[oversquare]

To your point about doing IPTV over DOCSIS - you need to have a pretty small node size to do this, by my estimation. If you want to deliver 4 HD streams to a house and fast Internet, that adds up to a lot of bandwidth pretty fast. Too many houses on a node and it just can't be done.

How is this true - the broadcast from Shaw already delivers all of this content to your house simultaneously, how would it be different if the delivery method was IP based? A standard CATV system of 125 channels could deliver 38Mbps per channel. At 125 channels this equates to 4750 Mbps.

Granted the return path is something to be contended with as is the infrastructure required to create that many DOCSIS channels per node but it is theoretically possible.

 

[travisc]

Well, let's say you spec the system so that you can run 4 HD streams at a time to a house and 50 Mbps Internet. Not sure of the exact number what an MPEG4 HD stream is, but for the sake of argument let's say it's 10 Mbps. So each household needs to have 90 Mbps available to them. Obviously some of the channels will be multicast so only one stream is going to that node, but if you had 200 homes on a node, you could pretty quickly eat up that 4.75 Gbps of bandwidth.

 

[oversquare]

If each house was watching 4 completely different HD streams and using all 50Mbps of internet simultaneously then yes, you would be out of bandwidth @ about 55 houses but this would be a total of 200 seperate HD channels being streamed and 55 50Mbps internet connections being pinned at 100% to make it happen.

Seeing as how most internet subscribers are @ 15Mbps and there are only 20-30 HD channels presently this cannot happen. Even if there were 100 HD channels the chances of saturating a moderatly sized node of 200-300 houses would be completely workable.

Also, we were talking about GPON's which are only 1Gbps not 4.75Gpbs so the point is moot, I was simply stating that there is already a perfectly capable network already built - why abandon it? Just make the nodes smaller if need be. Feeding only 50 houses from 2 fibers is better than running 1 fiber to each house when you don't have to.

 

[travisc]

Well, you're talking about 15 Mbps speeds currently and 30 HD channels... Considering Bell has north of 100 channels and Shaw themselves offer 100 Mbps Internet (or is it 50?) I think you're pretty far off with the demands that would be placed on the network.

That being said, I agree, there's lots of life left in the copper, but a lot of money will have to go into splitting nodes if you're going to go IPTV or continue to offer more VOD, network DVR, 100 Mbps+ Internet, etc.

 

[Holger_Danske]

Hi all.

Lurker for a few years, this thread finally got me to bite the bullet and sign up.

In regards to Shaw's Trial...and/or rewiring your home to suit emerging technologies...
Well, FTTH means exactly that. Inside the home it should be traditional transport for the most part. Don't go to extravagant conduit systems. Stick with traditional as it will suit your wallet better.

Upstream bandwidth will not be an issue, trust me on that.
It all depends on head end configuration not field node configuration.

Existing prem would likely not be added to FTTH in large part as that would be severely cost prohibitive, but think about this for a moment: if the new growth occurs on the new technology, as long as the existing infrastructure is maintained and incrementally improved, what is the real difference to the end user? As long as there is no more cash pulled from the pocket to get the same levels of service who cares what technology a corp decides to employ for delivery.

IMO the major improvements will come when how soon a cable entity can dump it's analog. Its the 80% rule if I remember that CRTC decision right. But that's going back a decade or so for that decision.




These opinions are completely my own...independent of any corporate entity.

 

[Holger_Danske]

Searching for what may the correct answer to my suggestion that it is an 80% rule, seems to be 85% instead if this forum is correct:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showpost.php?p=805389&postcount=12