First Mile Access Networks and Enabling Technologies

Summary

In this chapter we discussed DSL in the first mile. DSL technology is an evolutionary technology built on the the POTS infrastructure. Over the past few years, multiple variants of DSL have emerged—namely, ADSL, VDSL, HDSL, and so on. This chapter discussed these variants and their implementation and management issues. We also discussed LRE, a new paradigm for point-to-point communication over copper. LRE shows promise for the first mile—namely, an all-Ethernet approach. This chapter concluded by discussing some of the key limitations of DSL implementation that need to be solved to achieve a complete broadband network.