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Verizon - No DSL Over Hybrid Copper/Fiber Lines?
bziman asks: "Speaking of fiber, I've been waiting for DSL from Verizon here in Northern Virginia for more than a year now. Their excuse is that even though I'm well within the normal range limitations (I'm only 9,000 ft from the Central Office), I'm not eligble for DSL because half of the line between the CO and my house is fiber optic instead of copper, and they haven't figured out how to run DSL over fiber optic yet. I can
get no meaningful answers from Verizon, so I turn to the combined wit and wisdom of Slashdot." Note that it's the hybrid nature of the lines that's the problem, as Verizon already provides DSL for it's all-copper customers. I would think, that customers with all-fiber connections could just be wired directly into the Internet...or is this assumption a fallacy?
I have DSL through the CAIS-Covad-Verizon combination. Initially, they tried to put regular DSL through, but ran into the fiber problem. So, they just dropped me down to 144K ADSL and it's been working pretty well ever since.
However, Verizon is one of the worst when it comes to their own DSL -- they're really clueless.
Unfortunately, all of the independent DSL providers like Covad seem to be going out of business, so I may be looking for another provider soon. I can't see going with Verizon, though.
What you should really do is to check out www.dslreports.com -- Verizon is rated one of the worst out there.
Holy shit. Post number one modded up to +5 Insightful? Has hell finally frozen over?
The main problem is that Verizon needs to place the DSLAM (Central office equipment) closer to you. Specifically they must place it where the fiber terminates and the copper begins.
Here's the catch: politics. This would need to be placed in these remote terminals, which are basically small green boxes in the local community. This means that if Verizon wants to put a DSLAM out there, they have to let Covad put one out there also, and Northpoint (if Verizon didn't already kill them) and any other CLECs. Verizon doesn't even have room for all of these parties in the central office most of the time.
But there is a solution. Verizon is working on a obtaining a multiprotocol remote DSLAM. This would allow them to put one DSLAM in the neighborhood and lease cards to different CLECs. This multiprotocol DSLAM would support DMT, CAP, DMT2, and probably 2B1Q (for SDSL). This would allow Verizon to customize the card for the CLECs network and hardware.
The big upside? You will be able to get stupid speeds if you want them. Someday even VDSL (52 Mb).
YMMV
Yeah, but the DSLMAX is a DSLAM, so the DSL portion is only between the DSLMAX and the End User. The traffic backhauled across the T3/fiber/POS/atm/ether interface is no longer DSL. Just as your router bridges DSL to Ethernet.
Not even business DSL can get you much more than a few static IP addresses. I'm in the same situation (in Fairfax, VA, with copper and fiber between my house and the CO) and all they can offer me is IDSL (ISDN with the control channel also used for data -- blah).
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
That may be true, but A) it wouldn't be DSL, and B) it wouldn't run on your telephone line.
DSL, by nature of the technology, ONLY runs on a copper pair. Not fiber. If you have a clean copper pair from your house to the phone company's central office (CO), and you're within the distance requirement (generally around 15,000 feet), you should be able to get DSL. The DSL signal will be split off, and connected to a DSLAM, while the analog signal goes to the regular phone system.
If you only have a copper pair from your house to a junction box somewhere, and then fiber from that point to the CO, the only way to make DSL work on your line is to A) run a new copper pair all the way from the CO to your house (which would probably put you out of range), or B) install a piece of equipment in that junction box such as a miniram or remote DSLAM, split the DSL signal off there, and then use fiber to connect the miniram or remote DSLAM to equipment in the CO. Both of these cost money, and the phone company doesn't like spending money they don't have to spend. If you can get them to do B, though, your connection should be awesome, because your DSL loop length will only be a couple thousand feet to the junction box.
The whole point of DSL is to provide a cheap connection on existing wiring. The existing wiring was not designed for it. If you think about it, it's pretty amazing that it works at all. If you don't qualify, don't bitch at the phone companies too much, and please, PLEASE don't bitch at the ISPs (who have no control over your phone lines).
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I live in an area that has these hybrid lines, and I cannot get DSL either. DSL takes advantage of the "wated" bandwidth in copper lines; you only really use a small portion of the bandwidth for voice communications. But with fiber optic lines, there is no such waste. The phone company allocates a small portion of the bandwidth of each fiber to each phone line, enough to do voice transmission (at around 8 kilobytes/second). So no, you cannot "wire directly to the internet" through the fiber, because you and several hundred of your neighbors are already sharing that same fiber for your voice phone calls; there's no spare bandwidth.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
After dealing with Ameritech for several months just to get one DSL line installed I can honestly say anything is better than that. The local cable company is doing lightning-quick installs. I called to order service on a Friday afternoon and had my parents up and running on a cable modem on Tuesday morning. With DSL I can expect at least a month or two wait on a service install just for the local loop.
Ah well, I guess I'm just bitter. I had Northpoint at 17,700 feet from my CO and it ran just peachy at 384Kbps. I was happy as a clam and it was rock solid. Then that dark day came and the connection went dead and all the troubles started. Can't get Covad.. max distance for line sharing is 15000 feet. Can't get Ameritech DSL, max distance is 12000 feet. The only CLEC that might've reused the old Northpoint pair that worked fine went under a couple weeks after Northpoint. Yes, I've been soured on DSL. To have it snatched from your grasp and then receive the runaround that "you're too far away" is quite disheartening. When I move I will make sure to move within 10,000 feet of a CO and promptly order cable modem service instead. ;-)
me, too! ;-(
Part of the solution, I'm afraid is to get some other source of broadband (problematic, I know), get a cell-phone, cancel your Plain Old Telephone Service, and then make sure the entire Verizon management knows why you cancelled your service with them. And publicise that fact as widely as you can (send copies to the state public utility commission, publicize on usenet in your area, send letters to the editor, etc.)
They won'tl listen to you until you hit them in the pocketbook.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Isn't your problem resolved by RSLAMs (Remote DSLAMs)? If so, I suspect that Verizon are just being tight fisted: tell those lazy bastards to get off their arses and spend some money!
Talking of lazy, go and do a Google search, there's tonnes of information there on this subject looking to be discovered.
As many people have stated already, DSL is a copper technology -- it uses higher frequencies on the same twisted pair as your analog home phone line to handle the data side of things. In fact, some DSL installations require putting a filter on all the phones in your house to keep you from hearing those frequencies.
Ignoring the Fiber/Copper thing, DSL has always had problems with remotes. Remotes are devices that are not co-located with the CO switch, but sit closer to customers -- they're often in large green-ish boxes, typically one per neighborhood or so. (Remotes can actually get quite large...) Anyway, a Remote takes a large number of phone lines and relies on the fact that not all of them are going to be on the phone, to concentrate down to a smaller number of lines that go to the Central Office (CO). Typically, these conversations are sampled and sent digitally to the CO.
So, stepping back, DSL works by having your twisted pair connected up to a DSLAM (AM = Access Module, I believe), which strips out those higher frequencies and forwards your audio onto the CO switch.
Any remote will have an issue with DSL, because the DSLAM is typically located at the CO. Digital remotes don't even transfer the higher-frequency signals to the CO, and analog remotes (much less common) are set up so your twisted pair isn't always connected to the CO.
Now, phone companies will occasionally run a few twisted pairs straight from the CO to the site of the remote, often for future expansion. (A T1 trunk is physically just 2 twisted pairs.) It's possible for the CO to use those pairs to handle individual lines instead of configuring them as trunks.
More modern remotes use fiber to talk to the CO -- fiber carries many more conversations and doesn't have to be regenerated as often. So, if there's only fiber going to the CO, then it isn't possible to use DSLAMs at the CO.
