pishta
I know I'm right....
Allow me to set the record straight here. I have worked in both cable and telephony and I may be able to shed some light on the hurdles both have to face.
Cable modems are great. They are super fast and are pretty reliable but they cost $$ and the service is SHARED between your neighbors and whomever else is on the same node that you are one. A node is a fiber optic fed device that mults the service off fiber to coaxial cable that feeds the homes. This has a fixed bandwidth so if 70 people are on the node, they are all dipping into the same pie that the fiber provides. Imagine the water tower analogy, very good description. Huge amount of broadband in the tank but 70 feeder pipes all sucking from it at once kills the throughput for everyone on that node. Cable also is an active amplification plant. It has trunk amps and repeaters in series from the node all the way to your house. each one of these is powered off the center conductor so there are no additional power lines feeding these amps (silver boxes up on strand with heatsink fins on them) if one 20A fuse pops, the entire line downstream of that amp is down and must be re-fused for the downleg amps to operate again. The cable plant is also made up of F-fittings on your cable system in your house. If any of these fail (suck out, corrosion, etc) they will cause degradation of signal. a TV is a good indicator of the cable signal quality. Used to be analog channel 2 was the hardest to transport as it had the lowest frequency and low frequencies are the hardest to send. If you had horizontal lines on 2, you had a bad fitting. upper channels were usually not affected. Nowadays the entire cable package is digital so there is no analog clogging up the frequency map as you can fit 7 or more digital channels in the same space as 1 analog channel. We ran our cable modems at -10dB not highter and our analog channels were 0 or better up to +10. Digital is now probably closer to -10 for the whole spectrum. Distance is usually not a huge concern for cable as it can be regenerated.
DSL is a completely different beast. You cannot regenerate a DSL signal. Load taps will kill DSL and your installer knows that. distance will kill DSL and the plant engineers take that into consideration when they prequalify your address for service. 18000 feet is the theoretical limit for DSL on good 24g cable but that depends on if there are bridge taps or buried cable in the system. Both will degrade signel. Line pressure? C'mon.....Telephony uses nitrogen to pressurize paper cable in the transport runs but turning up the pressure has no bearing on your line quality. We usually run the bottles at 10 psi and the compressors at 10 and we see down to 4psi on the field cable due to leaks and just plain amount of cable. It is used for moisture control: Nitrogen is a dry gas and will remove moisture as well as keep water out of submerged cable (flooded vaults, manholes, etc) if you turn up the pressure to blow out a cable, your cracking a 3500 psi bottle with no regulator or the cable is taped somewhere. Doesnt happen. Techs will make up anything to tell a sub how he fixed a line when he shows up and finds nothing is wrong. DSL speeds were from 128K up to 15M depending on your distance and truthfully, I think 7-15M is all that 99% of residential users need for streaming up to 3 seperate channels in 1080p. 4K streaming is ridiculous. its 4X the bandwidth of a hi-def feed and if your not using 45 or larger screen 3 feet away your probably not even seeing the improvement. video fans will disagree but 4K and 8K is gonna make the countries internet supply even worse. Bonded DSL (using 2 pairs) is fairly new and is gonna get up to 90M out to subs closer than 4500 feet, and we usually see about 18M to people out to about 9000 feet from the central office. INstaller needs to be very careful on the pairs he uses and usually needs to condition the pairs prior to putting the service on them for bridges and "hot drops" (bridge that goes to another address. Both DSL technologies require the home network to have filtered phone jacks and usually a good cat3 or better feed to the modem when using bonded speeds. Home wireless is usually good enough for under 100M but 53M is about where the older wireless routers max at with the newer routers using dual band and MIMO (multiple channels at once) can do up to 800MB, but does anyone really need that speed? I say not.
Fiber is the best bar none. If you can get it and afford it, GET IT! Its very robust, requires very little maintenance as its not based on corrosive copper lines and most of the stuff is under 10 years old. Speeds up to 1G, no problem but fiber is also a shared network. Too many people on a hub will affect performance but were talking only what a meter can see. Most all fiber problems are installers "stealing" ports in the hubs for new installs as the records are not 100% accurate and there is no way to determine if a fiber port is in use as they all have visible light. ANd there are hardware problems with Fiber in the ONTs overheating or the battery backup or a kinked fiber line or bad port int he tap. We see all the problems so we are aware what can go bad, subscribers only see their problem and many never have any. There you go, Broadband in America via private companies that all have a bottom line and executives to pay when the outside plant is falling apart and there is no money for proper repairs. Half our copper plant needs to be replaced in my opinion as its upwards to 70 years old in places...and people who have fiber on the pole still wont move over to it! WTH? One day we will stop offering copper service to Fiber addresses when the PUC will allow it. We still need to support it for competing LEC's as part of the money used to build out the copper plant was tax payer funded. Monopolies on the lines are a fact of capitalism. THEY OPERATE AND MAINTAIN THE LINES so we are not going to give it up to a competitor unless they buy the subscriber as a resale. Same with the cable company. ITS A CLOSED SYSTEM. They are not going to open their hard work for the competition. Imagine a pipeline (or your car!) , allowing anyone else to use it for free while still having to maintaining it? No thanks.
