[HN Gopher] 10mbps over 1km on a single pair of wires
___________________________________________________________________
10mbps over 1km on a single pair of wires
Author : yosheli123
Score : 242 points
Date : 2022-06-22 11:21 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (botblox.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (botblox.io)
| vicek22 wrote:
| - 1km of fiber optic cable - https://www.amazon.com/Jeirdus-
| Launch-Singlemode-Measuring-O... - 1Gb modem -
| https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Ethernet-Converter-Multi-Mode...
|
| The price for two modems and the cable is just under $120
| terom wrote:
| A 1km reel of unsheathed 9/125um single fiber strand would last
| maybe about one minute during installation before it snapped.
| Zenst wrote:
| 1KM of fiber cable for $60 seems crazy cheap when you contrast
| it with 3D printer filement. More so as I'd of thought the
| former be more expensive to manufacture.
| klodolph wrote:
| There aren't that many types of fiber optic cable, the actual
| cable diameter is extremely small (single mode might have 9um
| core), and the product is used in large quantities by price-
| sensitive, sophisticated consumers doing large-scale capital
| investments. Ethernet cable is also very cheap.
|
| 3D filament is a consumable, like paper!
| inetknght wrote:
| Fiber is generally laid just once. But the filament is a
| recurring cost to consumers so it provides more value to
| businesses ... and therefore more opportunity for a higher
| demand and higher price.
| Zenst wrote:
| Does seem very much that the whole 3D filement market just
| needs one disruptive supplier. Which often happens when you
| have high-margin consumables markets. Which with the ink
| printer market saw makes of the printers introduce DRM into
| the consumables - something I don't see happing with 3D
| filement though, so could be interesting.
|
| That all said, I see that there are products that can
| convert your plastic bottles into 3D printer filement -
| https://3devo.wpmudev.host/filament-makers/
| ape4 wrote:
| You can also buy 50km on that page! But the fiber is raw
| (unprotected) so I would think that its not usable to run
| outdoors?
| Youden wrote:
| You linked unterminated single-mode fiber and a dual-fiber
| multi-mode media converter, you can't actually use these
| together.
|
| You need something more like this:
|
| - Terminated single-mode fiber:
| https://www.fs.com/products/74355.html?attribute=255&id=3029...
|
| - 2x SFP transceivers: https://www.fs.com/products/75335.html
|
| - 2x media converters (or NICs):
| https://www.fs.com/products/96396.html
|
| The price is over $200.
| nousermane wrote:
| Wouldn't cost of burying that cable be like 50x of that
| anyway?
| sethhochberg wrote:
| These solutions for things like IP-over-copper-pair are
| typically designed for situations where you already have
| the cable buried or strung on poles or whatever - so the
| choice isn't whether to lay new copper or lay new fiber at
| roughly equal expense, its really whether to use the
| existing copper or lay the new fiber at much greater
| expense
| jagger27 wrote:
| Thank you, this wasn't clicking for me until I read this.
| Of course there are countless places with a dead phone
| line hanging between them.
| hinkley wrote:
| Or a fat old conduit that you can run a new wire
| through...
| jagger27 wrote:
| I can't imagine a scenario where you already have a 1km
| long conduit that doesn't already have copper or fibre in
| it. Why would you choose to push a kilometre of brand new
| copper twisted pair line down an existing conduit just to
| squeeze 10 Mbps out of it? The hard part is already done
| and fibre equipment is pretty cheap.
|
| If the conduit already has a phone line in it that isn't
| being used, sure.
| zakki wrote:
| If you look closely in the parent's fiber product photo (last
| picture), the seller providing the connector for free.
| yosheli123 wrote:
| Yeah, I think there's other considerations like power, overall
| size, input voltage supply, ease of maintenance etc.
|
| If it's purely down to cost then I don't these modules would
| compete
| xhrpost wrote:
| Nitpick, I don't think you're going to just run bare fiber
| outdoors, not even indoors. You would need to first run your
| own ducting/conduit and then have the equipment to pressure
| force the raw line through the shielding. So, much more
| expensive. But you can get outdoor rated cable with moisture
| absorbing gel for not too much I believe (struggling to find a
| price). Some even come with wire-mesh already attached in the
| event you have to hang it between elevated positions (like
| telephone poles). But you would need all of that for a copper
| run outdoors as well so it doesn't change your point.
|
| Back to your point, fiber came to my mind as well. Why bother
| running CAT5/6 when you can just run fiber? Maybe its meant for
| existing infrastructure? But if that's the case, what was
| utilizing that infra before? Is it just in cases where you
| happen to have phone lines running between buildings?
| snickmy wrote:
| what does 'pressure force the raw line through the shielding'
| means ?
| jacknews wrote:
| SPE (Single-Pair Ethernet) is going to be a big deal, IMHO, and I
| would view this as a 'development board' for learning, though
| perhaps it also makes economic sense as an actual solution in
| some situations.
|
| The other killer feature of SPE (apart from in-theory cheaper
| cabling) is PoDL (Power over data line). Does this board do that?
| ginko wrote:
| What's the advantage of SPE compared to regular ethernet? That
| it's cheaper?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Well my house has electricity sockets but no ethernet
| sockets, so it would be less expensive than getting those
| installed. If I could stomach sub-wifi speeds.
| phonon wrote:
| Have you tried G.hn powerline to Ethernet?