Now, recently, it's become possible to install DSLAMs at the remote, extending the range of DSL. Not too common yet, but will be the way that many phone companies do it.
For fiber-to-the-curb scenarios (this is what I have), my local phone company (Sprint) is offering me what they call DSL, but which is actually ethernet straight from the ONU. (Optical Network Unit -- it's a smaller box that sits on our curb and translates from fiber to copper. We only have copper for the last 500 ft or so.) The ONU has a a router card in it that forwards my IP traffic into the rest of their network via fiber.
So, in short...
1. It is possible to get DSL if you're on a remote. Either use a pair straight to the CO, or use a DSLAM at the Remote.
2. With fiber, it's harder, but IP can be carried over fiber if the phone company wants to make the investment.
I actually live in DC and I was told by Verizon that they couldn't give DSL service in my area. I went to DSL.net and they were able to set me up via Covad. It is more expensive, but in the end I do have DSL service.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
This complicates competition. DSL CLECs can rent space from the incumbent in the CO to put in their own DLSAMs, but space in the street furniture is too tight to house several competitors' equipment. One answer is to open the data networks in the ATM network that carries the data back to the ISPs' routers, but that was not in the Telecom Act of 1996, which was written before the commercialization of the Internet.
VDSL will have to be deployed this way, since it can only reach 4000 feet. So either DSL competition goes away at that point, or we need a new Telecom Act.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Really? You might want to check with Alcatel or Lucent or AFC or NEC or Nortel about that.
(Maybe they don't go into curb boxes, but they do go into the neighborhood DLC remote terminal....)
The telcos are aware that the technology in question exists; they just might not want to spend the money installing it.
Yes, but would you be happy to have {Verizon,Belgacom,...} have access, as they deem necessary, to your basement?
Correct.
It tends to be called names like "remote subscriber terminal" (and possibly other things with "remote" and "subscriber" in them). Here's a tutorial on Digital Loop Carrier systems, that being the name of the technology. In effect, a digital loop (T1, or more, possibly fibre) is run to the "sub-station" (remote terminal), and subscriber phone lines are run to the "sub-station" as well. The "sub-station" performs some of the functions that would be performed at the central office for subscribers whose phone line goes directly to the CO, e.g. analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion.
This multiplexes N phone circuits over the digital loop, so you only have to run that one loop to the neighborhood, not one loop per subscriber. (This is called "pair gain" because you can serve more subscribers with one or two pairs to the neighborhood.)
Unfortunately, this means that everything above about 4 KhZ or so on the subscriber's phone line gets lost - the remote terminal filters it out and spits out the standard 8000-samples-per-second digitized signal. As ADSL uses stuff well above 4 KhZ, you can't do ADSL with this.
However, one might then ask "well, as the stuff going back to the central office is digital anyway, why not convert the ADSL signal to a bit stream at the remote terminal and send that back to the central office?"
That's what SBC's Project Pronto, and probably some other projects of other phone companies, is all about; here's a discussion of "Digital Loop Carrier meets ADSL". The link to the neighborhood is fibre, not copper, and it runs, among other things, ATM back to the central office; ADSL carries ATM cells, and those cells get shipped back to the CO, and, ultimately, to your ISP.
If the original poster can't get ADSL "because they have fibre running to their neighborhood", it's probably because Verizon don't have one of those shiny new ADSL-capable remote terminals in their neighborhood.
OC-12...? Uhhh... NO.
...or atleast how it was explained to me by a USWest technician I knew, and from what I gleaned as a service tech for a major ISP. Copper has a higher frequency range because it is analog. This range allows you to make a "modem" that talks simultaniously on multiple frequencies across a single line so as to increase the throughput.
When optical lines were installed (developed and initially roled out before high-speed modems were commonly available--faster than 28.8), the design restricted the frequency range it carried to that of the audible spectrum which humans can hear (since why whould you want to send data for stuff people couldn't hear?). Actually it's a bit tighter than that, and initially some people could spot who had fiber-optics to their home by the sound of the connection. This is also why some areas had/have real problems with 56k modems at full speed, and exactly why you can't run a DSL modem at all over one of these lines. And why the phone companies put a dead stop to "over-the-counter" modems faster than 56k.
In order for a telco to get DSL out to fiber-optic customers, the telco must upgrade their systems to carry full-spectrum on their fiber-optics. This is no simple issue. The initial benifit for fiber was that you could potentially replace a copper bundle with a single thread of fiber. And when it would be less prone to physical damage and decay, and it would be way easier to troublshoot, and cheaper to install.
The fact is, when you're phonecall hits that fiber line, over 60% of the sound data gets thrown in the trash (that was the number given to me, I don't know how accurate it is)... in a lot of ways, it's like taking analog music and recording it down to an MP3... sure it "sounds" the same, but technically, most of the sound is gone.
Now imagine if that was data you sent instead of voice... This is why you will not get DSL installed if there is even one inch of fiber-optic between you and the telco (unless the telco has upgraded all of their switches to handle full-spectrum on their fiber).
...oh yeah, and I didn't even get into the equipment that sits between a piece of copper and a piece of fiber, which digitizes the audio for streaming over fiber. Just how fast of a computer do you need to handle ripping a CD to even a 64kbps MP3 a 1X speed? Now, how many phone lines simultainiously on a optical feed to a standard hub? You do the math, and then think about how realistic you think it is that a telco is just going to drop a super-computer into that manhole just so that you can have DSL service?
In hybrid fiber/copper systems the central office transmits on fiber to a field box located in the local neighborhood. Equipment in that field box pulls data off of the fiber and puts in onto copper for local distribution. All the DSL concentrators on the market are designed for installation in a central office. Because the environmental and service needs of field equipment are different, so this stuff can't be deployed in the field boxes. Your infrastructure is great - in fact, its the right way to do this stuff. But most of the rest of the world is wired another way (copper all the way to the CO) so nobody is making hardware to service your setup right now. Considering the current downturn in the fortunes of DSL providers, the new equipment for hybrid setups could be a long time coming. Or maybe it'll be out next week ;).
this is not a sig
Don't know about Verizon (I'm with Sympatico HSE), but I suspect your "special software" is a PPPoE client (Point-To-Point Protocol over Ethernet).
m . Lightweigth, straightforward, stable and featurefull PPPoE for Win32 : need I say more ???
A year ago, free PPPoE where quite bleeding edge. I was pretty much stuck with the crappy Windoze client my ISP provide. Now, a PPPoE client is integrated standard in OpenBSD and Debian (my choices of free OS). If it is not in your, check out Roaring Penguin (www.roaringpenguin.com/pppoe). I used it with RedHat 6.2 for Sparc and must say it's a fantastic and easy to use piece of software.
As of the clueless telco tech not being able to make it work with NT Server 4.0, point him to RASPPPoE at http://www.accis.de/specials/raspppoe/raspppoe.ht
:wq
How do you think that cable companies do it? We can mux up to 850mhz of radio frequency (that's was television is), through fiber, and dump it out the other side with _minimal_ loss (like 1dBmV).
I am not a telco guy, but why doesn't it work? Crappy field equipment?
Joseph W. Breu
I have Verizon DSL with PPPoe (PPP over Ethernet) and it sounds like you do to. Just purchase a DSL router that says it works with PPPoe (Linksys, for instance). Then just plug all your computers into the router, and put in your PPPoe username and password.
Trust me, you'll be much happier with a router than the "WinPoET".
BTW, I get 400-500kbps down and 40kbps up with the $40/month self-install-on-your-own-phone-line Verizon DSL. It did take four months for me to get it, evidently Verizon was slow in deploying DSLAMs. I could have gotten $100/month Covad service faster if I really wanted it.