Cable modems are great. They are super fast and are pretty reliable but they cost $$ and the service is SHARED between your neighbors and whomever else is on the same node that you are one. A node is a fiber optic fed device that mults the service off fiber to coaxial cable that feeds the homes. This has a fixed bandwidth so if 70 people are on the node, they are all dipping into the same pie that the fiber provides. Imagine the water tower analogy, very good description. Huge amount of broadband in the tank but 70 feeder pipes all sucking from it at once kills the throughput for everyone on that node. Cable also is an active amplification plant. It has trunk amps and repeaters in series from the node all the way to your house. each one of these is powered off the center conductor so there are no additional power lines feeding these amps (silver boxes up on strand with heatsink fins on them) if one 20A fuse pops, the entire line downstream of that amp is down and must be re-fused for the downleg amps to operate again. The cable plant is also made up of F-fittings on your cable system in your house. If any of these fail (suck out, corrosion, etc) they will cause degradation of signal. a TV is a good indicator of the cable signal quality. Used to be analog channel 2 was the hardest to transport as it had the lowest frequency and low frequencies are the hardest to send. If you had horizontal lines on 2, you had a bad fitting. upper channels were usually not affected. Nowadays the entire cable package is digital so there is no analog clogging up the frequency map as you can fit 7 or more digital channels in the same space as 1 analog channel. We ran our cable modems at -10dB not highter and our analog channels were 0 or better up to +10. Digital is now probably closer to -10 for the whole spectrum. Distance is usually not a huge concern for cable as it can be regenerated.
DSL is a completely different beast. You cannot regenerate a DSL signal. Load taps will kill DSL and your installer knows that. distance will kill DSL and the plant engineers take that into consideration when they prequalify your address for service. 18000 feet is the theoretical limit for DSL on good 24g cable but that depends on if there are bridge taps or buried cable in the system. Both will degrade signel. Line pressure? C'mon.....Telephony uses nitrogen to pressurize paper cable in the transport runs but turning up the pressure has no bearing on your line quality. We usually run the bottles at 10 psi and the compressors at 10 and we see down to 4psi on the field cable due to leaks and just plain amount of cable. It is used for moisture control: Nitrogen is a dry gas and will remove moisture as well as keep water out of submerged cable (flooded vaults, manholes, etc) if you turn up the pressure to blow out a cable, your cracking a 3500 psi bottle with no regulator or the cable is taped somewhere. Doesnt happen. Techs will make up anything to tell a sub how he fixed a line when he shows up and finds nothing is wrong. DSL speeds were from 128K up to 15M depending on your distance and truthfully, I think 7-15M is all that 99% of residential users need for streaming up to 3 seperate channels in 1080p. 4K streaming is ridiculous. its 4X the bandwidth of a hi-def feed and if your not using 45 or larger screen 3 feet away your probably not even seeing the improvement. video fans will disagree but 4K and 8K is gonna make the countries internet supply even worse. Bonded DSL (using 2 pairs) is fairly new and is gonna get up to 90M out to subs closer than 4500 feet, and we usually see about 18M to people out to about 9000 feet from the central office. INstaller needs to be very careful on the pairs he uses and usually needs to condition the pairs prior to putting the service on them for bridges and "hot drops" (bridge that goes to another address. Both DSL technologies require the home network to have filtered phone jacks and usually a good cat3 or better feed to the modem when using bonded speeds. Home wireless is usually good enough for under 100M but 53M is about where the older wireless routers max at with the newer routers using dual band and MIMO (multiple channels at once) can do up to 800MB, but does anyone really need that speed? I say not.
Fiber is the best bar none. If you can get it and afford it, GET IT! Its very robust, requires very little maintenance as its not based on corrosive copper lines and most of the stuff is under 10 years old. Speeds up to 1G, no problem but fiber is also a shared network. Too many people on a hub will affect performance but were talking only what a meter can see. Most all fiber problems are installers "stealing" ports in the hubs for new installs as the records are not 100% accurate and there is no way to determine if a fiber port is in use as they all have visible light. ANd there are hardware problems with Fiber in the ONTs overheating or the battery backup or a kinked fiber line or bad port int he tap. We see all the problems so we are aware what can go bad, subscribers only see their problem and many never have any. There you go, Broadband in America via private companies that all have a bottom line and executives to pay when the outside plant is falling apart and there is no money for proper repairs. Half our copper plant needs to be replaced in my opinion as its upwards to 70 years old in places...and people who have fiber on the pole still wont move over to it! WTH? One day we will stop offering copper service to Fiber addresses when the PUC will allow it. We still need to support it for competing LEC's as part of the money used to build out the copper plant was tax payer funded. Monopolies on the lines are a fact of capitalism. THEY OPERATE AND MAINTAIN THE LINES so we are not going to give it up to a competitor unless they buy the subscriber as a resale. Same with the cable company. ITS A CLOSED SYSTEM. They are not going to open their hard work for the competition. Imagine a pipeline (or your car!) , allowing anyone else to use it for free while still having to maintaining it? No thanks.