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Why not use the power lines?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug
| plasticchris wrote:
| Just get a decent mesh WiFi, should get around 600mbps or
| better, it's cheaper too.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| You can do your own Ethernet, it's especially easy if
| you're just running a wire or two for an extra AP or
| something with premade cables
| jacknews wrote:
| Cheaper cabling, at least in theory, but I'm not sure
| ethernet (for data) is the right comparison.
|
| IMHO, in the near future, data-intensive connections will
| move to wifi 6/7/etc, or to fiber. Copper will be for
| providing data _and_ power. IMHO, it makes more sense to
| compare SPE to current PoE networks /devices, powered wifi
| devices, CAN bus, rs485/modbus, and other wired IoT and
| industrial networks.
| yosheli123 wrote:
| Smaller, lower power, more reliable + a somewhat open spec
| being developed around it (unlike things like homeplug which
| are kinda murky). Generally it's the same people who
| developed the ethernet spec that are developing single pair
| ethernet, so it's designed to play nicely with it.
| Ahwd wrote:
| PeterPumpkin45 wrote:
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| Something like this is what this is competing with;
| https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/314029740243
|
| In the US, you will be able to get these cheaper than the product
| on Botblox and with better performance (both products require a
| pair). "20/12Mbps over a long distance of 1.4km"
|
| The author might be more competitive when he managers to go
| $100/pair (which he mentioned in another post he plans to by Apr
| 2023).
| varjag wrote:
| DSL isn't it. Not anywhere as easy to embed into products as 2
| wire Ethernet, and you miss PoE option.
| [deleted]
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| Not a hard problem to solve as both are twisted pair and POE
| injectors are a extremely cheap.
| yosheli123 wrote:
| tbh I don't think I'm really ever going to compete with the
| mass volume stuff on DSL. I think this is more for
| applications where space is the key motivator, rather than
| cost.
| yosheli123 wrote:
| Yeah I'm really targeting directly embedded applications that
| will want single pair ethernet. Robot tethers and things like
| that.
|
| $200 a pair is definitely possible. $100 a pair is probably
| possible in a year or so, I just can't place orders for the
| chips in bulk because of the chip shortage so everything is
| inflated.
| [deleted]
| superkuh wrote:
| If you use a surface wave transmission line with RF launcher
| cones on the ends you can send gigabits over a _single_ 28 awg
| copper wire at very low loss from 100 MHz to ~10 GHz. The only
| problem is that the line has to be suspended and away from
| conductors.
| madengr wrote:
| superkuh wrote:
| madengr responded with a completely on topic link to a surface
| wave transmission line start-up. But it looks like that
| comment, and 2/3 of their other on-topic posts are getting
| grayed out [dead]. I don't think they know.
|
| madngr: your account my be shadowbanned and only viewable by
| those like me that show dead posts.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Why are you mostly ignoring fiber comments in this thread? It
| seems like a no-brainer.
| withinboredom wrote:
| There are lots of reasons to choose something other than fiber,
| this isn't/shouldn't be a discussion of why you, or anyone
| else, would choose fiber instead of this product. It's pretty
| obvious that there is fiber in the world and saying "but
| there's fiber!" isn't very constructive.
|
| Some off the top of my head reasons why I wouldn't choose
| fiber:
|
| - runs that require turning very sharply, beyond what fiber can
| handle.
|
| - applications where the cable can undergo sheering forces
| causing sharp bends or damage.
|
| - applications where the cabling already exists.
|
| - in cases where the cabling is already owned thus this becomes
| quite cheap.
| kjs3 wrote:
| No one is obligated to respond to every "you didn't do it the
| way _I_ would have done it " comment.
| neilalexander wrote:
| Unless you absolutely need to go 1 kilometre specifically, what
| are the advantages to this over using G.hn? On shorter runs G.hn
| will go anything up to 1.8Gbps and will still manage well over
| 100Mbps on anything up to about 700-800 metres. Even
| better/further with coaxial instead of twisted pair.
|
| I've been using a pair of GIGA Copper G4201TMs to take advantage
| of twisted pair wiring at home rather than having to rip it out
| and it also appears more cost-effective:
| https://www.gigacopper.net/web/en/ghn_faq_en.html
| jimmyswimmy wrote:
| Actually need something like this, but I need to be able to
| program the microcontroller for my own uses (to use it to convert
| and transfer sensor data). Is the firmware source code available?
| zajio1am wrote:
| 10 mbps or 10 Mbps? That is 9 orders of magnitude difference.
| memorable wrote:
| The website says 10Mbps. OP seems to not pay attention to that.
| ladyattis wrote:
| I wonder if keeping the wires on a spool is what allows the speed
| to be the range of 10mbps? I only ask because I know at least for
| radio signals there's capacitive coupling between wires which
| some signal leakage will happen. But I assume as long as the
| signals are differential as in current flow between the two wires
| are in opposition which should in theory be fine, so common mode
| signals ought not to leak over.
| gandalfian wrote:
| I'm 1km of copper to green box, then fibre rest of way to
| telephone exchange. VDSL 40mb down and 6mbs up. That's on a
| 1980's buried copper cable.
| unwind wrote:
| Neat, but is that copper a single pair?
| midasuni wrote:
| Yes that's how the traditional phone system works, single
| pair from your house back to the exchange (via a jumper block
| in a cabinet nearby). Modern DSL equipment can get upto
| 50mbit aggregate speed over 1km of traditional phone wire (so
| 40/10, or 30/20 or however you would want to set it up)
|
| Condition of the wire will effect it of course, aluminium
| wire, ground conditions, cross talk etc could lower your
| speed.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think the difference with this product is the
| transceivers are $150 each and you don't need anything else
| to use them except for a couple of power supplies.
|
| I do find it interesting that their box diagram claims a
| 2km range.
| anderiv wrote:
| DSL uses a single pair, yes.
| geozimm wrote:
| All these things are related. Back in the 1990s I worked with
| others to develop DSL technologies (ADSL, HDSL, VDSL) for telcos.
| Why not fiber, some ask? oh, fiber materials may be sand, but
| installed fiber is sand, energy, and labor. Installation costs
| trump everything - use what you have for the physical medium.
|
| While we (PairGain) also made point-to-point private links, it
| was clear then, and even moreso now that most DSL involves a
| service provider managing the network - with specialized skills,
| practices and setup.
|
| In the 2010's I was spending time with the Ethernet folks, and in
| particular industrial folks with large plants. I ended up
| chairing IEEE Std 802.3cg which developed the 10 Mb/s 1km
| technology. Not really a speed increase - more an application
| refocus. As the networking world developed, many realized that
| converging networks above the physical layer added network
| complexity and therefore setup and ongoing operating costs... So
| we now also have SPE - pure Ethernet at DSL-like distances...
