On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Jamie Ostrowski wrote:

> Is it possible to modulate each of the hosts's transmissions on the
> subnet so that each host is transmitting at a different frequency on
> the same line? If you could do that, all the hosts could talk at the
> same time to the router without signals bumping into one another if
> they are all talking at a different frequency. Wouldn't this
> significantly increase the amount of speed that a host could operate
> on if we didn't have to worry about contention?

There's no free lunch; what you suggest (if I understand correctly) is
trading time slices of a broadband transmission for frequency slices of a
time-continuous transmission.  I think the horses mouth here would 
be Shannon and those old chestnuts.  

Thing is, each host would have limited bandwidth.  You'd have to make sure
that in doing so, each host had all the bandwidth that it previously had
before, which means designing a new transmission system with higher
bandwidth than you had previously.  There's no difference between a
transmission system that goes faster and one that goes wider -- think of
it as an area problem.  Pulling on one side shortens the other.

Anyway, now you're getting back into analog electronics -- impedances,
freq response, etc...  Fun stuff, but not really what you were hoping to
do, I think.

HTH,
Phil M

-- 
"To misattribute a quote is unforgivable." --Anonymous