[10833] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Two-way Internet service from Continental Cable?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin L. Schoffstall)
Fri Mar 11 20:09:47 1994
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 15:34:06 +0000
From: "Martin L. Schoffstall" <marty@psilink.com>
To: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>,
Cc: merit.com-priv@merit.edu, schoff@psi.com, fellows@farnsworth.mit.edu
Mile's answer is correct.
However it masks some other essential truth's
- The "Cable Relays" (CR's) can work on both assymetric and symmetric plants,
in fact some of the other cities that were announced on the PSI/Continental
press release start out doing PSICable (individual version) assymetrically
- Once installed on an asymmetric plant, one simply flips a software bit on
the device to take advantage of a symmetric plant.
- The RF portion of the CR is modular. It was clear to PSI (and others) that
the RF technology is going through some revolutionary change in the next 12
month in cost, performance and capability. The CR's have a "daughter card"
strategy which can be changed in the field.
While eventually this technology will appear in set-top boxes from various
manufacturers, the instantaneous road to obscelence (sp?) is to cast it into
those boxes now. Imagine an Internet which decided in 1987 to standardize on
Proteon and WOULD NOT back out due to massively deployed sunk cost.
Actually this kind of happened with the ARPANET using BBN gear.
Fundamentally I see a whole class of boxes, some integrated and some not
appearing in the home.
Marty
> On Thu, 10 Mar 1994, Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason wrote:
>
> > There was an article a day or so ago in the NYT stating that
> > Continental Cable had announced it was beginning to offer Internet
> > connections over its coax cable lines in Cambridge, MA. I was struck
> > by the claim that the service would be two-way symmetric, that is
> > both incoming and outgoing traffic over the cable. In the past I'd
> > only heard of asymmetric cable connections: incoming over the coax,
> > outgoing over the twisted pair (phone line). What is Continental
> > doing differently that enables them to offer symmetric service?
> >
>
> Two-way amplifiers on the cable. It lets them do essentially ethernet
> over cable.
