Brian's Brain

If Microsoft's recent predictions for fiber optic-equipped ISP speed improvements have whetted your appetite for a broadband bandwidth boost, you might be interested in the hands-on experiences of a PC Magazine editor. Back in June, Lance Ulanoff wrote up (Slashdot commentary) the initial Verizon FiOS installation; earlier this week he followed up with commentary on FiOS TV (ditto from Slashdot). All in all, he seems quite pleased with the service, including the ability to get out from under the yoke of his cable television provider.

A note on terminology; Verizon's FiOS is a FTTP ('fiber to the premises') approach, also known as (depending on the target customer) FTTB ('fiber to the business') and FTTH ('fiber to the home'). AT&T's alternative approach to broadband DSL and IPTV, which back in the SBC days was known as 'Project Lightspeed' (and is now called U-verse), also involves swapping out copper for fiber, but in this case only to the curb (therefore FTTC, for 'fiber to the curb' or 'fiber to the cabinet', or FTTN, for 'fiber to the node'), with multiple subscribers sharing the fiber bandwidth and connecting to it over copper-to-the-home/business links. AT&T's approach is arguably cheaper and speedier to implement, but Verizon and its fans point out that FTTC may result in insufficient per-subscriber bandwidth to deliver a compelling IPTV experence.

Several years back, local telecommunications provider SureWest Communications ran fiber up my street, and the company is now promoting high-speed Internet, IPTV and VoIP plans (as well as bundled combinations of them). Google searching confirms that SureWest's approach is FTTP and, although other personal and professional distractions have to date delayed my reach-out to the company's PR contacts, my recent DSL bandwidth-starving movie download experiences have bolstered my motivation to test-drive the fiber alternative. In fact, in preparation I've already got two dual-WAN routers in my possession (a Hawking FR24 Dual WAN Firewall Router and a Symantec 200R Firewall/VPN Appliance), which'll enable me to easily do relative bandwidth, latency, etc. benchmarking and also allow me to test bandwidth-sharing and fail-over configurations. Stay tuned....