According to Australian newspaper, The Sunday Morning Herald, Dr John Papandriopoulos from University of Melbourne developed a new algorithm capable of boosting DSL speed to 100 Mbps.
The algorithm Dr. Papandriopoulos developed aims to reduce the effect of cross-talk on ADSL line. "Many years ago people used to pick up the phone and make a phone call and you'd be able to hear a faint or distant telephone conversation taking place, and that's called cross-talk", he explained. " That is not an issue for voice calls these days but it becomes a problem when you're trying to wring more bandwidth out of these existing copper telephone wires [which power ADSL broadband connections]. This cross-talk in current day DSL networks effectively produces noise onto other lines, and this noise reduces the speed of your connection. "
The research was reviewed by Stanford University engineering professor John Cioffi who developed the computer chips inside the first DSL modems. Professor Cioffi, known to some as "father of DSL", was so impressed he offered the 29-year-old researcher a job at his Silicon Valley start-up company, ASSIA, which is developing ways to optimise the performance of DSL networks.
Melbourne Ventures, the University of Melbourne's commercialisation company, is now marketing the technology around to vendors of DSL equipment and modems. The vendors would then sell the supporting equipment to internet service providers worldwide for placement in their exchanges.
"We don't yet have a feeling for the extent to which it could be adopted ... [but] it (the new algorithm) has the potential to be adopted worldwide in any country that has a copper network", said Richard Day, commercialization associate at Melbourne Ventures.
Dr Papandriopoulos has already applied for two patents relating to his discovery and will be leaving for USA in about 2 weeks.