I worked for an ISP a few years ago where we were testing DSL equipment (back in 1997) and we were doing it over fiber - this cut back on maximum bandwidth a bit, though. This was also in the Chicago area, which was one of the hottest ISP markets in the US at the time. Unfortunately, DSL in the hands of phone companies is almost as bad as Cable Modems in the hands of cable companies, but you end up having to deal with a lot of people who just don't really know what they are doing. Additionally, it costs them a lot to set all this up as well as paying qualified people to do it. My advice for DSL is to avoid it like you would ISDN - too many problems with the technology have made it's rollout less than spectacular. I would recommend cable. . .
I've had two personal experiences with Cable companies hooking up cable modems for me, once in Northern New Jersey area, and once in Phoenix, AZ. The quality of service in Phoenix seems to be 100x better than what I've seen in NJ - getting my folks cable modem setup in NJ has been an absolute nightmare.
It's all about the people behind the local service.
From what I hear, Canada has the US whipped in many places w/ DSL connectivity. At least here, the excuses you hear are that the telcos only want to put DSLAMs in the COs. :-(
I guess it depends on who your telco is too -- some may be that much cooler than others. The way the US system (doesn't) work, I'm not really surprised...
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
This is the so-called splitter.
Untrue. Line characteristics are also affected by weather, temperature, and potentially by changes in service to other people in your area.
Untrue, at least to the extent that this processing burden is unique to G.lite. "Regular" ADSL also has a DSP that performs the same function. (Hey, I work for a DSP company that sells a ADSL chipset that's used in both....) Now, it's come to my attention that the term "G.lite" is no longer widely used. It's officially known as ITU G.992.2, and most places don't bother to tell you what particular flavor ADSL you're running -- they'll just tell you a bandwidth number. Wheee.... The main point is that it's splitterless at the consumer's end of the line.
The main reason I say G.lite has lower computational requirements (at least, in steady state), is that the data rate is lower. Since at least some portion of the processing cost is proportional to the data rate, this makes sense. Much of the front end work that processes the analog data of the wire stays pretty much the same, though, as I understand it. Those pieces work at symbol rate, which I believe is fixed. The way bandwidth is varied is by varying the number of bits per symbol.
Now as for changing line characteristics: The line characteristics of a full-rate ADSL line and of a G.lite line both drift over time. A DSL modem needs to track these changes and incrementally update its mathematical model of the line. If too large of a change occurs, the DSL modem needs to re-train (just like a voiceband modem does) to get back on track. This is true for both ADSL and G.lite. A G.lite modem is simply much more likely to need to retrain due to wild changes in loading. Because retraining is an "exceptional" event though, and because the whole modem focuses on retraining rather than transmitting data during the training process, this cost is not added on top of your normal communication processing requirements.
In practice, I understand G.lite and full rate DSL are very similar in processing burden, and that the main difference is in how they're tuned. Full rate DSL is tuned for high speed transmission, at the expense of making retraining more expensive (since it doesn't expect to retrain often, as you mention). G.lite runs somewhat slower, but offers fast retrain to handle interruptions on the line, and also to offer lower-power modes that basically "hang up" the modem. The drawback is that you don't get as much bandwidth to play with.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
My understanding is that DSL is a signalling protocol for copper lines, so they're correct that a hybrid fiber/copper feed won't work unless the copper-to-fiber bridge contains the DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer) front end to convert the analog DSL signals into digital bits to go over the fiber.
Right now, DSLAMs like to live on racks in a CO, not one of those grey boxes by the side of the road where the copper-to-fiber conversion is likely happening. To run DSL, you need copper from you to the DSLAM. Hence the problem.
Presumably, whatever they use to bridge the copper over to fiber could be adapted for tranceiving high-bandwidth DSL signals as well, but it sounds like right now that's not in the cards.
That's my 0x02 cents...
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
My understanding is that G.lite is a less computationally intensive version of DSL, and so it can be implemented on lower cost equipment. It also makes some compromises so that you can have a "splitterless" setup (you don't have a voiceband/DSL-band filter where the phoneline enters the house). The result is a lower-bandwidth DSL which is suitable for consumer applications.
G.lite still uses the same frequency bands as normal DSL, though, from what I recall. It may be slightly narrower, but it's still well outside the 300 Hz to 3300 Hz range that voiceband uses, because it's supposed to coexist with the household voiceband service on the same line. It's also supposed to coexist with voiceband modems and FAX machines. (Some of the performance tradeoffs in G.lite apparently have to do with the harmonics coming off of the things it might have to coexist with, including changes in loading due to people picking up handsets, incoming ring signals, and so on... In a non-G.lite setting, the splitter handles most of this. G.lite is supposed to make this easier on J. Random Consumer, again at the cost of some performance.)
Given all that, I'd be surprised if G.lite was any friendlier to fiber than regular DSL.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Actually, if you live in British Columbia, the telco is *extremely* interested in delivering everything _plus_ voice.
They already deliver video to some apartments. They've run fiber to all new homes. And they're biding their time... watching while the "competition" falls apart.
It's fairly amusing, actually. For a while, it looked like the telco was going to get caught with its pants down: the cableco's were getting into broadband and wireless, and the telco seemed to be doing nothing.
Then all of a sudden everyone and his dog can get DSL for dirt cheap, the cell phone competitors are going bankrupt, the long-distance alternative providers are going bankrupt, and the telco is supplying video to a few people. Goodness, what an about-face!
Anyway, all that to say that there's at least one telco that does a heckuva lot more than voice.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Once again, OLD NEWS. There are plenty of DSL sites out there with this information. DSL was designed for COPPER service. There are technologies that allow the DSL to be Mux'ed out at the end of the fiber run, but are relatively expensive to put in place due to the fact it only helps 1 person at a time, so a new bridge unit has to be put in for each user. I just don't see most providers doing this. And before you go spouting off about "you demand this that or the other", look at it from their standpoint... for them to install/maintain this service /JUST FOR YOU/ in an already low profit margin is just dumb business sense.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
We had the same problem (Fairfax, VA). What was our solution? We yelled and yelled and yelled. We bitched and moaned. We called them and complained over and over.
We got DSL very soon thereafter. Somehow the technical issues vanished, although they claimed a top speed of 780-something because of them.
Now, I titled this post YMMV, and I mean it. I don't want people to reply "But that's not possible!!!!!" over and over. It may very well not be possible; my suspicion is they (Verison) were lying when they said it wasn't possible (meaning, the lines in our area were just fine, etc). It wouldn't be the first time I'd caught them in a lie. What my point IS, is don't just wait. Make a stand, or just get a cable modem and tell them to fuck off.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Dsl over fiber works because it was installed after dsl became popular and you have a what you called a "mini-slam". The problem that other people have is that when thay installed fiber in other places they installed copper to fiber bridges that limit each copper line to some low bit rate I have heard 46kbits before but sense the sense he was only getting 26 some thing with a dial up that means that is all the bandwith there is with the fiber to copper bridge.
One day people will learn the folly of Winbloze, Linux Rules!
It does work, with the right equipment.
I know people who make regular use of fiber optic lines to relay analog S-band signals (2.3 GHz) from one building to another. This lets them test S-band transponders without hauling all of their test equipment to the building the transponder is located in.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
1) The fiber is configured for OC-x services as TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) which basically means each copper phone circuits (DS-0) has a specific timeslot in the muxed OC-x circuit back to the phone switch. This works fine for alarm circuits, T1, phone lines, ISDN ... Anything that fits into the DS-0 building block of the phone company. The Internet is packet based and typically ATM (cell switched) is used for feeding information to DSLAMs (DSL Access Multiplexors). The fiber feeding your circuit would have to be reconfigured to handle the packetized data.
