Dan Belenkov
Contributing Writer
University of Houston student Ravinder Singh Narula was recently awarded the first prize in a nationwide student paper competition held by the Association for Telecommunications Professionals in Higher Education.
The ACUTA held its second annual competition in April, asking students in the telecommunications field to compete for the $1,000 grand prize by submitting a paper on, or relating to, the telecommunications field.
Narula, a UH graduate student, submitted his paper, "Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line: Implementation Issues for High Speed Remote Access," but didn't expect to win.
An asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line is a method of high-speed Internet connection relying on copper wiring.
"I just wanted to participate," Narula said. "(ADSL) is very helpful in our work here." Narula said that he came up with the idea for the paper while he was working in a computer lab in his department.
"I was working on (ADSL) at the office and the university considered it to be a good choice to use ADSL in its high-speed Internet connection," he said.
However, the problem arose when it came time to implement the process. The bandwidth makes implementation difficult since it tends to bottleneck.
However, Narula believes that this method will be what most will be using for their Internet access in the future. In his paper, he says that to ignore ADSL would be a waste.
There are currently 560 million copper loops worldwide that can be used for
connectivity. In fact, Narula's next project will be helping when UH begins testing the new equipment next month.
For more information concerning ADSL or to read Narula's paper, visit the ACUTA Web site at www.acuda.org/html/
spaper2.html.
How is Narula planning to spend his prize? "I am planning to go to India in December, and the prize will help to finance the plane ticket," he explained.