|
| Similar tech with different use models, enabling connectivity for
| whatever...
|
| I'm not Al Gore - I won't claim to have invented the internet. I
| just an engineer who happened to have a hand in both of these
| technologies, and am still pleased to see that people use them.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Fiber doesn't conduct electricity, a wire does. I remember
| reading somewhere to be careful with running a wire over any
| long distance between two houses that are not connected to the
| grid with the same meter. Something to do with phase or
| different potential, can't remember, but the point was it could
| fry your equipment. Fiber sounds a lot safer to me.
| midasuni wrote:
| The biggest problem is lightning strikes hitting the cable.
| The phase wouldn't matter - and even different earthing
| wouldn't matter as long as you only connect any shield at one
| end.
|
| But fibre is so much more versatile if you're running new
| cables (unless you want to run power)
| repiret wrote:
| Last summer the local cable company replaced all their
| cables in town in order to begin offering digital cable and
| internet service. I was flabbergasted that they they spent
| all that money on linemen but still ran coax rather than
| fiber. As far as I can tell talking to their linemen, its
| not even FTTN, just FTT-central-office.
|
| Assuming its not run by morons, which I'll accept is a bit
| of a stretch for a cable company, there must be some other
| reason to not run fiber for new installations.
| Aloha wrote:
| Cost and Fragility.
|
| You can push around 1GHz of bandwidth on the normal
| hardline-feed line with taps system cable uses, each node
| is designed to pass by a certain number of households.
|
| Coax is.. cheap, forgiving, easy to terminate, and
| inexpensive to replace - Fiber is more expensive,
| unforgiving, and much harder to terminate.
| rodgerd wrote:
| https://www.chorus.co.nz/tools-support/broadband-
| tools/broad...
|
| New Zealand has fibre to the home for the majority of a
| country the side of the eastern seaboard of the US, with
| only 5 million people, and a lower per-capita GDP.
|
| It's doable. It's just a question of wanting to.
| Aloha wrote:
| Its just not as efficient, you can deliver similar
| classes of service by HFC networks.
| GreyStache wrote:
| Regarding the termination: our local fiber provider
| handles the termination with some optical precision
| connector (forgot the name). Both to the sunken-in-
| sidewalk multiplexer and in the home to the optical
| termination point (both gpon). So for mass deployments
| fiber connections do not require fibre welds are not
| required.
|
| I have to see it play out in practice and I'm not a fan
| of the idea that one telco controls controls (ie stifles
| competition) in a gpon scenario. The conduit has recently
| been placed in our street, so "soon"...
| Aloha wrote:
| I'm still a fan for cost reasons of FTTN, because I think
| with Coax in the last mile, you can deliver fantastic
| performance, so long as you're not also trying to
| delivery video too.
|
| Furthermore if you actually run Coax in duct for buried
| circuits, its easy to replace with fiber later.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Our telco converted all its infra to FTTN via fiber. So,
| I've actually have fiber connection up to the front of my
| building, then it's terminated and distributed via VDSL
| to the street.
|
| I have a 50/8 mbps connection at home and, it gives all
| the performance it can give. The telco keeps the speeds a
| bit higher to handle VDSL overhead, so we have a real
| 50/8 mbps IP connection at premises.
|
| I'd rather not rewire my home and use existing equipment
| (which can handle 350mpbs), rather than bringing in
| fragile fiber into the home.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| This sounds like post-hoc rationalization.
|
| I have Sonic fiber in SF. 1Gbps symmetric, over a
| "fragile fiber" run directly into my home. It works quite
| well. The drop cable is pre-made in standard lengths with
| weatherproof connectors. The glass is embedded in a
| large-ish diameter substrate that resists sharp bends
| naturally so the installers don't need to take special
| care to prevent losses, just don't try to force the cable
| to bend beyond what it wants to do (very different from
| your standard fiber patch cables in a switch room). It is
| robust enough you could cable staple it to a wall without
| issue. Terminates in a tiny ONT that gives me Ethernet on
| my side.
|
| They're deploying 10Gbps for all new installs and I'm
| eagerly awaiting my upgrade. No change to the fiber
| itself are required, just swapping equipment on both
| ends. This same fiber can do 100Gbps in the future if the
| need arises, possibly more. No coax plant can come close.
| The fact that an independent ISP can do this for
| $40/month and make money at it proves the economics.
|
| There is no reason not to run fiber unless you're more
| focused on rent extraction than investing in your
| business... at least in suburbs and cities. (See ATT's
| public comments and focus on milking wireless while dis-
| investing in physical plant as an example of goosing
| profits because they don't face real competition in most
| of their service area).
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Then you just install a lightning arrestor on your comms
| circuit - I have a mast way up the hill to provide our
| connectivity here, and use one on the Ethernet line down to
| prevent issues (like a house fire) from a strike.
| dboreham wrote:
| There's really no "just" concerning lightning protection.
| You can just add some protection, to code or above, but
| it may not work. Nature can be unforgiving.
| Aloha wrote:
| You have to assume a direct hit by lightening will fry
| your hardware, period, full stop - proper grounding and
| lightning protection however will mean that the hardware
| does not catch fire.
| Animats wrote:
| There are lightning protectors that will absorb a direct
| lightning strike. Most antennas on hilltops and tall
| buildings have them. They take lightning strikes
| routinely. Here's some ARRL material on lightning
| protection.[1]
|
| It's not difficult, but it's not miniature. A classic
| design was a soup-can sized device with a coax connector
| on each end and a hulking big ground connection on the
| can. Inside was a spark gap with dime-sized silver
| contacts, and a few turns of copper busbar as an inductor
| to smooth out the spike that got past the spark gap. That
| goes where the cable enters the building. Similar units
| today tend to be smaller. There will still be serious
| metal boxes.[1]
|
| You need a serious ground. As in hulking big copper cable
| to a long ground rod. Grounding to a pipe is no longer
| allowed; there might be plastic pipe somewhere in the
| system, either now or in the future.