2). The copper from your home is terminated on the litespan. The DSL needs to originate from the litespan. The maker of the litespan (Alcatel, Inc.) needs to make a linecard which supports DSL.
I think all this technology exists, or is in late stages of development. I have been told by my Verizon reps (I resell Verizon DSL) that they are looking to support DSL over fiber sometime later this year. They will start with IDSL which is 128k/128k and fits nicely in the DS-0/OC-3 TDM network that is already in place.
Basically, it is coming, you'll just have to wait. Right now Verizon can't keep up with orders on areas they can easily serve (high density copper served locations direct from CO). Once that market saturates, They will be looking at the fiber fed markets.
"Now, I hope and pray that I will, but, today I am still just a bill"
Now I hope and pray that I will But today I am still, just a bill
There was an article in the local paper about this. Qwest is apparently looking to push DSL into areas currently unreachable for whatever the reason -- distance, circuit quality or fiber muxes. They were planning on upgrading the little green boxes into larger green boxes with climate controls (I'd think they could fix the heat problem with lots of fans, but the humidty'd be a killer) and DSLAMs. I'd imagine the box/DSLAM vs. climate problem is easier to solve than the "DSL data backhaul problem", unless they're planning on upgrading the existing fiber muxes to something more data friendly.
One of the rich guys where I work lives on a cul-de-sac, way out of reach of DSL but both he and his neighbors can get it thanks to the whining of politically connected neighbors. He says that one day US West showed up and dropped what looked like 1/3 of a shipping container with an A/C where the dinky phone box had been. I think this represents basically the type of "upgrade" Qwest is talking about, a micro-CO, that can support interesting data bits on the inside.
There's probably a market for DSLAM vendors to come up with DSLAMs that need little more than power and good venting and can withstand wide environmental conditions, like heat and humidity, so that the Qwests of the world don't have to build buildings with A/C everywhere. Since the upgrade to "digital cable" in my neighborhood, I see a fair number of what look like school lockers bolted onto the phone poles. I think they must be breakout points for the cable system, they have power running into them and what looks like CATV coax running out. If they can do it, DSL can too..
On the other hand, it might just have a Network Solutions placeholder there. Don't waste your time.
Yes, the technical word for it is indeed screwed. I'm in the same boat here in No. VA. The explanation they gave me was that copper was just fine, it was the fiber that ruined it for DSL! "Pair Gains" was the term they used. As I (barely) understand it, they are using the full bandwidth of the fiber, allocating just enough to each line (virtual copper pair?) to carry voice, no spare room for the (higher frequency?) for DSL. Seemed accurate enough to me, best I could get dial-up was 26.4 (eliminating the house wiring, even). They are NOT going to remedy this, they are not interested. Unless you want to spring for satellite or a leased line, get a cable modem.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
Yeah, that sarcastic comment should contain SDSL, not ADSL, and then not be so sarcastic. Most DSL companies will sell you guaranteed bandwith over SDSL, but if you want DSL to be better then cable expect to pay more. Alot more.
BTW, my mother has an SBC DSL modem, and I regularly can get 6 megabits worth of concurrent traffic, so they must be using something much bigger then a T1.
Well, the ones that only charged $30-50/month are dropping like flies, but the ones that charge $100-200/month are doing just fine.
You get what you pay for.
Maybe someone should make a web site about the situation so we can all keep up-to-date.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
After reading your question, I went out on the net and found this interesting document. It really runs down on what DSL technology is about (history, terms, and lots of good info)...
For the paranoid, the url is: http://www.telebyteusa.com/dslprimer/dslfull.htm
:)
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Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
i have sw bell dsl (which drops almost everyday randomly), but i managed to connect my linux box (and a bunch of other computers in the apartment to their ppoe system using a linksysn "etherfast" cable/dsl router. It works okay, although, I'd recomend turning of DChp if you want to deal the goddamn inflexible firewall the thing's got.
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
You've gotten a half baked answer from them, and everyone one this thread:
The real answer is this:
Most likely what is going on, is your being serviced by a "sub-station". Thats not the real name, but I don't know the real one.
Basicly what they do, is put a mini-switch out in the feild in a envormentaly controled valt, either below ground, or above. So you are most likely being serviced by a "sub-station" (not the real name). Its not a fiber/hybrid.
What SBC is doing (Southwestern Bell, Pacbell, Ameritech, etc) is putting NEW "sub-stations" out in the field where people are to far from the CO, or where they are already serviced by a"sub-station" . These are equipment cabinets, in the field that take the copper, and put it into a DSLAM to provide DSL services, and into a switch interface, to provide phone service, and then backhaul it all with fiber.
SBC is spending something like 5 Billion on this project, and so far nothing has come of it, other then I have seen alot of these above ground cabinets pop up.
Anyway, I was quite annoyed that no one gave a straight answer (that was moderated up, I didn't read EVERY message) although I'm probably to late to get moderated up.
-Tripp
My friend in NY had the same problem.. When he tried to get DSL through telocity, his phone was disconnected and he didn't have anything for weeks. When he decided to go with Verizon, they switched him from fiber to copper and hooked him up with relatively little problems. I'd say that Verizon is just trying to make it tough for the competion.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I'm at about 18500 feet, which means, to verizon, I am dead. They won't even let anyone else (speakeasy, toadnet, etc.) do even IDSL to me, though there's no technical limitation preventing it.
But of course, I can pony up the extra money and get BUSINESS DSL service, no problem. What gives? Is this just a way to screw the little guy and make even MORE money?
You can also check the box to keep the connection alive. Thats what i do.
Annoying, yeah the first day but no one notices now. PPOE works under every windows version i have tried (NT SP6a, Win2k, WinME and Win98). Works on my linue box because of the Linksys :)
I can't believe i'm wasting my time responding to this, but i'm bored, so...
1) People do not buy cisco brand hardware just for the hardware. I buy cisco hardware because if there's a bug with it, i can call cisco and they'll build a new copy of the IOS for me. I buy cisco because if it malfunctions, they'll overnight me a replaecment. I buy cisco so i can use their website (which by the way is friggen useful, compared to say, MSKnowledgeBase). Try compare that with your $75 dvd drive from compusa.
2) The chip on your videocard is much different from the chip on your local cisco (well since cisco has shifted from that 68000 chip to a decent asic). With a much smaller market for say, 7200 series routers versus the market for video cards, a cisco mainboard/processor costing significantly more than your video card isn't an insane idea. Not only fab costs, but the R&D costs aren't spread across 10million units like they can be for video cards, or even x86 cpus.
3) You know how much a local point to point T1 costs? roughly $100-$200/mo dependent on cost. Not thousands of dollars like you think it is.
And I will contend that a dsl line is more like a ladc line than a point-to-point t1, so the cost is about half that. Hell telcos are happy they can make $30/line or whatever for a bundled loop, because that's $30 extra bucks, without using another pair. You can't do that with a ptpT1 or ladc.
4) I don't see how you can call it overcharging when 90% of these companies don't make profits. You need to recoup R&D expenses, as well as the actual production expenses. In my world, chipset designs don't grow on trees. See the above argument on production volume on why your pc hardware is cheaper.
5) Repeaters blow. There's really no difference between putting a repeater in somewhere, and putting a miniDSLAM in a lobsterpot on a telephone pole, both suck to do, require additional provisioning and manpower.
There is a possible workaround for you. Order ISDN. Most of these copper-fibre hybrids cannot provide ISDN either. Your telco will then get you copper all the way to the CO. Then either order a migration form ISDN to PSTN and ADSL or order a ADSL subscription on top of your ISDN subscription if that is available in your area. Over here it is, but here is somewhere else on the globe.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
i had a friend who worked at verizon during the merger and before the name change. there were rumors about how the company had already bought newnamesucks.com, and .net, and a bunch of other ones like it, even before the name had been announced.
