[LINK] super-fast cable broadband (1)

[Peter Bowditch]

Chris said:

> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 02:01:55PM +0000, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> > Telstra today announced that its hybrid fibre coaxial cable broadband
> > network in Melbourne will be upgraded to 100Mbps - more than triple the
> > current peak speed - by Christmas. 
> 
> What the release doesn't say:
> 
> 1) The HFC network is a shared resource - the mythical 100Mbps is only
>    possible if no-one else on your cable segment is using anything and
>    then only under ideal conditions. If Telstra push ADSL users onto
>    their HFC network to keep their monopoly over the last mile, then
>    the bandwidth experience is likely to be much less than 100Mbps.

I had 30Mbps cable at my last address, but where I am now doesn't even 
have ADSL2 so I am now on 1500/256 ADSL1. On published raw figures you 
might expect that I would be frustrated and disappointed at the reduced 
performance. I'm not. When I had five simultaneous downloads going 
yesterday things got a bit clogged, but for normal use I haven't noticed 
any difference at all, except where things run faster than before.

I don't know what I was sharing the cable with, but I wasn't getting 
anything like 30Mbps. I was on cable from almost its inception and I 
remember that when the cable was supposed to be 10Mbps and I had a 10Mbps 
network I could turn the "clash" light on the hub solid with downloads 
from some sites (Microsoft was one I remember). 30Mbps wasn't three times 
as fast - it was much slower.
 
> 2) The HFC uplink speed is a max 2Mbps upstream with DOCSIS3.0 - and
>    there may be a handful of upstream channels to share with the other
>    punters on your coax cable segment. I suppose there's a better
>    chance of getting VOIP and torrent type services going with a shared
>    piece of 2Mbps than with the 128Kbps of DOCSIS2.0 but it's still
> pretty
>    shabby when compared to ADSL, leaving aside Annex-M uplink speeds.

My major upload use is for web site maintenance, and my "slow" ADSL is 
much faster than my "blistering" cable ever was.

> 
> You'd have to be an idiot to migrate from ADSL to HFC - say, a typical
> Telstra customer...

Cable is cheaper and you really can do away with the fixed line for a 
phone, but ...

-- 
Peter Bowditch
The Millenium Project - http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
Australian Council Against Health Fraud - http://www.acahf.org.au
Australian Skeptics - http://www.skeptics.com.au