July 2001 - Test - lists.nanog.org

RE: Broadband v. baseband ... again?
by Tom Walton 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

Commercial broadcast radio is, in olde-worlde communications parlance, *narrowband* modulation of a carrier. Wideband - *not* broadband - modulation refers to signals with transmitted bandwidth that is a significant fraction of the carrier frequency. The baseband signal is essentially the information-bearing signal, sans any modulation of a carrier. Glibness is a poor excuse for sloppiness. --Tom -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Roeland Meyer Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 1:29 PM To: 'Larry Diffey'; nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Broadband v. baseband ... again? Broadband isn't a speed, it's a signaling architecture. The alternative is baseband. Ethernet is baseband. Broadcast radio is broadband. Now that you have the two competing terms, please see your friendly neighborhood search engine (PSYFNSE). BTW, silence is a poor excuse for posting a message.

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Re: It's way too quiet
by Miles Fidelman 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

> > I have a number in my head as to what I consider broadband. It's not > > an unreasonable number but it certainly does exceed what is available > > to the average consumer. > > > Oh wise nanogers, what speeds do we need to achieve for the average > > consumer before we truly have broadband? Neglecting the debate about how to define "broadband," I've long maintained that homes and small offices should have whatever people have at work - otherwise telecommuting, small businesses, contractors, and such are at a big disadvantage. That makes "broadband" (or perhaps "standard practice") a moving target. A few years ago that was 10mbps. Today 100bps is becoming the norm (and most PCs come with 10/100 cards). Pretty soon we're talking gigabit ethernet. If you're deploying a new system today, gigabit fiber-to-the-home seems the way to go. Check out www.worldwidepackets.com to see what's available to support that. Miles ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman(a)civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" **************************************************************************

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Broadband v. baseband ... again?
by Roeland Meyer 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

Broadband isn't a speed, it's a signaling architecture. The alternative is baseband. Ethernet is baseband. Broadcast radio is broadband. Now that you have the two competing terms, please see your friendly neighborhood search engine (PSYFNSE). BTW, silence is a poor excuse for posting a message. -- From: Larry Diffey [mailto:ldiffey@technologyforward.com] Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 10:13 AM Since it's so quiet in here, I want to stir things up a little with an informal survey. With all of this talk about broadband (mostly in reference to cable modems and xDSL), consumers have been tricked into actually believing that if it's faster than a modem then it's broadband. I have a number in my head as to what I consider broadband. It's not an unreasonable number but it certainly does exceed what is available to the average consumer. Oh wise nanogers, what speeds do we need to achieve for the average consumer before we truly have broadband? I will try and keep track of all the numbers that you give you an average and I'll also give you the number I had in mind.

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Re: It's way too quiet
by Robert Cannon 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

The FCC figure was a benchmark for the purpose of conducting the Sec. 706 Reports. http://www.cybertelecom.org/706.htm It has no more significance than that. It was selected in part because it was believed that at that rate, video with sign language for the disabled would work. Other than creating a bench mark, which the FCC stated in might change in the future, it does not have further regulatory signficance. -B www.cybertelecom.org >>> Vincent Power <vince(a)penguin-power.com> 07/05/01 02:05PM >>> In January 1999, the FCC defined broadband as a connection to an end-user with speeds greater than 200 kbps in both directions. -Vince On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Larry Diffey wrote: > Since it's so quiet in here, I want to stir things up a little with an informal survey. > > With all of this talk about broadband (mostly in reference to cable modems and xDSL), consumers have been tricked into actually believing that if it's faster than a modem then it's broadband. > > I have a number in my head as to what I consider broadband. It's not an unreasonable number but it certainly does exceed what is available to the average consumer. > > Oh wise nanogers, what speeds do we need to achieve for the average consumer before we truly have broadband? > > I will try and keep track of all the numbers that you give you an average and I'll also give you the number I had in mind. > > > Regards, > > Larry Diffey > > **Incidentally, I am at this very moment wearing a t-shirt that says "Will work for bandwidth". > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

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RE: Broadband v. baseband ... again?
by Jeff Harper 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

> The great unwashed masses don't necessarily stick with > the time > honored definitions we would prefer that they admire, > respect, and accept > as gospel. Get over it! Well, in my opinion, networking is an exact science, it's very binary, and the definitions must follow suit. It has to be. Chaos would erupt if it wasn't, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria! -- Jeff http://www.mp3.com/intervox

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Re: GRC rides again...
by Ron Buchalski 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

Chris Rapier writes: >From: Chris Rapier <rapier(a)psc.edu> >CC: nanog(a)merit.edu >Subject: Re: GRC rides again... >Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 10:45:39 -0400 > >My feeling is that he's missing some clues regarding the necessary >realities of the situation. Its not so much a matter of laziness, <snip> >I'm also sure that XP might increase the number of spoofed packets >running through the network. If that spurs more ISPs to use source >address filtering them thats a good thing. Even if they don't it is >possible to track down where a spoofed IP is coming from - its more of a >social engineering issue than a technical one. The GRC page talks about his dos attack, and he also rants about the "dangers" of the IP stack in XP, but his dos attack didn't come from sources sending spoofed packets, so source address filtering wouldn't have helped in this case. GRC complaining about the spoofed packet problem should be a separate rant on his website (who knows...it probably is!). -rb _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

