com/whitepapers/default.asp