Australian Researcher Boosts ADSL Speeds

sea_stuart writes "Like your ADSL connection to go 100 times faster? Despite the grim state of Australian mathematics and science, there is still exciting original work being done Down Under. John Papandriopoulos, a Research Fellow with the ARC Special Research Centre for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN) has developed a method to reduce crosstalk interference in ADSL technologies to bring speeds up the theoretical maxima possible. With an Australian Federal election due in a few weeks, and both parties promising improved broadband speeds and access, this is a welcome development, hopefully enabling higher speeds without huge expenses."

You must not be using it

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

I got this story last month [slashdot.org].

Re:

[Agripa (139780)]

This is just delayed crosstalk which his research helps to prevent or at least accommodate.

aaarrggghhhh!!

[yoshi3 (1118623)]

Damn dial up, I almost had forst post! :(

Re:

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

You youngsters with your electronical modems.
In my day we had to get first post with a mail-in comment.

dupe

[mgblst (80109)]

With more bandwidth, we will need more content, so I guess we can expect a few more repeats.

Re:

[martin-boundary (547041)]

It shouldn't be too hard to rig a firefox extension to open 5 simultaneous windows with the exact same content rendered in each. Instant fivefold speed increase :)

Re:

[mgblst (80109)]

Surely they would all use the cached data, so it wouldn't actually download it five times. Maybe an extension to load up ie, opera, lynx and kde browser would do the trick.

Politics

[religious freak (1005821)]

With an Australian Federal election due in a few weeks, and both parties promising improved broadband speeds and access...

Wow, I wish this was even close to being an issue in one of our campaigns here in the USA. Can you imagine having an issue like this on the national agenda here?

Re:Politics

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

Wow, I wish this was even close to being an issue in one of our campaigns here in the USA. Can you imagine having an issue like this on the national agenda here?

Its partly because a Universal Service Obligation is built into our telecommunications laws. Companies which supply loss making services to remote areas get a subsidy from companies which do not. It may not be a driver in the current debate but it is certainly a symptom.

Another factor is that remote areas are currently being hit bad by a drought. Hand wringing over communication is one way for the Government to be seen to be helping people where they can't really do anything about water.

And to top it off, we actually have a very bad problem with rural infrastructure. We have 1/10th the population of the US, and slightly less land area to service. The cost of improving service in remote areas is a political hot potato. The party currently in power is a coalition of the National party which traditionally supports country voters and the more broad based Liberal party. By making broadband an issue the Government is trying to tell the country voters that the opposition Labour party doesn't have an interest in supporting them.

Re:

[MillionthMonkey (240664)]

Its partly because a Universal Service Obligation is built into our telecommunications laws. Companies which supply loss making services to remote areas get a subsidy from companies which do not.

A law like that in the United States wouldn't have made it past the Reagan administration. American law is written by telecom lobbyists and is designed to create and sustain fake scarcity of telecommunications services.

Re:

[Belacgod (1103921)]

Actually, we have a similar law (the Rockefeller amendment to the 1996 Telecommunications bill). That doesn't require any particular quality of connection, though.

Re:

[jamesh (87723)]

Subsidized tin cans and pieces of string for all!

Re:

[glittalogik (837604)]

From the sounds of it a lot of you would be better off with that.

Re:

[shellbeach (610559)]

Wow, I wish this was even close to being an issue in one of our campaigns here in the USA. Can you imagine having an issue like this on the national agenda here?

Don't worry, broadband really isn't an issue in the election campaign down here in Oz. In fact, we're have a very US-style personality-based campaign, with precious little policy detail in any area.

And for what it's worth, if the howard turd gets re-elected once more you're welcome to move here and take my place. Give him another three years and every last one of the old Australian values will have been replaced by fear, xenophobia and selfishness.

Re:

[Nazlfrag (1035012)]

We have a cable modem service here too. There is one provider, it peaks around 7M and is capped at 20 gigs, throttled down to 64k (yes, dialup speed) once the cap is reached. That cost $60AUD/month. They recently expanded the plans (yes, there was one provider with one plan for quite a while) which are just as pathetic. Luckily the competition regulators opened up the exchanges and the smaller players have been installing adsl2+(theoretical 24M, realistic 8-12M) with decent plans for a while now, all this e

oh please

[smash (1351)]

Despite the grim state of Australian mathematics and science

Grim state? At least the majority of *our* population are literate for a start.