|
| The next stage is a "central office protector". This is a
| gas tube with three terminals - both sides of the line,
| and ground. So it's an enclosed spark gap in an inert
| gas. An overvoltage will ionize the gas and short it to
| ground. Telco central offices have one of those on each
| line. They're plug-in devices that sometimes have to be
| replaced.
|
| There's a lot of obviously fake stuff on eBay and Amazon
| in this area. 2D logos superimposed on curved surfaces,
| even. There's a standard, UL 497B. If it doesn't have
| that certification, don't buy.
|
| [1] https://www.polyphaser.com/search?Category=Data+Surge
| +Protec...
|
| [1] http://www.arrl.org/lightning-protection
| Aloha wrote:
| Well, Howdy!
|
| I'm a licensed radio amateur since 1996, I've spent about
| 20 years working in the cellular/telecom/two way radio
| industry, and I've done Motorola R56 inspections (as well
| as other proprietary grounding standards).
|
| I respectfully disagree, a direct lightning strike almost
| certainly will take out gear at a cell site, even when
| properly grounded. Similarly a direct strike to telco
| cable will certainly fuse the 16-20ga wire in the cable
| itself at the first point its near a ground. Carbons,
| Glass Tubes, and other similar hardware will protect you
| in the event of a nearby strike (like to a lightning rod
| on a tower, or building) - but wont save you if the
| infrastructure is struck itself.
|
| Generally the point of lightning protection systems is to
| well ground the tower, to draw the lightening away - so
| the tower and grounding system can protect the equipment
| - that isn't a direct strike by what I'm saying here - a
| direct strike would be if it struck the antenna itself.
|
| Thats the perspective I have from cleaning up from
| strikes at well grounded and protected tower sites.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes, few antennas really need to remain operational
| against direct hits. Nor do they usually need to be the
| highest thing on the tower.
|
| Data cables aren't usually up that high, fortunately.
| Power cables, though, are. In some areas high tension
| towers carry a ground wire between the peaks of the
| towers for lightning protection. It's impressive to see
| those systems take repeated direct hits without the
| lights even flickering. I've seen that in Florida.
|
| Worst case is probably is an AM broadcast station where
| the tower is isolated from the ground at the base. WSM in
| Nashville TN is like that. They had a pipe ground
| vaporized and windows blown out in a lightning strike in
| December 2019. They lost the tower lighting and some
| transmission components were damaged, but they apparently
| stayed on the air.
|
| The Empire State Building takes about 25 lightning hits a
| year. I wonder what their lightning protection looks
| like.
| upofadown wrote:
| ... also lightning strikes hitting the ground somewhere in
| the area. That can induce large voltage differences between
| the power grounds on the buildings. The voltage difference
| might be large enough to arc across any isolation provided
| by the physical network implementation.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| My neighbor's house was hit by lightning last year and it
| took out the ethernet ports on two of my devices. Nothing
| else was affected though. Those devices still work.
| They're on a PoE switch (though not using PoE) so that
| may have been part of the cause.
| dekhn wrote:
| Any long run like this would use optoisolaters.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Magnetic coupling removes any issues with potentials, and if
| it's not AC at the same frequency as what's in the wall, the
| phase is irrelevant.
| willglynn wrote:
| I'd like to add a few asterisks:
|
| Magnetic coupling removes issues with potentials _up to the
| dielectric breakdown voltage_. Ethernet magnetics are
| considered high potential components, and even the entry
| level options will isolate at least 1.5kV, but fault events
| often exceed that figure.
|
| Magnetic coupling removes issues with _common mode_
| potentials. If the + and - side of a pair are both a
| thousand volts away from the pair on the secondary side, no
| problem. If a wire pair suddenly measures a thousand volts
| across... well, Ethernet transformers are typically wound
| 1:1.
|
| _Ideal_ magnetic coupling removes issues with potentials.
| Ideal transformers behave as above, but real transformers
| have parasitic effects, particularly winding capacitance.
| Fast transients (including ESD) can and do capacitively
| couple across the transformer from primary to secondary.
|
| Magnetics are important but do not solve the problem on
| their own. It is possible to design and manufacture
| electrically robust copper Ethernet systems - for a given
| definition of robustness (typically defined as passing some
| specific EMC test) - but even then real world electrical
| faults can and do destroy robust Ethernet systems. Fiber
| has none of these concerns.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| All very true; good clarifications. In context my point
| was that it would be totally safe to run a copper
| Ethernet cable between two houses on separate electrical
| grids (or even an un-earthed battery powered computer).
| Aloha wrote:
| Inductive pickup (foreign voltage) from even fairly long
| runs (20kf +) of well maintained copper is usually much
| less less than half a volt, measuring either T-R, or
| T-G/R-G. It's supposed to be floating to ground - nothing
| on a twisted pair should be ground referenced, if you do
| have voltage to ground, you have a short.
|
| If it was not floating, you'd get atmospherics, hum, and
| other issues that you saw in old fashioned ground return
| systems.
|
| Indeed, measurement of voltage and continuity of T-G and
| R-G is a standard way to check for faulty cable
| throwaway____10 wrote:
| What a blast from the past, DSL was an exciting technology.
|
| I did the config and networking of DSLAMs for the first private
| test installs of Paradyne (Hotwire) DSL hardware in a western
| state around ~1998-1999, a couple years before DSL really hit
| the mainstream.
|
| The telecos were slow to move on the technology and didn't do
| their own centralized rollouts until several years later. We
| took full advantage of that lead time time to win away a lot of
| ISDN customers with much lower prices and much faster service.
| We also saw end of that advantage coming and got out of the
| business before we had to compete directly with the telecos who
| could operate at scale and do bundled pricing of the line +
| service that was harder to compete with. At the time high speed
| internet over cable was also a while off for the general
| public.
