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Re: Broadband v. baseband ... again?

  • From: Christopher B. Zydel
  • Date: Thu Jul 05 14:03:10 2001

If you want to get to the root of these terms, without getting caught up 
in all of the ways their meaning has been distorted, the best place to look
may be a dictionary. 

In baseband signalling, you have one signal using all of the bandwidth
available on the wire.  In broadband signalling, there are multiple signals
on the wire, multiplexed in the frequency domain.  

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 01:23:51PM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote:
> 
> > Broadband isn't a speed, it's a signaling architecture. The alternative is
> > baseband. Ethernet is baseband. Broadcast radio is broadband. Now that you
> > have the two competing terms, please see your friendly neighborhood search
> > engine (PSYFNSE).
> 
> Though, to be fair, a lot of people have coopted the term "broadband." You
> and I know that broadband is defined in the 802 series of specs as a way
> to run ethernet over an analog cable system. But... the cable companies
> would have you believe that it means "the fastest thing going" and the
> telcos would have you believe that DSL is "broadband."
> 
> Miles
> 
> 
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