Indeed. It's bollocks

[Colin Smith (2679)]

Just one politician trying to make another politician look bad.

If there's a demand for mathematicians or statisticians then they'll be well paid, and being well paid the profession will attract people which'll push down the cost.
 

Re:

[Felius (56017)]

..the grim state of Australian mathematics and science..

that'd have to be SA, right? ;)

(hey, I had to pick one..)

Re:

[Heir Of The Mess (939658)]

It's only SA because NT isn't a state

Re:

[Nazlfrag (1035012)]

The grimmest state is Tasmania, but most of the time we forget its there so SA wins.

Re:

[mwvdlee (775178)]

the majority of *our* population are literate

You is very literate indeed.

Re:

[BlueParrot (965239)]

Grim state? At least the majority of *our* population are literate for a start.

Maybe it's because I'm Swedish and not an expert on English grammar, but doesn't your fine language use "is" when the subject is singular? I.e, "our population is literate"?

Re:

[rantingkitten (938138)]

Well, Brits and people who speak British English have yet to figure out the concept of "collective nouns" and their place in subject/verb agreement. They will argue that since "a population" necessarily consists of multiple individuals, it is a plural noun and requires the verb "are". This is incorrect -- a population is a single, collective entity, and requires the verb "is". Examples include "The band are playing" or "Microsoft are releasing an update". However, they will fight and argue this until th

Re:

[rantingkitten (938138)]

Perhaps so, but my primary complaint is that you Brits seem to do it consistently (cf. my examples above), which means it isn't irregular. Your cited example of "the population is increasing" is the irregularity as far as British grammar conventions go; the rest of the time it seems every Brit wants to treat collective nouns as plural, which is, as far as I am concerned, demonstrably incorrect and not merely a matter of dialect or regional variation. It really stings some deep part inside of me that wante

More range please

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

If his technique can make ADSL work at greater distances from the exchange then he might be on to something. I know people who live in non-urban parts of Australia who are just on the limit of distance to the exchange for ADSL to work.

Doubling that distance could increase the number of homes covered by a factor of four.

Re:

[Lumpy (12016)]

you guys could do what some others do. get a set os SDSL modems and create your own point to point to another home inside the coverage area sharing that DSL.

SDSL modems can talk to each other, over a standard Category 3 twisted pair it can talk at least 3Km easily some guys get 10km with stronger modems. then they simply buy a "dry pair" of wires to the other location from the phone company or run it on their own gorilla style burying the wire just onder the surface along side the roads. Old flooded (g

Re:

[Tony Hoyle (11698)]

They can't - cable has the disadvantage that it's all shared bandwidth in an street (up to the 'green box') so if they uncapped it as high as that it would affect TV reception (which is their primary revenue source)... not to mention the backhaul would have to have enormous bandwidth just to handle it... and people just wouldn't be prepared to pay that kind of money for service (when your streets local p2p junkie suddenly maxes his line out 24/7 and your service runs like crap because of it who are your goi

Re:

[cheater512 (783349)]

Actually these days its where they have to roll out the least back haul.

We can assume that in Australia at least, the exchange is in the worst possible place.
Inner city it doesnt matter too much because the suburb sizes are small enough for ADSL but as you get out a bit it really bites.

UpZide Labs

[digithed (445564)]

There's a company in Sweden called UpZide Labs (http://www.upzide.com/ [upzide.com]) that's been working on a technology called VDSL (Vectored DSL) for a few years. This also promises speeds of 100Mb/s using normal copper connections in use right now with normal ADSL.

Get the facts straight

[kju (327)]

First: VDSL is already in active deployment e.g. in Germany (offered in speeds of 25/5 and 50/10 mbit here). Second: VDSL does NOT stand for "Vectored DSL" but for "Very High Speed DSL".

a technology called VDSL ..

[rs232 (849320)]

Some time back, a company called Genesis Europe were going to rollout a VDSL network, what ever became of it I wonder. As for VDSL, this article has something interesting to say about it.