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
Are you advertising for these guys or something? Jeez.
See you, space cowboy...
Ever try to make radio signals work over fiber? It doesn't work! B.S. Hyper-Light-Speed can be transmitted over fiber. I learned that as a junior EE back in '81.
But they CAN say "We don't feel like buying the additional equipment at this time." And there's not a damn thing you can do about it, except maybe getting enough people in the area to say "yes, we want DSL" to warrant the equipment costs.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Thanks for such an informative post!
I'm suffering from the same problem. This is a situation known as "pair-gain" which basically means that a bunch of copper telephone lines collapse into a neighbourhood box and then ride fiber (or copper) back to the central office. Basically, this means that all the phone lines hit an ADC (analog to digital converter) and then get time-divisioned multiplexed into a digital circuit (t1, ds-3, etc.). Since DSL relies on point-to-point signalling over an unswitched copper line, it won't work in situations where there is pair gain. There are a couple of solutions to this issue. You can get a t1, which nothing but 24-channel circuit that works fine over TDM muxes, you can get an ISDN line which is 2 B channels and a D channel which also works fine over TDM muxes, or you could get something called IDSL. It is offered by Covad as "telespeed 144" and basically consists of a nailed up ISDN line that transits the TDM muxes and digital circuits back to the CO where it terminates on a DSLAM. For what it's worth, it's shitty service that's limited to 144kbps half-duplex but it is definitely better than dial.
Other than these three solutions, the only other thing that you can hope for is that someone puts a DSLAM in that neighbourhood box where your copper terminates. There was some movement in this direction in the industry not too long ago, but that was before everything melted down. At this point, there's no telling how much longer Covad is going to exist. Either your ILEC will provide the service or you're out of luck. Let's all have 3 cheers for monopolies, eh?
I live in MD and got nothing but run around from Bell Atlantic (Now Verizon) about DSL. They claimed not to be able to get me hooked up yet another provider running off Covad did no problem.
Try these things:
1. www.dslreports.com
this is a great website to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about dsl.
2. Check with various other providers in the area. Mine is capu.net. They have been awesome for me, great support with people who really know networking. Also, they allow me to run anything I like on my end as long as it isn't a business web site or other high traffic site.
3. Keep calling Verizon and asking about DSL. Make them tired of hearing from you. It is their fault we don't have more access to high speed connections to the home anyway since they are/were one of the baby bells that screwed up the competition in the market place.
Good luck!
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
take the phone companys side, and even the trolls have lower limits.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
PPPoE doesn't run over dialup, or even standard serial, it runs _o_ver _E_thernet. So, the stack looks something like: TCP/UDP > IP > PPPoE > Ethernet > Cable stuff. Nothing to do with a modem.
HEre is anotehr url that will help: http://www.iec.org/tutorials/adsl_dlc/
What it comes downto is older equipment cant handle dsl but newer stuff may be able to. Odds are they just say no to avoid any potential hassles since it is easier that way right now.
this space for rent
I'm out West in Manassas and the GTE group here is a bunch of morons. They actually SIGNED me up for DSL 4 times before telling me each time that they couldn't give it to me! One installer actually tried to bitch at me for continuing to sign up - not my fault their WEB site listed it as AVAILABLE! At one point I was told that DSL pamphlets were being handed out at the local telco store but when I went there they were gone. I asked them where they were - seems they got such conflicting infomation from the installers and from their own company about availability that they threw them away rather than being caught in the middle with the customers!
:-) Thank you DSLReports.com for fixing that little problem for them....
:-) Want to bet there's a regulation preventing me from doing it?
I finally got IDSL from COVAD and am hearing that SOME people are getting DSL from GTE now (at last - it's been three years). My distance from the CO pretty much sticks me to IDSL though which sux but is better than a modem.
I'd take cable but those morons are worse than GTE (name change is a joke, it's the same clowns). After they hosed my bill for the fourth time in two years (had to mail them copies of the checks THEY cashed!) I dumped them. Did I mention they promised me cable modem (and a dialtone for my phone) for over 2.5 YEARS before I gave up? For over a year they told me they were "rewiring their cable plant" - how long does THAT take?! Now that they've finally rolled out their system they STILL don't service my heavily populated area! I just love calling the cable company about a cable modem and having them ask me if I've got "digital cable" since that apparently means a higher chance of getting the modem. Why do I like it? Because I can tell them I've had a sat DISH for about 2 years and dumped their sorry asses and haven't a clue what sort of cable I'd have. When and IF they can pull their heads out to provide a quality service (*cough*) I'll consider giving them my money again.
Who do you have to blow around here to get decent access?! Talk about a need to be filled. Vanna, can we buy them a clue? I actually told one rep that I had money - cash in hand and that whoever could provide me service would get it and lot's of it. I told them it was a race (they didn't care) - turns out that BOTH GTE and the cable company lost. Not that this prevented the phone company from jerking my chain getting my IDSL since it's "their" wires. They actually told someone I know that they didn't provide it and since it was their wires they couldn't get it from anyone else. A shame the FCC didn't hear that
In the meantime I squeal for IDSL from COVAD and enjoy a nice static IP address range with a company that doesn't care one bit what I do with my bandwidth. I'll be tempted to keep that if I can ever get cable access since those dweebs won't want me to run a server - we'll see. Another temptaions, since T1 costs have apparently dropped, would be to buy into a T1 and provide wireless access to my neighbors for a fee. Wouldn't THAT just piss them off
P.S. Using a SAT dish for access is NOT an option. Ever play a game with 500ms lag?! Yick!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Go read the rest of the discussion. You'll find lots of info there.
They might have put in a "(DSL?) hotel." That moves some of the gear from the CO to the other size of the fiber, but it requires money, space, money, available bandwidth on the fiber, money, equipment, and did I mention money?
Ironically, the odds of getting this are inversely proportional to how far the fiber runs. If fiber runs to your block (or building!), there's not enough potential customers to justify the expense. But if there's hundreds of potential customers, the phone company can be fairly confident that it can find customers to justify the investment.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
how is a copper connection not directly connected to the internet?
I do not know what "wired directly into the Internet" means and I don't think Cliff does either.
...can be found here. (That's http://www.paradyne.com/sourcebook_offer/ for the goatse weary.) It should be a little ways into exactly how DSL works, and why you'd be ineligible for it.
I know here in Texas, SWBell is rolling out "Project Pronto" - which is essentially moving the DSLAM farther out to the customers - but as I understand it, it's a different setup than just moving the DSLAM (as a previous poster pointed out, compacted enviromentally hardened DSLAM's would be a bit pricey).
Yes the SBC owned Baby Bells have been making a big deal about "Project Pronto". The system will put DSLAMs out in neighborhood cabinets and shorten the copper between the customer and the DSLAM. This will open up DSL to a much larger subscriber based (including me, my copper pair is about 20,000 feet long).
As with most Telco ideas this one is mostly non-competitive in nature. The neighborhood cabinets don't have enough space for competing DSL providers to install equipment ( a tech said the cabinet had 25 units (standard 19" rack?) of space.. and a DSLAM uses 21 of those.) So the competing DSL providers won't be able to access those customers until a tiny 1 unit DSLAM ships, and even then there is no guarentee the neighborhood cabinet qualifies as a CO under open access provisions. Of course.. most of the alternative providers are already dead.
