From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2001 - 08:07:43 MST
From: Brian Atkins <brian@posthuman.com>
>A single optical cable can carry at least 6.4tbit/sec, so 100
>optical cables can provide all the required dedicated bandwidth to
>serve the same stuff that all those copper cables do. The cables
>are there now, and are simply being lit up as needed by the
>various companies running them. I'm sorry, but the times when the
>data amounts used for voice seemed big are over. In the relatively
>near future the data passing over the Net will dwarf what the
>phone carriers deal with now.
No system being sold runs at anything near these numbers. I
recently got to play with OC-768 which is a mere 40 GBS. The big
problem is that while 100 cables can theoretically carry the
traffic, the reality is that connections will need to be made to
many thousands of different points. We will need a thousand times
the Internet we have today. I also stated that these networks will
need to be built to accomodate QOS which they do not now.
As the bandwidth increases, eventually the cost of the bandwidth
needed to conduct a voice call will be miniscule, but we are
hundreds of billions of dollars from that point. TANSTAAFL.
The days of saying the phone companies understand voice but they
don't understand data are over.
Brian
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