"Mr. Walker .. claims VMSK achieves spectral efficiencies of 90 bits/sec/Hz or more .. These claims are in direct violation of the mathematical principles of digital communications discovered by Harry Nyquist (1928), Claude Shannon (1948), and others"

The VMSK Delusion [archive.org]

was: Re:UpZide Labs

Don't forget Rural Areas

[by Anonymous Coward]

Faster ADSL in Australia? I can't even get Mobile (Cell) phone coverage. Hell, where I work we don't even have landlines just a fucking public telephone booth. Gotta love Rural Australia :/

Re:Don't forget Rural Areas

[fons (190526)]

So how did you post this comment? Hacked modem on the phonebooth? :-)

Re:Don't forget Rural Areas

[GaryOlson (737642)]

He is probably using the Kangaroo connection protocol where messages are passed using a pocket hopping procedure.

VDSL2?

[Max Romantschuk (132276)]

First of all, this is a dupe...

But more to the point, doesn't VDSL2 [wikipedia.org] already provide similar speeds?

In the future

[FridayBob (619244)]

My current Internet bandwidth:

• 14 Mbps down
• 1 Mbps up

My Internet bandwidth in about 7 years time, after Papandriopoulos' technology has spread world-wide:

• 140 Mbps down
• 1 Mbps up

-----

WTF?!

"Our strategy is to sell higher upload speeds only to business clients"

Last mile isn't the limiting factor in the UK

[gilesjuk (604902)]

In the UK as ADSL gets faster the traffic allocations seem to get even meaner. The prices of ADSL connections remain static, even falling, yet the speed of the connections increase. This is obviously unsustainable and this is why people are complaining that they have an 8MB connection yet only get about 4-6MB download speeds.

There's already 50:1 contention, if the ISPs and BT don't increase the speed of their pipes and add more pipes then the extra speeds accounts for nothing.

Re:

[caluml (551744)]

I see you're a Zen subscriber. Me too, and I regularly get 800+kB/s downloads. Don't tell too many people though. :)

This is fantastic!

[AbRASiON (589899)]

Exactly what we need in Australia is higher performance ADSL links, something like this will be perfect for us to use up our measely 20/40 or maybe even 60gb! monthly download quotas in only a day!

Re:Australian?

[lord_rob the only on (859100)]

So what ? His grandparents may come from Greece. That does not mean mean he's Greek because his surname sounds greekish ...

Re:Australian?

[Anthony (4077)]

This [vic.gov.au] might explain why.

Re:

[thevoice (54067)]

In Australia we tend to call everyone Australian if they've been here for a few years and have citizenship. In America I'd probably be Irish-American or some such thing, despite the fact I'm five generations out of Ireland. Australians tend to find that pretty weird.

Re:

[donscarletti (569232)]

Have you ever been to Australia? Greeks in South Eastern Australia are as common as any other ancestry, you find them everywhere from blue collar labour to business, politics, entertainment and broadband research. Even Australia's most nationalistic rednecks don't see them as anything but normal, white Aussies anymore. Personally, I hear a Greek name and immediately think: Melbourne, because how much useful research has ever been done in Greece? Archimedes lived in Sicily, Pythagorus and Zeno lived in Italy

Melbourne v. Athens

[xixax (44677)]

The only city in the world with more Greeks than Melbourne is Athens.

Fully Sik Mate.

Xix.

Re:

[cutee (1147787)]

"normal, white Aussies"? I know we here are heading back to white australia, but not that far, yet. I'll push my children out of here long before then (and I'll remember to post a message here when I do). For now if you are an Indian doctor (not American Indian doctors, anything American is welcome by the present australian government) think again before you come here. The government may think because you look darker therefore you must be on the dark side. Perhaps science is only dim for Australian politici

Re:

[donscarletti (569232)]

"Normal, white Australian" was intended to mean normal amongst white Australians i.e. no different to someone with British, Irish or Northern European background, but I don't see why I need to justify myself simply because I said something that under some twisted interpretations could been seen to expose racist tendancies.

Oh, and by the way, where are you planning on heading when if country's immigration changes against your liking? Will you go to America with it's patriot act, to Europe with it's almost z

Re:

[shellbeach (610559)]

The guy is Greek

s/r//g

Re:

[mwvdlee (775178)]

Sure, if you have to revert to calling Australians Greek in order to boost your sense of national pride, you can call him Greek.

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG (946591)]

"Australian Maths.
One sheep.. Two sheep.. Three sheep.."

No, that's New Zealand math. Aussie math is "One beer... Two beers... Three beers... ... FFffourteen beerrrsh..."

Re:

[Gorshkov (932507)]

Q: How do they define safe sex in New Zealand?

A: Painting a big 'X' on the back of all the ugly sheep