OK, I don't pretend to know all of the technicalities behind how my DSL works. But what I do know is that I have fiber until about 100 feet away from my front door. From there it's copper to the house. I know this because a) I saw them put it in and b) I've had two or three sepereate people from the local phone company tell me such. So, while I guess I can't be 100% positive, I'm pretty sure. I believe that I've heard them describe the fiber/copper box as a "mini-slam" but could be wrong, and yes, there is probably one of these little (6 sq ft?) boxes for every ten houses or so...
And even with this copper/wire hybrid, I'm typing this over a dsl link with my dsl modem upstairs in the office. Just a standard dsl modem from alcatel. Nothing fancy. So what it sounds to me is that someone is to lazy/cheap to install the necessary equipment to make it work for you and your situation.
99% chance it is changing it to digital.
The most likely setup is copper wire from your house to a brown/green/black box on a street corner that has 200 or so other people's copper wire running into. In this box is a remote switch (DMS-100 I believe for Nortel shit). This digitizes the voices and throws it out on an OC-12 that goes to the main switch at the CO.
So basically as I have had it explained to me, they need a way to make DSL phone company recieve equipment to fit into this very cramped street box before the signal is digitized. This has not happened, and as such many many people will not get DSL.
The province where I use to live (NB) is going to have 3 or 4 real switches for the whole province and just have remotes everywhere. This really cuts down on actually needing CO buildings where DSL service is usually provided from.
It's amazing that DSL has gotten this far, since it works on so few lines. Indeed it will not work if there's optical fiber anywhere along the path, because DSL is merely a copper pair line driver. It was a clever invention, but the copper was installed for analog telephones, not DSL, so it won't always work.
Now a few years ago, the US telephone industry came up with a new scheme called "Serving Area Concept" (SAC), which would shorten the copper loop to 12,000 feet, using fiber to a neighborhood multiplexor (DLC). SAC sounded great. When ISDN was the best thing going, it could have meant ISDN everywhere, because DLCs do ISDN just fine. (Not that the former-NYNEX parts of VeriZontal ever do that without hard coaxing.) But then DSL came along and best became worst: The DLCs didn't do DSL.
Now there *are* DSLAMs designed to go outdoors, in manholes or huts. These "remote terminals" are temperature-hardened. US West/Qwest has installed a few (their sprawling lines are mostly beyond the 12-18,000 foot limit of ADSL, and largely on DLC). SBC's Project Pronto uses them; trouble is, they're trying to hold up Pronto as a weapon against competition. Put in Pronto and take out competitors (who are using the old copper wires). The FCC said no so they've slowed down Pronto. Also note that *recent* DLCs can be upgraded to do DSL, but many older ones can't.
VeriZontal (well, the BellTitanic side; not so sure about ex-GTE areas) simply does not do remote terminals. So if you're in a DLC-served neighborhood, or more than about 15,000 wire feet from the CO (and the wire can snake every which way...), you're not going to get it. Competitive providers sometimes do apartment buildings (a nice deal is going into Harbor Towers, Boston, for instance) but that requires a large enough complex to merit the considerable cost of getting the T1 or T3 uplinks there.
A few years ago, the Bells said they'd get fiber to the home Real Soon Now. See http://www.newnetworks.com/ for some info about how those promises were broken.
As a Verizon employee (fGTE - Idaho) I work as an equipment intaller; I can tell you the problem isn't copper/fiber lines - it's the fact we can't install them fast enough. All a DSLM (digital subscriber line module) needs is a T1 (for transport) which can be carried over either copper or fiber. My educated guess would be you are working out of a remote (telco speak for a sub-station off of the main switch). We have a GTD-5 EAX switch here with 3 RSU (remote switching unit), 8 RLU (remote line unit) and 48 MXU. And off of those, 1 RSU and 1 RLU has DSL capability. Best thing for you to do, if you really want DSL, is to go door to door and collect signatures from other DSL craving neighbors. If you can collect enough, you might be surprised - but don't expect it tomorrow - 6 months if someone has lots of pull, longer if not. tech stuff: RSU = up to 4096 lines RLU = 768 lines, MXU = 96 lines GTD5 EAX - runs on a 386sx @ 20 mhz - lots of 'em :)
what? me worry?
Pronto is an SBC project, and it's utter bullshit. By the time they finish with it, we'll all be too old to care about DSL.
The idea behind Pronto is to replace all the old SLC's with DSL-capable ones, specifically the Alcatel/DSC brand Litespan 2012. It may be different equipment in other areas.
In the meantime, bother them to provision you a T1 circuit and bill it like it was a DSL. Even the older SLC's can handle T1.
Yup, I'm looking at the Litespan 2012 docs now, and it has HDSL channel units. At the very least, I guarantee the telco can give you a T1, because even the older DLC's support DS1 channels.
Cblood has it right in a previous comment, your local telco can do it, they're just not allowed to, because then they'd have to let everyone else do it. Write a letter to your state's commerce department, one to the FTC, and one to the FCC. Explain how much easier it would be if the CLEC's were allowed to resell service from the ILEC's DLCs in this situation.
Just get together with one of your local ISPs that offer DSL and conspire to get around Verizon. Order an alarm circuit which is a relatively easy thing to do, just don't mention ANYTHING about your true intentions of running data over the line.
Pass the info your conspiring ISP, (all the needed circuit id#'s, etc.) and they, if they have been in the DSL game for more than a year or two, will be able to get a DSL provider to provide service over that circuit.
As COVAD has moved from dedicated loop installs to line-sharing, you may or may not be able to get ADSL over the circuit, just the pricer SDSL.
Were there is a will, there is a way. And for more trials and tribulations check out dslreports.com. A virtual treasure trove of info there, aswell as people in a similiar position with the ILECs.
--
Adelphia was swallowed up by Comcast, you may want to check on that timeframe again. I imagine it probably is still the same or only slightly closer, but it's worth a shot. If you already have digital cable, cable modem isn't far off.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
They must really think you guys are morons. Like you would think your phone sounds better just because they came out and replaced perfectly good runs from the street. Sounds a lot this crappy little phone company in central NY that has 1950's era equipment, I think it's Citizen's Telecom. They suck ass, my poor parents can't get a reliable dial-up connection over that junk, and sometimes the noise level is just nasty when I'm talking to them.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's not that they aren't capable connecting homes via fiber. It's capitalism at its (worst?) Keep in mind, I am connected to the net at darn near T1 speed and pay not even close to what a business would pay. That's why some DSL providers have a special "fee" for businesses. It has to do with the absurd markup they have on businesses. If the phone co charges a business 1k+ a month for a fiber t1+, how can they sell fiber access to a home? Theres no way in hell any homeowner would pay that kind of money for "internet" access. And it's not as if a fiber line is that tough to administer. When a business pays for fiber service, they are paying a premium because they are financiall capable. The major cost in fiber is the installation. Once the run is complete (and if you were running fiber to the door, it could be put into the cost of building a home *development or such*), there is almost no upkeep, if you do it right. Heaven forbid the once in a million occurs and a fiber breaks. Yeah it'll cost some money and effort, but prolly no more than a key copper peice. My point is that phone companies are keeping certain doors closed becuase of the impact it would have on their financial situation. Other nations around the world are taking the intelligent choice and building the infrastructure to allow their citizens to be able to interface with the citizens of the world. Our phone companies (like the capatalists we are) are only concerned with the "now," and its only going to hurt us at the expense of our global future. -Bob
That URL is no good... all it does is point to a Network Slowutions domain holder page...
-k
Working as a firmware designer of DSL modems, I can tell you the following:
ECONOMIC
When Baby Bells knocks off the DSL competition to the point where they can comfortably raise the DSL rates (10-30%) as ISDN rollout in the 80s has shown us before, these Bell companies usually waits to recoup their current copperwire-based infrastructure to pay off before investing in new technologies (i.e. fiber-DSL). They are pretty hard pressed to respond to shareholders at this market time.