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RE: Broadband v. baseband ... again?
by Roeland Meyer 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

> From: Tom Lettington [mailto:tom@tfl.net] > Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 11:01 AM > > At the risk of incurring the wrath of Mr. Meyer by posting without > permission, I offer the following: Harry Newton, of "Newton's TELECOM > Dictionary - The Official Dictionary of Telecommunications & > the Interent" > (Updated 15th Expanded Edition), defines "Broadband" (in the > WAN context) > as anything over 45Mbps (T3). heh, that dictionary may be a good marketing tool, but try and pass your engineering exams with it ... you won't. By that definition, my 1.5Gbps switched backplane is a broadband system. It isn't, regardless of what that dictionary says. > The language we use in our industry is evolving at an extremely rapid > rate. The great unwashed masses don't necessarily stick with > the time > honored definitions we would prefer that they admire, > respect, and accept > as gospel. Get over it! You must work in marketing. Fuzzy definiions mean fuzzy equations, which reults in things not working. The unwashed masses are allowed to be imprecise, we are not. That's why we get the big bucks (not).

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Re: Broadband v. baseband ... again?
by Richard A. Steenbergen 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 11:00:52AM -0700, Tom Lettington wrote: > > At the risk of incurring the wrath of Mr. Meyer by posting without > permission, What about at the risk of looking like a gigantic idiot in front of a whole 'lot of people? > I offer the following: Harry Newton, of "Newton's TELECOM > Dictionary - The Official Dictionary of Telecommunications & the > Interent" (Updated 15th Expanded Edition), defines "Broadband" (in the > WAN context) as anything over 45Mbps (T3). >From the Offical Dumbfuck's Guide to Not Posting Stupid Shit to Nanog (Updated and Expanded 69th Edition): cluebie noun 1: A person so stupid their right to live should seriously be questioned before they have a chance to breed. see: People who make up definitions. > The language we use in our industry is evolving at an extremely rapid > rate. The great unwashed masses don't necessarily stick with the time > honored definitions we would prefer that they admire, respect, and > accept as gospel. Get over it! Hrm any other definitions we can make up? We've already redefined Tier 1 to mean anyone who thinks their network is good enough to call it that. Lets change broadband and baseband too, it's too difficult to explain it to people. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras(a)e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177 (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)

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RE: Broadband v. baseband ... again?
by Roeland Meyer 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

The thing is, cable systems ARE broadband. Some DSL methods use broadband transits, especially on the last mile. Anything transiting HFC is using broadband as a part of the link. FrameRelay has many of the same constrants as HFC cable, but is definitely a baseband technology. The reason that HFC has such horrible aggregation congestion effects is that the head-ends are over-commited. Fewer clients per head-end would eliminate the bottle necks, as would a larger return band, or application of spread-spectrum technologies on the HFC medium. (At PacBell/ACN, this was the subject of much debate, business economics won out. We had cost targets to hit, at ~400 homes passed per HFC head-end.) The same is true for many FR clouds. I'm looking into 802.11b regional wireless systems right now and am seeing the same things. BTW, for the audience, 802.11b is definitely broadband, as is any other wireless technology. The real kicker is how many of those companies will be around one year from now? ALSO, some advocates of broadband don't realize that GigE is baseband at 1Gbps. Getting it on broadband would require a 4GHz carrier and would pretty much saturate the spectrum. Now I'm getting really far from my BSEE days and let the RF guys take it over (if we have any here). At PacBell/ACN, we had a 10MHz return band, on a 750Mhz HFC system. Of course, I couldn't understand why we couldn't allocate an entire digital video band for the purpose <grin>. But, the only routing was at the super head-end. The head-ends were never considered to have return data, in the original design. -- > From: Miles Fidelman [mailto:mfidelman@civicnet.org] > Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 10:24 AM > > On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote: > > > Broadband isn't a speed, it's a signaling architecture. The > alternative is > > baseband. Ethernet is baseband. Broadcast radio is > broadband. Now that you > > have the two competing terms, please see your friendly > neighborhood search > > engine (PSYFNSE). > > Though, to be fair, a lot of people have coopted the term > "broadband." You > and I know that broadband is defined in the 802 series of > specs as a way > to run ethernet over an analog cable system. But... the cable > companies > would have you believe that it means "the fastest thing going" and the > telcos would have you believe that DSL is "broadband." > > Miles > > > ************************************************************** > ************ > The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 > Miles R. Fidelman, President & > Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 > Director, Municipal Telecommunications > Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: > 617-630-8946 > mfidelman(a)civicnet.org > http://civic.net/ccn.html > > Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century > Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere > Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" > ************************************************************** > ************ >

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It's way too quiet
by Larry Diffey 05 Jul '01

05 Jul '01

Since it's so quiet in here, I want to stir things up a little with an informal survey. With all of this talk about broadband (mostly in reference to cable modems and xDSL), consumers have been tricked into actually believing that if it's faster than a modem then it's broadband. I have a number in my head as to what I consider broadband. It's not an unreasonable number but it certainly does exceed what is available to the average consumer. Oh wise nanogers, what speeds do we need to achieve for the average consumer before we truly have broadband? I will try and keep track of all the numbers that you give you an average and I'll also give you the number I had in mind. Regards, Larry Diffey **Incidentally, I am at this very moment wearing a t-shirt that says "Will work for bandwidth".

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