|
| We also had a tip from a teleco employee that we could use DC
| Signalling channels / dry copper pairs instead of regular phone
| circuits (no dial tone, they were meant for alarm service).
| They cost about 1/2 to 1/3 of the price.
|
| At one point we petitioned to get the local telco to dig up the
| sidewalk and install several hundred more copper pairs into the
| building.
|
| It was really interesting to watch the internet access
| landscape change so quickly.
| netsharc wrote:
| Al Gore never claimed that, btw, but he did recognize its
| importance and provided political support, even Vint Cerf said
| so: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/internet-of-lies/
| baldfat wrote:
| dekhn wrote:
| there is an entire multiverse fan fic where Al Gore won the
| presidential election and we're all living in a post-scarcity
| society.
| serf wrote:
| >Al Gore never claimed that, btw,
|
| GORE: "During my service in the United States Congress, I
| took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the
| initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives
| that have proven to be important to our country's economic
| growth and environmental protection, improvements in our
| educational system."
|
| There are three ways to read the first sentence, two of which
| take the presumption that Al Gore invented the internet.
|
| Snopes is so half-wrong that it's getting to be easy to
| ignore.
|
| In other words , he _did_ say that, he just didn 't mean for
| people to interpret his ambiguous statement in that fashion.
|
| aside : the word of the day is _initiative_.
| zuminator wrote:
| Gore absolutely deserves to be dinged for speaking
| ambiguously in a way that leans towards greatly inflating
| his contribution to the field.
|
| But at the same time, anyone who's ever read or written a
| resume will readily recognize "took the initiative in
| creating" as CV-speak for "I assisted in some capacity,
| however minor." I expect the actual number of people misled
| by Gore's self-puffery to have been small to nonexistent.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the
| initiative in creating the Internet"
|
| Sounds like we're playing word games at this point.
|
| Imagine that, a politician playing word games.
| baldfat wrote:
| Why ruin a good meme with FACTS! People
| geozimm wrote:
| absolutely - a good meme takes on a life of its own...
| geocrasher wrote:
| Right. Don't want to mess up the AlGoreithms that run the
| interwebz!
| oasisbob wrote:
| > While we (PairGain) also made point-to-point private links,
| it was clear then, and even moreso now that most DSL involves a
| service provider managing the network - with specialized
| skills, practices and setup.
|
| Mmm. This brings back memories of running private DSLAMs in a
| campus environment as a transitional pre-Ethernet stopgap in
| the early 2000s. 95% of the DSL lines worked great. The
| remaining 5% were a never-ending nightmare of troubleshooting
| and sudden breakage.
|
| We didn't want to be DSL experts, we just wanted the hardware
| to work well-enough for long enough to make it all go away.
| jleahy wrote:
| I actually ran a private DSLAM to get internet between
| upstairs and downstairs in my house only a few years ago (not
| a joke, G.fast).
| kombre wrote:
| >oh, fiber materials may be sand
|
| what does sand means in this context please ?
| hervature wrote:
| Fiber optics cables are made of glass whose primary
| constituent is silicon dioxide and/or quartz which are the
| primary constituents of sand.
| kombre wrote:
| oh okay, thx
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| And therefore should be cheap in a naive estimate
| jaredhallen wrote:
| To be fair, fiber cable itself is actually pretty cheap
| in the scheme of things. It's the installation and
| termination that account for the bulk of the cost
| mbarras_ing wrote:
| Dr Z! I've recently started at Tunstall Healthcare and you are
| frequently referenced when refering to SPE. I'm the first
| person they've had working full time on SPE, so hoping to make
| some progress :)
| yosheli123 wrote:
| Awesome to have your input on this. I'd love to talk to you in
| person to learn more. Reach out at josh@botblox.io
| tomhoward wrote:
| Cool to see you here on HN. I hadn't heard the name PairGain
| since I worked for a small corporate ISP in the early 2000s.
| We'd recommend PairGain modems for clients who needed seriously
| high-speed links of 2Mbps! This was just before ADSL and SHDSL
| were rolled out en masse, or at least well before they were
| reliable enough for corporate use. We had to organise a special
| installation of a direct copper line from their premises to
| ours. I guess they just patched them together at the exchange?
| It was a pretty small catchment area. Fun times!
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The tariff in my locality allowed for dry copper pairs to be
| installed ("burglar alarm circuits") and some of my Customers
| took advantage of that along w/ PairGain devices to get high
| speed links between sites serviced out of the same central
| office.
|
| Relevant article:
| http://helices.org/commentary/dry_copper_pair.html
| watersb wrote:
| I can't tell exactly from a quick scan of Cringeley's
| commentary... but I get the impression that a "dry copper
| pair" the single-pair POTS equivalent of "dark fiber"...
| with the critical caveat that a dry copper pair can link
| two points only if they are serviced by the same central
| telephone company switch.
| Aloha wrote:
| I remember seeing your guys HDSL hardware in the field what
| seems like a million years ago. (for those without a telecom
| background) It was pretty common as a way to extend T1's
| without conditioned lines or repeaters then.
|
| Interestingly enough, I'd done direct t-spans's inside of a
| building over house cable in a situation that was too long (and
| too poor of cable) to do Ethernet.
| hericium wrote:
| DSLs were capable of at least 8Mbit/s speeds close to 20 years
| ago. I worked for a small ISP and where were more than 100 meters
| (theoretical limit for cat5) between residential buildings, we
| were setting up 8 modems on a single UTP cable. With home
| internet speeds back then it wasn't a bottleneck.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| ADSL2+ can do 22Mbps at 1KM. It can do 10Mbps at 2.8KM. But
| without mass-manufacturing of the such a switch/access device,
| it will be expensive.
| hinkley wrote:
| As long as you weren't stringing those cables off of rooftops.
| I heard too many stories of lightning strikes burning out a lot
| of expensive equipment.
| baybal2 wrote:
| DSL and 10BASE-T1L are not quote the same.
|
| 10BASE-T1L PHY fits on a single chip, without much of analog
| trickery, and the whole line encoding, signal processing is
| much simpler.
|
| 10BASE-T1L is what will go into 1 dollar devices, not a $100
| modem.
| zokier wrote:
| > 10BASE-T1L is what will go into 1 dollar devices, not a
| $100 modem.
|
| Which is why this $150 media converter product feels bit
| baffling tbh.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Wait, can DSL modems talk to each other instead of a DSLAM line
| card?
| crazyjncsu wrote:
| Not a traditional dsl modem, but these work well using dsl
| technology: https://www.amazon.com/Tupavco-Ethernet-Extender-
| Kit-Repeate...
