Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
I have not read through all the replies but a few things stand out about the Nation broadband scheme.
The new system will require you to put in lines into your home. The Network will only come to your fascia. Average price for putting lines throughout your home if you have say 2 connections is estimated at around $500-$2000. I heard it on the ABC radio yesterday. This does not cover the cost fo new phones, modems and fax machines that are compliant with the technology. Reason for the high costs is supply and demand. There are not enough technicians available to do this work with the necessary skill. Nor is the new gear available yet and we know how much new equipment costs.
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I'm afraid that most of this is wrong. You don't have to rewire your home any more or less than you would with any current wired (ADSL or cable) broadband connection. If you wish to run cables through your house you can, if you wish to run a wireless network inside your house you can, if you wish to do neither you can choose that option too. No different to the situation today. The required networking gear
is available today and it isn't expensive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
Next this system will only really be good within Australia. The overseas lines are copper and will not be replaced for some time yet. Systems overseas will affect the speed of connection and download rates. Since most stuff is overseas guess what will happen? This should also be borne in mind with the notion of contention. That being, each node is only capable of a certain load. If 100 people share the same load the speed will not be heaps faster as has been suggested. It will be a shared speed and that might mean it might be twice as fast or just as fast as now. It really depends on how this is all setup. Quite frankly I see this scheme being a bit of a fizzer once the bills start rolling out.
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There were overseas lines laid before optical fiber became ubiquitous, I don't know how many (if any?) of them are still used. All undersea cables laid in recent history have been optical fiber. The
vast majority of phone and data traffic to overseas destinations is sent along fiber optic links. There are also huge geographically spread caches dispersed around the internet to reduce the traffic requirements across intercontinental links so not all traffic that you might think comes from overseas really does, e.g, to be flippant you are not dragging your YouTube videos across the Pacific.
If everybody tries to simultaneously download at the maximum possible speed they can then things will slow down. If everybody in my local area turns on every cold water tap in their house the water pressure to my house drops too. My water example is about as likely and significant. Both networks are supposed to be scaled so that under any likely situation there is plenty sufficient `flow' (data or water). The suggested network design has vastly higher headroom than any current broadband system in use in Australia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
Also bear in mind the cables stung up on the power lines have a service life of 25-30 year due to radiation from the Sun and the cosmos.
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I've never seen studies on the effect of cosmic rays on optical fiber. In fact I don't see how a cosmic rays affects fiber at all but I could be wrong (happy to learn!). Regarding maintenance, running any kind of `wire' underground is definitely better than stringing it on poles, I agree with this point. This is why NBN Co. has been trying to get access to the ducts Telstra use for their cabling.
The original request was for a technical discussion but it's become anything but that. I make no comment about whether the project is worthwhile, I'm just trying to point out some technical falsehoods.