The Change Mariner

Advent Networks' Ultraband Boosts Cable IP Performance

eweek.com:
Corporations looking for alternatives to expensive T1 service may soon get benefits from an unlikely place—cable TV operators.

At the cable industry's Western Show 2003 here on Wednesday, networking startup Advent Networks Inc. of Austin, Texas, showed off its new Ultraband line of switch routers, designed to let cable operators increase cable modem bandwidth from 2 to 10 or more megabits per second.

Advent's new Ultraband 8800 works by layering time-division multiplexing on top of a standard DOCSIS-based cable plant. According to President and CEO Geoffrey Tudor, that provides more bandwidth for each user by eliminating overhead, as well as guaranteeing packet delivery.

... In Japan, Mitsubishi Corp. is already using Advent's hardware to deliver that performance to home users for under $40 a month. A Mitsubishi representative in Advent's booth confirmed the performance benefits, and said the company was very happy with the system's performance.

Time Warner Inc. is already using Ultraband equipment to provide IP service to business customers in Austin Texas. One of the first customers is IBM's Austin-based research lab.