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| According to the description this adds at least 660ms of
| latency, so might be useless for certain applications.
| Wonder how much the TFA solution adds.
| Dan_Sylveste wrote:
| I was about to point something like this out.
| xhrpost wrote:
| That's pretty cool. The specs look like this is both faster
| and cheaper than the main link of this thread, unless I'm
| missing something?
| betaby wrote:
| Most SHDSL and some VDSL can talk each other indeed. Used
| that capability a lot in 200xs.
| ajb wrote:
| Its true that the specs are not symmetric in ADSL. The CO
| (Central Office) end is different from the CPE (Customer
| Premises Equipment) end, and two CPE devices cannot talk to
| each other. Among other things, the engineering work had to
| take into account that at the CO end a bunch of wires would
| come together and leak RF between each other.
|
| G.SHDSL is more common in a 1:1 configuration (although I
| think the ends may still be not symmetric) because it was
| designed as a T1 replacement.
|
| However some devices that could do a single line of CO were
| made, that can therefore talk to a CPE.
|
| See also https://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-
| over-wet...
| geocar wrote:
| Some can at least. I used Netopia SDSL routers without a
| DSLAM around twenty years ago to serve "high speed internet"
| in town in the US (Easton Maryland) a few years before they
| managed to get municipal broadband.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| It used to be possible many years ago, when I had a DSL modem
| as PCI card. There was a windows software that would put it
| in "server mode", and then you could connect another DSL
| modem to it and "dial in". Not sure if this is possible
| anymore, but there are Ethernet repeaters that are based on
| DSL tech which should work in a similar way.
| chmod775 wrote:
| They may be using the term "modem" loosely here, or rather,
| more generally than "home modems".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem
| miguel_cordeiro wrote:
| Love this stuff and was expecting to find more "wild" engineering
| stories in the comments. Not disappointed!
| yosheli123 wrote:
| So I built a tiny single pair Ethernet bridge (10BASE-T1L) that
| can transmit 10mbps over a kilometer on a single pair of twisted
| copper wires.
|
| Would love to get some feedback for the next iteration
| Aloha wrote:
| What are the limits on cable characteristics? Capacitance,
| foreign voltage, etc?
| zakki wrote:
| Is this full duplex?
| yosheli123 wrote:
| Yep full duplex
| chriscjcj wrote:
| Definitely cheaper than StarTech's offering. That's appealing.
|
| https://www.startech.com/en-us/networking-io/110vdslext
|
| However, with StarTech's product, you have a shot at faster
| speeds if you're going a shorter distance. It can do 75 Mb/s at
| 300 meters and up to 100 Mb/s at shorter distances.
|
| I would really like to find a similar box that can bond
| multiple pairs for faster speeds but I haven't found such a
| device yet.
| tyingq wrote:
| >Definitely cheaper than StarTech's offering
|
| There are other brands of VDSL extenders. This board seems to
| be $300 for a pair.
|
| This product, for example, is ~$271 a pair if you buy them at
| the same time: https://www.netsys-
| direct.com/products/vdsl2-ethernet-bridge...
|
| And they come with an enclosure and power supply. And a
| better sort of "step up / step down" bandwidth based on
| distance...see the chart at the bottom.
| yetihehe wrote:
| > Any application requiring a simple, low cost, robust
| connection between physically disparate devices
|
| At $195 it's definitely not low cost.
| [deleted]
| silviot wrote:
| What's the difference in price between 1km of fiber vs 1km or
| single pair wire? It might play a role in this solution being
| cheaper than immediately apparent.
| rkangel wrote:
| It comes down to whether the cable is there already. If you
| were laying it, you'd probably go for fibre. But if you've
| got 1km of some poor quality cable there already, then
| spending $200 to get usable bandwidth might be a lot
| cheaper than laying something new.
| DannyBee wrote:
| The fiber is much cheaper because it's so much more common.
|
| For example: I/O fiber is about 0.10 cents a foot or less
| for 2 fiber cable. (12 fiber is only 20 cents a foot).
|
| OSP gel-filled direct burial is 0.55 cents a foot or less
| for 2 fiber cable. (12 fiber is only 65 cents). This is
| micro-armored OSP cable, resistant to chewing/damage as
| well.
|
| Basic 18 awg single pair shielded direct burial wire is
| about 0.80 cents a foot. Can't even find a non-expensive
| armored version
|
| 10km single fiber transceivers at 10gbps are 40 bucks.
|
| 10km dual fiber transceivers at 10gbps at 29 bucks.
|
| It would be much cheaper, more effective, and a better
| result to just use fiber for 1km here.
|
| You could easily bury 12 fiber cable and use it for the
| price you will pay to use single-twisted-pair.
| Aloha wrote:
| When everyone prices fiber, they fail to include the
| termination costs.
|
| How much are the termination costs on that fiber, per
| run?
|
| Also, you'd never install single pair direct burial, and
| almost never shielded (unless its audio and not phone
| type) - it'd be 4/6/12 pair direct bury gel-filled cable.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Besides what DannyBee says about termination being a lot
| cheaper and easier when you can tolerate small losses
| (which is most people):
|
| Big infrastructure often orders the cables pre-
| terminated, eg an ISP will order their arial cable with
| built-in termination at certain intervals. No muss, no
| fuss.
