GLITS
Agenda: Fiber to the Home
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Broadband Technology Overview,
Steve Belter, Indiana Dataline Corp
Active Ethernet FTTH,
Oliver Beers, Wintek Corporation
GPON FTTH,
Steve Biggerstaff, Cinergy MetroNet
Broadband Technology Overview
Steve Belter, President
Indiana Dataline Corp
427 N 6th Street, Suite C
Lafayette, IN 47901
www.indiana-dataline.net
seb@wintek.com
Broadband Technologies
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ISDN & DSL (too slow)
Fixed Wireless – WiFi, WiMax (too slow)
Mobile Wireless – 3G, 4G LTE (too slow)
Satellite (really too slow)
Cable Modems using DOCSIS
FTTx Active Ethernet and WDM-PON
FTTx GPON and TDM-PON
Acronyms: Fiber to where?
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FTTH – Fiber to the Home
FTTP – Fiber to the Premise
FTTB – Fiber to the Building
(multitenant office and residential)
FTTC – Fiber to the Curb
FTTN – Fiber to the Node
FTTx – wherever
Broadband Quality Measures
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Speed (kilobits/sec, megabits, gigabits)
Latency (think delay or ping time)
Jitter (think ping time variation)
Symmetric or asymmetric down/up speeds
Terminology
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Wavelength/frequency – color of the light
Passive vs. active – does an intermediate
distribution point need power?
PON – Passive Optical Network
WDM – Wavelength Division Multiplexing
(using different colors at the same time)
TDM – Time Division Multiplexing
(one at a time, maybe round-robin)
Cable Modems – Architecture
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HFC – Hybrid Fiber Coax
Fiber to the Node – powered cabinet in
the neighborhood (grey steel box)
Coax from the node to each home
Each node typically serves 50-1000 homes
(target used to be 500 homes)
Cable Modems - DOCSIS
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DOCSIS – Date Over Cable Service
Interface Specification
Comcast currently deploying DOCSIS 3.0
Each 6 MHz channel can carry 30 Mbps
Bonds 4 or more channels downstream,
shared with all of your (node) neighbors
Uses TDM for upstream
Cable Modems – Summary
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Node bandwidth shared with your
neighbors (50-1000 neighbors)
Asymmetric speeds (upload slower)
TDM upstream increases jitter
FTTx Direct Connection
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One strand of fiber from the ISP to you
Two colors used, one for upstream, the
other for downstream (WDM)
Usually symmetric speeds up/down
Private, not shared, connection to ISP
Best speeds, latency, and jitter
Requires lots of fiber
Active Ethernet – Architecture
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Fiber to the Node – powered cabinet in
the neighborhood with Ethernet switch
Fiber from the node to your home
Usually symmetric speeds up/down
Typically gigabit from the ISP to the
switch in the node, 1-48 neighbors with
100 Mbps each
Active node, but needs less fiber
Active Ethernet – Summary
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Active electronics in the neighborhood
node
Bandwidth shared with a few neighbors,
but may or may not be oversubscribed
Excellent speeds, latency, and jitter
Uses less fiber
Passive Optical Networks
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At the node, downstream colors are sent to 8,
16, 32, or 64 homes using a power divider
At the node, upstream color is combined from
the same 8, 16, 32, or 64 homes using TDM
The dividers and combiners are passive, not
requiring any electronics or power
Unaffected by power outages
GPON – Architecture
(Gigabit PON)
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Fiber to the Node – passive optical
splitters and combiners in the node
Fiber from the node to your home
Typically two colors downstream, one for
IP (data/TV/voice), other for analog TV
One upstream color for TDM data/voice
One of several types of TDM-PON
GPON – Summary
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Nodes don’t need electrical power
Typical downstream is 2.4 Gbps shared
with 32 neighbors for both data and TV
Typical upstream is 1.2 Gbps shared with
32 neighbors using TDM
Asymmetric speeds up/down
Good speeds, latency, and jitter
Uses less fiber than direct fiber
Future Fiber Technology:
WDM-PON
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Instead of using TDM to share fibers, use
WDM (different colors)
Passive nodes for reliability
Like direct fiber, private non-shared
symmetric connections, typically 1 Gbps
Same advantages as direct fiber
Uses less fiber than direct fiber
Summary
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Comcast using DOCSIS 3.0
Wintek uses direct connections or Active
Ethernet
Cinergy MetroNet uses GPON, one of the
flavors of TDM-PON
Questions?
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Thank you for your attention
Steve Belter
Indiana Dataline Corp
269-8521 (direct number)
seb@wintek.com
www.indiana-dataline.net