PHYSICAL
The urge to deploy fiber-based DSLAM is not as great as the copper-based DSLAM simply because there is a huge amount of already installed copper-wire. The economic of using current copper wire is still very strong. Hence effectively diminish (but not deny) the desirable explosive growth of fiber-based DSL. Not to mention an excess vacant slots in many installed copper-based DSLAM waiting to be translated into steady revenues.
GOVERNMENTAL
Baby Bell companies will not be tempted to deploy new public-based infrastructure (i.e. Fiber-based DSL) if they are forced to share them with Competitive Local Access Carrier (CLEC) such as Covad (and whatever other CLECs are still surviving today).
POLITICS
I'm just very glad that that liberal Republican senator switched parties. Now we can flush out Rep. Tauzin of Louisiana (whose pocket seems overflowing with Bell money) from the Telecommunication committee and return the playing field back to the CLECs. We need to reinvigorate the DSL competition some more by level the playing field a bit.
SUPPORT
As many of us DSL-users will testify, the support of DSL line will only but slowly be improving (at a snail-pace) as they shore up their order/problem tracking systems. At this moment, too many DSL users who are at the fringe distance (more than 12,000', excess bridge taps, and even crosstalk interference caused by too many DSL subscribers within the same trunk) will just have to tough it out while DSL providers work out the kinks one DSL line by one.
SUMMARY
Until the five things improve above, fiber-based DSL is a bleeding-edge toy technology which has been proven. Fiber-based DSL will not be effectively deployable at the rate we'd like to see.
I used to have regular DSL before I moved. I was roughly 5k feet from the CO and the connection was good.
While I was at my old house Bellsouth came in the area and put in FITL (Fiber in the loop?). Basically this is fiber all the way to a green box in the back of your house (1 green box feeds like 3-4 houses). From the green box to the CO is all fiber. Now with this setup they where offering digital cable & "PC-Data" which is a 10BaseT connection from the green box to your computer (Throttled down to 1.5mbit). When I moved to my new house, the new development had the same green boxes & FITL (The guy who installed the POTS lines confirmed this).
I was pretty sure I would be able to get some type of high-speed Internet access, but unfortunately that was not the case. Throughout the process of trying to get DSL/PC-Data I have found out that they installed all this hi-tech/fiber equipment configured for only POTS Service (no Video/PC-DATA/ISDN/anything else...). I have personally opened up the boxes & told a friend who works for Bellsouth the #'s on each card in there & he has confirmed this. So now I'm basically screwed, nobody can give me service there. The only thing I can think of is that they are waiting for more people to move in to justify the expense for the other cards?
I've been thinking about satellite service, would like to hear from anybody who has it.
Anyways, ironically I guess, my cousin who lives 4 blocks from me is setup like the poster. Her phone line is fiber from the central office to a box in the area & then copper to her house. She had no problem getting DSL, go figure.
Yes. Or reprovision it for ISDN.
Actually, alarm lines are not designed for communications. They are "dry contact" lines which means continuity is the only thing you can be certain of. You have zero say about the loading of the line -- it could have a load-coil every three feet. Additionally, when ordering an alarm circuit, you have to specify the location of both ends. You cannot be 100% certain it will go through even one CO.
Technically, they wouldn't have to share -- check with the local Public Utility agency. Those vaults aren't CO's or Wire Centers. There is extremely limited space and power in those vaults.
The CLEC can build their own vaults if they want. In my experience, no CLEC will build a vault -- there's no economic point in doing so.
And for my 2 cents, alot of the DSL providers are folding because they didn't realize what they were getting themselves into. The only way to make money from DSL is to be the phone company. And I don't think they realized the hell they were walking into trying to get access to the coveted last mile.
Yeap. They are called "Remote Offices". And at least with BellSouth, you get only what BellSouth wants to sell you -- which is consumer ADSL. There is zero colo in a remote office.
Fiber-in-the-loop means you don't have an end-to-end copper loop. DSL, with the exception of IDSL, requires a direct electrical connection to the CPE. There are a number of products that can be placed in concentrators (i.e. DSL line cards) that move the DSL termination to the nearest junction which then trunks everything back to a "DSLAM" (calling it an ATM cell mux would be more accurate.) The problem is, no one uses this technology. I've known about them since mid-'98.
<sarcasm>But DSL is better because you don't have to share your bandwidth like you do with cable. DSL is always fast.</sarcasm>
That said, I can't even imagine what it would be like to have several thousand ADSL customers sharing a single T1. If the bandwidth is that oversold you'd be better off with a 28.8 modem.
________________________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
I tried for quite some time to get DSL from (Bellatlantic at the time) and finally did. First they said that I "didn't qualify". After pestering people about that they said it could be anything from distance to fiber in the ground. I finally got them to retest the line (physcally send out an engineer) and I was good to go (after 5 days and 4 techs at my house I finally had DSL). It would be nice if they could just hook up the fiber... but the fiber only runs to the neighborhood and/or house... not INTO the house. Figures.
Like a couple of others mentioned, you can get iDSL to work over a fiber/copper mix. It's usually used when folks had ISDN and wanted to switch. I don't think the telcos do iDSL, but I know Covad does/did. A check of the speakeasy.net DSL price chart shows them doing 144/144 iDSL for $89.99 a month (residential).
Lots of people who live in huge cookiecutter subdivisions plopped down in the middle of old dairy farms in the 1980's usually have this problem, because they've usually got a bit of fiber split into a bunch of copper. And if you live in the city, your phone is full of bridge taps and doesn't have a clean signal. And if you live in the country, you're too far away from a CO. Otherwise, you're one of the dozen people who have DSL....
The phone company expects to only deal with 8,000 samples of 8 bits each per second, and when they multiplex the signals for 24 lines into one (to get 23 more phone services through a single pair of wires), then sample everything at that rate. They don't care about DSL, they only expect to provide voice service, and engineer appropriately.
If you were willing to pay for the labor and materials and increased expense of having to run completely new lines... they would still probably turn you down, because they are only interested in delivering voice service, at the aformentioned 64kbits/second encoding.
--Mike--
I am in the BellSouth area and DSL service can be provided over all-copper lines (via a modem) or all-fiber optic lines (service is called IFITL and comes to your NIC, directly). But, if your phone line is part copper and part fiber, you cannot get DSL service.
I work for Lucent Technologies and BellSouth has had us to install DSLAM shelves in their cabinets. They also installed OC-3 in these same cabinets. They plan on using the copper from your house to the cabinet for the DSL and then crossconnect the DSLAM to the OC-3 to get you back to the CO. Bellsouth is having problems with the conversion between the DSLAM and the OC-3 though. I don't know if that is something that might happen in the future to fix your problem but you could always ask about it.
Tries hard. Fails to achieve the low standards he sets himself. Works well with a broom
hmm 64 DSL circuts on fiber? These are the same SPs that put 64 DSLs on a T3.
Someone you trust is one of us.
They said I was about 20K feet away from the CO. I live close to a high-tech area (City of Industry in Southern CA). I don't know if my area has too many hybrid copper/fiber lines for me not to get ADSL.
:)
I wonder if I really have a long distance problem or this hybrid/fiber problem. None of my friends in the same city (different locations) can get DSL either.
What do you think? I look forward to receiving replies soon.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
My modem dial-up that connects at 26400s and 28800s. I heard this is caused by fiber lines? Is this true?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
> I would think, that customers with all-fiber
> connections could just be wired directly into
> the Internet...or is this assumption a fallacy?