|
| You're right about single pair though. If you're putting
| in two strands might as well do 6. If you need 6 might as
| well do 24. Never hurts to have spares and extra
| capacity. Especially if it involves stringing poles or
| digging holes.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Termination is basically a non-cost anymore. The price a
| pack of 10 sc/apc field terminations (IE that a random
| DIY'ers could do) is <20 bucks, and to your question, the
| same as a price of a pack of 10 ez-r45 connectors.
|
| The loss and ease of mechanical connectors has gotten
| good enough (0.15 db or better) that most of the folks i
| know will only fusion splice when they really have to.
|
| I agree it wouldn't make sense to do single pair or
| single fiber, but that's the actually the comparison at
| which 10baset-1l is _at all_ competitive.
|
| I have buried a _lot_ of fiber, and a _lot_ of network
| cable over the years :)
|
| I was just trying to be fair and present the best case
| for 10baseT1L
|
| In practice you can do 12/24 strand fiber (or 6 strand
| fiber + power + whatever) for less than the price of
| whatever particular set of 18 awg twisted pair (which is
| what the spec requires at 1km) + other things you wanted.
| The cable would be smaller, and if you use A3 or B3
| fiber, it would be more flexible/support a lower bend
| radius than the 18 awg twisted pair. By far. IT's not
| even close.
| jandrese wrote:
| This product makes sense if you are reusing existing
| copper lines.
| DannyBee wrote:
| in which case unless you have 18awg copper lines around,
| you can't do 1km :)
|
| I would be shocked if anyone has those. Maybe alarm wire
| I guess?
| p1mrx wrote:
| > 0.80 cents a foot
|
| Isn't that 80 cents/foot, or 0.80 dollars/foot?
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Aren't you off by a factor of 100? Maybe dollars per
| foot, not cents per foot?
| icedchai wrote:
| If you're in the position to bury new fiber cable, why
| would you use this product?
| DannyBee wrote:
| To get to 1km, the spec requires 18awg cable, which
| nobody has around either ;)
| withinboredom wrote:
| A copper wire can be bent in just about every which way
| (such as tangled when being tethered to an underwater
| drone), while fiber cannot.
| eru wrote:
| I don't think the wire itself would be the expense, but the
| laying of it?
| voakbasda wrote:
| The cost of laying wire is virtually the same as laying
| fiber, so the difference really comes down to the
| material costs. The only good reason to use wire would be
| existing installations, as you sidestep that cost
| entirely.
| EUROCARE wrote:
| But perhaps the wire is already there. I don't think
| anybody advocates for building entirely new datalinks
| using this. Laying another 1km of cable is much more
| expensive than 2x200 USD to reuse existing cable.
| kube-system wrote:
| "Low cost" is relative. For parts in the industrial/robotics
| space, $195 is not expensive.
|
| You can certainly spend more on other options:
| https://westwardsales.com/patton-cl2300e-ethernet-extender
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You can get full products that do higher speeds over longer
| distances at lower cost, search term "vdsl repeater".
|
| It's possible that this product handles bad wiring better
| as it's ethernet rather than VDSL2, but I think those
| devices are a much better fit.
|
| One thing that might be better with an ethernet based
| standard is the ability to add multiple stations to the
| same link, relying on ethernet's error correction.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| The schematic/drawing says 2000 meter range, the title and
| description say 1km. Not sure which to believe!
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Most don't realize, you can run 400mbps of data over your old in-
| home electrical wiring.
|
| https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/everything-you-need-...
| RedShift1 wrote:
| My experience with powerline adapters is that they all fail
| sooner or later... I think 230 V is just too much to handle in
| a small package combined with sensitive low voltage
| communication chips.
| icedchai wrote:
| I experimented with powerline network adapters for a while. You
| might see 400 megabits on the same circuit. Between floors in
| your house on different circuits? Very unlikely. The latency
| was also pretty bad compared to wifi.
| tumetab1 wrote:
| My experience is also that between floors (circuits) you
| loose bandwidth. With latency I see no issue and I find that
| weird.
|
| Latency, with Wi-Fi or not, it's probably correlated with
| transmission failures so there probably some bad circuitry or
| devices than create noise (like electrical motors).
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| Depending on the country, you can be made responsible for radio
| interference.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| Some questions:
|
| 1. Would you need two of them at a $430 cost for this?
|
| 2. If so would the person be much better with alternative
| solutions like fixed wireless or Ethernet-VDSL2 conversion that
| would deliver much better performance at this price point?
| mrjin wrote:
| Further more, why would someone choose this over $59.69 a pair
| fiber ether net media converter, up to 20KM, 1000Mbps from TP-
| LINK? There are most likely cheaper options from other vendors.
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001435649462.html
| numpad0 wrote:
| These emerging Ethernet standards are cost effective upgrades
| for large industrial objects like warehouses and monstrous
| vehicles.
|
| You may have an unused phone line or just some reserved pins in
| a connector, and the cable runs a quarter mile to the other end
| of "this". The existing solution is working, albeit
| inconvenient, and it will be _nice_ to be able to just add
| Ethernet telemetry or control to it. That's where these shine.
| xattt wrote:
| The economics in buying this is whether re-running the 1-km of
| copper with whatever media you want will cost $430 or less.
|
| I think just rolling a telecom truck will cost you this.
| yosheli123 wrote:
| Yeah fair. I'm aiming at new space constrained applications
| with this.
| yosheli123 wrote:
| Yeah approx $400 for a pair. Mainly chip shortage messiness, I
| think I can get the cost down to less than $200 a pair in April
| 2023.
|
| Regarding VSDL, never used it myself; I guess it would come
| down to space/power considerations. I haven't seen VDSL used
| much in the industrial automation, single pair ethernet seems
| to be the preferred choice.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| Long range networking is a very overcrowded market. You need
| something that is either really good or really cheap.
| jmpman wrote:
| What's the best way to do this underwater? I need to go across a
| lake about 1km.
| dhon_ wrote:
| You might be better off with directional wifi antennas if
| appropriate for your application.
| [deleted]
| mrjin wrote:
| Fiber I recon.
| yosheli123 wrote:
| You'd use some standard tether cable, Blue Robotics sell good
| stuff for that.
|
| https://bluerobotics.com/store/cables-connectors/cables/fath...
|
| Then just straight onto the screw terminals.
| transistor-man wrote:
| Awesome project!
|
| This would be fairly great fit for underwater UAV's, or like
| security camera way out on the edge of property. May be a good
| idea to post on ardu-sub related discussion forums. I'm not aware
| of an off the shelf module that's point to point ADSL, almost
| every modem is intended to yell at a ADSL / ADSL2+ host.
|
| Did you run into any issues with consumer-grade gigabit switches
| negotiating 10Mbit?
