1. GLITS Agenda: Fiber to the Home
Broadband Technology Overview, Steve Belter, Indiana Dataline Corp
Active Ethernet FTTH, Oliver Beers, Wintek Corporation
GPON FTTH, Steve Biggerstaff, Cinergy MetroNet

2. Broadband Technology Overview
Steve Belter, President
Indiana Dataline Corp
427 N 6th Street, Suite C
Lafayette, IN 47901

3. Broadband Technologies
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

4. Acronyms: Fiber to where?
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

5. Broadband Quality Measures
Speed (kilobits/sec, megabits, gigabits)
Latency (think delay or ping time)
Jitter (think ping time variation)
Symmetric or asymmetric down/up speeds

6. Terminology 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)

7. Cable Modems – Architecture
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 homes (target used to be 500 homes)

8. Cable Modems - DOCSIS
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

9. Cable Modems – Summary
Node bandwidth shared with your neighbors ( neighbors)
Asymmetric speeds (upload slower)
TDM upstream increases jitter

10. FTTx Direct Connection
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

11. Active Ethernet – Architecture
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

12. Active Ethernet – Summary
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

13. Passive Optical Networks
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

14. GPON – Architecture (Gigabit PON)
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

15. GPON – Summary 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

16. Future Fiber Technology: WDM-PON
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

17. Summary Comcast using DOCSIS 3.0
Wintek uses direct connections or Active Ethernet
Cinergy MetroNet uses GPON, one of the flavors of TDM-PON

18. Questions? Thank you for your attention
Steve Belter Indiana Dataline Corp (direct number)