It's equivalent to an old POTS party line, just with some makeup covering its shambling corpse (read: ITU G-number) and a bit more razzle-dazzle after strapping on some lasers. We can do better!
I strongly disagree. On a party line information flows along the copper cable to every connected endpoint bidirectionally. While it's true that incoming information flows to all subscribers, never does information that flows out and you only get scrambled data even on the incoming stream. So if you're trying to make a security argument: the system is also safe on a physical level.
> We can do better!
Depends on what "better" is. I was quite critical of PON in the past but I have come around. Practically at this point I think PON is a better way to run networks in most places. At one point you hit a bottleneck anyways and not having to run individual fibers makes for a more resilient and cheaper system.
Yes, exactly like one of those old copper POTS party lines - remember how providers could easily supply a reliable symmetrical multi-gigabit service over those (like we can with XGS-PON) and how they theoretically could use DWDM to move hundreds of gigabits over them? No??
