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"New technologies could accelerate DSL"

I'm sure if they work hard they could squeeze a few more KB/s out of dial-up too...

Not many people need gigabit speeds as long as they are getting internet at decent speeds, i think for those DSL accleration could be worth it.

Obey Shannon. It's the law.

You can get any speed you want, if you bond enough lines. People have been doing that with Ethernet for years. These days, there are probably lots of unused pairs in telephone cables. The phone company might prefer to get some revenue from using them this way, than having them sit unused.

Bonding has been around for quite awhile. Vectoring"...involves compensating for the noise and interference..." which sounds like what phone lines have had for a long time now. So why implement this now? Hint: Google Fiber.

:\ this article doesn't really detail what vectoring is, or what bonding is. So here's a brief description:

Bonding has been around for a long while Dr_toad; usually it's been used with T1s and it'll take two synced up lines to act as a single connection to send data over. This can be beneficial because unlike doing what's called a "multilink" where layer 2 TCP syn-acks handle errors on the lines, layer 1 protocols handle it individually, reducing bandwidth-hurting latency issues.

Vectoring is essentially this: When you put an electrical signal down the line, it makes an electric field around the wire; these often interfere with other wires. The problem with DSL has traditionally been that too many signals (on neighboring wires) = too much interference -> signal loss. So account for the fields, and the ones you make with your own DSLAM (the box that distributes DSL), and overall you get less interference. Imagine all the lines working together to make a nondestructive electric field.

^Just to elaborate on my point: I'm a network tech/engineer working for a company doing majority fiber work. I got hired because of my experience with VDSL2 (the newest tech in DSL) - it's proved fairly useful because it can get links of 25-100mbps (synchronous) to customers within 5,000 feet, without doing expensive fiber builds. Vectoring would improve this even more. Right now, VDSL2 is only capable of doing up to what's known as the 17a profile - 100mbps at best - outside of Asia; with vectoring, the 30a profile (up to 300mbps) would be released.

DSL is not dead. Do remember that while fiber is powerful, light is also only an electromagnetic wave like electrons are, just passing through a different medium. There are simply different tradeoffs for each technology.