Municipal Ethernet Over Coax Cable

[JohnInTexas]

My rural community (on the outskirts of a major metro) has a terrestrial cable tv provider that went bankrupt in the early 2000's. The coaxial cable that was providing cable TV is still in place in our community (less than 2000 population over a large area)... My question... Is there a way to provide Gigabit internet access over this existing coaxial cable network? I know that networking and bridge gear would be needed (of some kind) but I have no idea where to start and want to take the proposal to the city council. Thoughts?

 

[bill001g]

Not gig but you could run docsis3 over it and get maybe 100m. What you need to buy is call CMTS something like a Motorola bsr64000. It likely is not that simple though, the wire likely has issue that would need addressing.

 

[JohnInTexas]

The majority of the cable network is in very good shape. There are areas that would need to be addressed and of course a fiber connection to the NOC would be needed. Since the cable is NOT going to be carrying any video or cable channels.... Couldn't that additional bandwidth be used to increase the throughput to the end user? I know ideally Fiber to Home or a Hybrid would be better, but with a system of cabling and demarcation points across 90% of the city already that is going UNUSED... I just hate to take that big step before building on the existing system. Thoughts?

 

[abailey]

The DOCSIS 3.0 spec does allow for 1Gb/s speeds. If you use 24 channels you can get about 912Mb/s. If you use 32 channels you can get 1.2Gb/s. I don't know if anyone has a modem that supports 32 channels yet, but Cisco and Hitron make modems that support 24 channels. Hitron's modem is 24 channels down and 8 up. Anyway it can be done but is not efficient and it comes with high cost. The DOCSIS 3.1 spec is out but those products are not expected until 2016. It can support 10Gb/s speeds. It is supposed to be able to deliver 1Gb/s speeds much more efficiently and less costly than the DOCSIS 3.0 modems can do it. If you really want to look into it you need to hire a consultant that is knowledgeable in such things.