Interview with CableLabs President Richard Green on High-Speed Internet and HDTV's Cable Future (Part 1 of 3)
Summary
CableLabs President Dr. Richard Green discusses the cable industry's push toward high-speed internet access at ethernet rates of 10 Mb/s, describing it as the most compelling new service development underway. He outlines the technical infrastructure of neighborhood fiber nodes and addresses internet congestion challenges as cable positions itself for the HDTV era.
An Interview with Richard Green
President of CableLabs
Boulder, Colorado
Part 1 of 3 Parts
We first asked Dr. Green what he thought is the most interesting topic in the labs today, moving then for a discussion on interactive standard television, and then honed in on the HDTV question. You will see that cable has every reason to be forward looking into the HDTV era, but first a few comments about the system you used to access this information--the internet.
Dr. Green:
We are working hard in the cable industry to develop new services, as are
the telephone people. But the business most interesting is that data services
for high speed connection to the internet. The reason it is attractive
is that there is not an entrenched competitor. You can go ISDN with telephone,
but we (cable) are talking ethernet rates of 10 Mbt/s. This make a huge
difference on the World Wide Web for accessing web pages with increasing
amount of content and graphics. I included here audio and video, as well
as graphics.
From a technical standpoint it is not a huge leap (for us) because the technology for transmission of ethernet on cable has been around for a long time. It does require modification, but the structure of the cable networks is such that they are now designed to have neighborhood nodes serving 300 people (and passing 500) Those nodes now are basically internet nodes as well. Not all 300 (customers) will be using it, of course. When the subscriber base increases to the point where you are loading down the ethernet and we are then capable subdividing the node, because there are already four or five fibers to the node. The technical challenges, and there are some, are pretty straight forward. The equipment development process takes time. Of all the things we are doing at Cablelabs that is probably the most interesting.
HDTV Newsletter:
Are there file servers on the web now that would act as a bottleneck to
that throughput rate?
Dr. Green:
Of course. There are problems with the internet itself. Some of our companies
are looking at those problems. In some places they are considering a separate
backbone. When you start expanding the world wide web and people start
accessing a great deal of it from home there is going to be a quality-of-service
issue. There is nothing you can do about people's servers, if that is what
they want to put on the network. If a server gets really overloaded, there
isn't much we can do about it except mirror it. We can do things about
congestion on the internet itself. You can have multiple backbones, for
example. The people that govern the internet have authorized that.
The bottom line is that it (the internet) is getting more graphic and
more and more people are getting interested in the world wide web. Older
people, shut-ins, young people, obviously... the one thing interesting
about the demographics is that it is broad. There is something for everyone
and it is important to people that are cut off in other ways. If you live
in isolation it allows commuting by using the internet without any other
connection (needed) to carry on a business. With the cities more congested
and more difficult to live in you will see still more importance given
to it. The whole work at home kind of philosophy I think will grow. The
thing that will drive it (the internet) is, like television, entertainment.
Copyright 1996