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Blue Robotics sells the fathomX exactly for this purpose. I
| wouldn't be surprised if it uses the same chip set.
|
| https://bluerobotics.com/store/comm-control-power/tether-int...
| yosheli123 wrote:
| That tops out at around 300meters. Ours goes beyond 1km.
| Still there's is awesome for camera feeds; I love the Blue
| Robotics hardware, SPEBlox Long is just a different
| application (more industrial automation focussed)
| transistor-man wrote:
| Any chance you're going to release schematics / open source the
| design?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| It seems that single mode fiber is king for long distance cable
| runs now, nevermind that it can push gigabits. What kind of cable
| would this be and is it actually much cheaper? My impression is
| that most cost of cabling now is the labor to run it as opposed
| to the medium, but I'm a neophyte for sure.
| time0ut wrote:
| A common use case for this is to use existing infrastructure
| like in an industrial setting. You can also provide power over
| a cable like this.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Fiber has the downside of being extremely vulnerable to
| mechanical damage or dirt and expensive on long runs. This here
| runs on virtually anything that's twisted-pair wire.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _It seems that single mode fiber is king for long distance
| cable runs now, nevermind that it can push gigabits._
|
| Bandwidth isn't the only consideration: you can deliver power
| over copper:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet#PoDL
|
| * https://www.ti.com.cn/cn/lit/an/snvaa25/snvaa25.pdf
| DannyBee wrote:
| Main reason POE is useful is that it lets you deliver power
| over existing wires. If you are running new wires, you can
| already do what you want.
|
| They make plenty of fiber+power in single cable, because the
| fiber is unaffected by the power.
|
| Running 1km of slow, expensive, single-pair cable to run low-
| data rate + power, vs fiber+power cable saves you essentially
| one connector. For very high cost - in money and loss of
| bandwidth.
|
| Plus 10base-t1l is not common, so the price of equipment is
| high as well.
| yosheli123 wrote:
| Basically just any CAT5e like twisted pair has worked for me up
| to 1km. 26AWG unshielded twisted pair basically, 100Ohm diff
| impedance. Cost of cabling is pennies IMO. Labor cost, who
| knows.
|
| Optical can be quite expensive though these boards aren't
| exactly cheap (yet).
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I've actually had to deal with fiber for the first time in my
| career recently and it was actually easier and cheaper than I
| imagined. I think my take on costs was about a decade out of
| date and things have gotten pretty affordable these days (for
| 1Gbps at long range at least). Probably all the fiber to the
| home providers have pushed the economies of scale on these
| things.
|
| But here's sort of an example of what I'm talking about.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Gigabit-Ethernet-
| Converter-1000Base-L...
|
| So the cost is pretty low if you wanted to terminate with
| these (these things aren't too loved in networking circles,
| but I can vouch that they do work), then the biggest
| difference is the cost of bulk cable - fiber vs copper. I
| assume the cost of labor to run it is essentially the same.
|
| The main tradeoffs I see are that you can run power over catX
| cable (though probably not 1km?) but single mode fiber seems
| to be indefinitely able to upgrade bandwidth; I'm told that
| old installations from the 90's are still used and are
| pushing 100's of gigabits with newer optics attached to them.
|
| Like I said, I'm fairly new to this having started a job
| where I have to talk to datacenter people about this sort of
| thing, so I'm learning a bit as I go.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Optical is not expensive anymore. It's 20 bucks for 10gbps
| transceivers. The cable is much cheaper than twisted pair.
| termination will take you no longer than a network cable.
|
| The world is not the same as it was 15 years ago :)
| madengr wrote:
| I wired my house with 62/125 fiber 22 years ago as a 1 km spool
| was only $250. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I suspect
| multimode fiber is cheaper than copper, and termination kits
| are cheap now.
|
| I'm running 10G on single mode 100 ft jumpers to a few
| computers in the house and that's cheap too. SFP are $35 but
| the NIC are more.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Yeah, multimode fiber seems to be the red headed step child
| of the networking world these days, but that's a good
| question about the cost of it vs copper. It's just plastic,
| right? It seems like a good option for high speed SOHO or
| perhaps within rack networking. But if I was running cable in
| my house today, I think I'd still go copper for PoE
| capability.
| madengr wrote:
| trollied wrote:
| A few years ago, revk (owner of an ISP in the UK) did ADSL over
| wet string: https://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-
| over-wet...
| yosheli123 wrote:
| That's brilliant!
| xhrpost wrote:
| There's also Ethernet over barbed wire:
| http://www.sigcon.com/Pubs/edn/SoGoodBarbedWire.htm
| gorkish wrote:
| Back in the day I ran X.25 over an actual barbed wire fence
| for a customer. It connected a serial terminal in a field
| house at a local feedyard back to their SCO box in the main
| office. Probably about 1500 feet. It was reliable!
| rlonstein wrote:
| Paraphrasing the old joke about getting a dry pair, must be
| an SBC customer.
| justcodin wrote:
| wow
| aidos wrote:
| The HN post at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29440681
|
| RevK is the owner of AAISP (an xkcd/806 compliant
| organisation).
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/806/
|
| https://www.revk.uk/2010/10/xkcd806-compliance.html?m=1
| jokoon wrote:
| I guess it's also a latency tradeoff?
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