[LINK] How fast is the NBN?

[Karl Auer]

On Fri, 2016-03-04 at 08:35 +1100, Tom Worthington wrote:
> On 03/03/16 13:57, David Boxall wrote:
> 
> > ... Two networks; one all fibre, the other solely wireless. ... 100
> > kilometres for wireless ...
> 
> No, the question is, should the last bit, from the street into the 
> home, be fiber, copper or wireless? This is only the last tens to 
> hundreds of metres on the end of the fibre in a suburban street.

[Craig already answered this, and better, but I had it all typed in so
you get to see it anyway :-)]

Wireless would *work* but would be SO poor a solution as to not be
worth considering. Plenty of others have pointed out the disadvantages
of wireless before, do we really need to go over them again, here?

- wireless takes power. And according to very well-known laws of
physics the further it is the more power it takes. Fibre takes far less
power, both on the supply side and on the client side, and requires no
power in between (though sometimes at reticulation points).

- wireless is a shared medium. The more people you have using it the
lower the bandwidth available to all. With fibre you have dedicated
bandwidth, at least up to the first reticulaton point.

- wireless is trivially easy to interfere with. Fibre is generally
buried. But even if exposed, fibre is an easily reparable, simple
commodity.

- wireless is more expensive to maintain. Fibre is relatively costly to
install for the same distance, but lasts essentially forever.

- wireless is more difficult to upgrade; with fibre you just attach
something different to the ends and you have the latest technology.

- wireless is easily and commonly affected by the terrain, walls, the
placement of objects, even transient objects like trucks. Fibre is not.

- wireless has a sharply limited bandwidth. Fibre does not.

- wireless is susceptible to weather and the ravages of time to a far
greater degree than fibre. Fibre doesn't corrode.

- wireless is a broadcast medium and thus trivially eavesdroppable. To
make it NOT eavesdroppable requires crypto. Crypto requires agreement
between the AP and the client, and crypto steals bandwidth. This has to
be unique for every client/AP pair. This is a huge bookkeeping exercise
that a) will fail b) will cause regular issues and c) will cost a lot
of money. Fibre does not require any such protection because it is not
a broadcast medium.

Regards, K.


-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

GPG fingerprint: E00D 64ED 9C6A 8605 21E0 0ED0 EE64 2BEE CBCB C38B
Old fingerprint: 3C41 82BE A9E7 99A1 B931 5AE7 7638 0147 2C3C 2AC4