Yes, you could get "wired directly into the Internet", and then perhaps "hack the net", or "bypass the security system", or perhaps even control a large theme park using your UNIX SYSTEM.
xx Stuii!
starting in June Direct PC offers product called Pegusus and is in a two way satelite connection. the connection is suposed to be 150k/sec upload and 350k/sec download. Just point yoour dish in a sounthernly direction and you can get highspeed Internet access anywhere in the USA, except Alaska and Haiwii. People in the sticks are going to start getting highspeed access. I know I am exited!!!!
"Help me Obi-/.-Kenobi,your my only hope!" -$
That's the first thing I thought of when I read this story. I have fiber to the curb, but can't get DSL. Distance to the CO is 45,000 ft+, but a friend in the next neighborhood over had DSL installed a couple of months ago so I'm assuming that there's a DSLAM nearby.
By brother-in-law works for BellSouth and he recommended IFITL. I did some checking and found out that a co-worker has it.
From what I understand (which isn't much), if you have fiber to the curb, IFITL is the only solution.
I wasn't aware that it was only a BellSouth thing though. My brother-in-law did say that it was something that was going to get canned (not intended for mass market), but some BS VPs have it at home and kept it alive.
In the meantime, I'm getting good performance from my Ricochet wireless modem (not DSL performance, but better than 56k dial-up).
What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it's all about?
You know what happens to you when you have too much fiber in your diet.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
So I went with Cox Cable RoadRunner. The advantage is that it's a full-time raw bit pipe. The disadvantage is that it goes down at peak times -- no, not lowered bandwidth, I mean the cable modem reports no carrier.
Oh, how I long for the Bell Atlantic "FlexCap" DSL I had from 1997 to 2000. That's right, 1.5MB in 1997. It was their trial program. And it was a raw bit pipe. And it worked up to 20,000 feet. And it was solid -- never went down.
So the short of it is, if cable Internet is unavailable where you live, you may need to consider business DSL, which is around $300/month. Or get a T1 for $1100/month.
Your telco needs to install a DSLAM at the end of the copper section. DSL then runs over the copper between your modem and the DSLAM. After the DSLAM your packets can go straight over the ATM (or whatever over your telco uses) on the fibre back to the CO.
Problem is DSLAMs aren't cheap, so installing one to service the people in your situation takes a back seat to installing ones in COs that can serve lots more customers.
"instead of using energy, light is used" light is not energy? Damn, there's gonna be some busy scientist now that this revelation has come to light.
Originally, POTS (plain old telephone service) was delivered out of COs (central offices) with a twisted pair going to each customer. This is known as the local loop and typically covered a 3 mile radius from the CO. As switches became saturated and neighborhoods/businesses sprang up further from the CO, the question of how to deliver POTS to these outlying areas came up. Building more COs at several million $ each was not cost effective.
This dilemma was very much like the xDSL problem the telcos are faced with today with DSLAMS that extend 15-18 kft. The solution to the original local loop problem is also the solution to the xDSL loop limit. In the case of POTS, DLCs (digital loop carriers) are used to extend the reach of the CO by placing remote terminals just about anywhere -- as long as you can feed that terminal with copper or fiber (and their inherent distance limitations).
DLCs have evolved into an alphabet soup of features and acronyms (NGDLC, MSAP, IMAP, etc). The current IMAPs (integrated multiservice access platform) deliver nearly any type of analog or data service over copper, fiber, and RF.
So, with an IMAP, VZ can deliver that xDSL service (which is ATM-based) over copper or fiber or RF. In this configuration, the DSLAM is pushed out to the remote terminal. There's no reason ATM traffic can't be transported over copper -- it happens all the time! The challenge is having the equipment to handle the conversion between electrons and photons (among other things). If you can put that equipment (hardened) in a remote terminal, then the sky's the limit as long as the customer is within the range of the remote terminal.
If you want to know more about this, check into SBC's Project Pronto. SBC has selected two DLC/IMAP vendors (AFC & Alcatel) to provide equipment for a digital overlay. Verizon is reported to be very interested in AFC's xDSL solution (essentially a DSLAM on a card), as well. Another good source for the technically curious is WebProForum.
Someone told me that www.verizonsucks.com might have some answers.
Got Rhinos?
Hello, I'm in NVA (Arlington), and after a year of typical Verizon DSL trauma with nothing but missed install dates and every problem under the sun, I switched to Cavalier Telephone http://www.cavtel.net on the recommendation of a friend, for both POTS and DSL. Best move I ever made. Cheaper than Verizon, and they actually showed up a week early to install DSL (two-week total wait). It's worked without a hitch for four months now, static IP, none of that shoddy Verizon software. Verizon is lying to you, I think it's safe to say; try calling back a few more times (if you've got a few hours to sit on hold), and you'll hear all kinds of not-so-imaginative reasons why nothing is happening.
I would think, that customers with all-fiber connections could just be wired directly into the Internet...
So all I need is a fiber from Verizon to my house, and I get my brain shunt? I don't care how far they are, I'll dig the trench myself, sweet!
somebody bent my whookey.
Here in Richardson, TX (a suburb of Dallas) we have fiber to the curb, then dedicated copper to the house. It seems to work fine - I'm not sure the technical differences between this and "normal" DSL, but I get a solid 160 MBs download almost every day. It is ADSL service coming from Southwestern Bell.
Ah, I see. "The truth is on the horizon". But not "The truth is here", I note. Explains a lot :)
Ait', first, let us talk about my qualifications to talk about this subject a bit.
I am cisco CCNP certified, have worked for GlobalCenter, GlobalCrossing, and have been working with networking for the last seven years or so.
The problem with fiber in the line is that when copper meets fiber, there is a medium conversion. The fiber only cares about vocal audio, which is the analog communication on the copper from about 20-20000 Hz -- the human voice (relatively). All else is killed off and this analog communication is translated into a digital pattern for transport on the fiber.
The result of this conversion is that the frequency range that is used by DSL for communication gets cut off. The multiplexor that does this conversion was only designed to transport audio -- not data, and was never designed for DSL.
You are fscked.
Sounds like Verizon just doesnt want to install a DSLAM on the other end of the Fibre (that is, your end). Admittedly they are not cheap, so you might end up in one of the all-to-common Pockets (packets?) of people square in the middle of town that can't get DSL. [Of which I am one in my town].
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
According to VZ, the company newsletter, "Verizon" is a contraction of "Veritas" and "Horizon."
I guess they're going for some kind of "Truth for the future" type image.
Anyway, the rules for what DSL can cross are rather picky. DSL cannot cross a crossconnect, so if you are 500' from a CO and there is a crossconnect between you and the CO, no luck. It cannot cross a copper-fiber bridge, another, you can be 500', don't matter. There are more oddities, but it works out to - if you don't have a straight line of copper going to the CO, you are SOL.
OTOH this company currently recalculates who can and cannot get cable every night (using more of our software, yummy) and updates their db. INterestingly enough more often than new people being able to get DSL, people lose the ability to get DSL - though this usually signals the phone company to send a crew out to run some copper around the x-connect they put in yesterday, while you wait on hold asking for tech support.
I just HAVE to weigh in with my own experience here. Sorry in advance for the rambling. It's therapeutic. SWB has been jacking me around the same way for the last 6 months. I moved into my new apartment in December and ordered DSL then (we are within walking distance of the CO). The order was approved, and slated for installation on Jan 2. Around Christmas time, I get a letter saying something to the effect of oh, something is wrong and we can't install it after all. No further explanation. So I call them. At this point I first hear the term pair gain though with no further explanation, and I also didn't ask. But I do get told that it is slated to be fixed sometime in the first quarter of 2001. Later in January, the helpful SWB salesperson leaves a message saying that the problem on my line now has been fixed, and she is reinstating my order. It should be installed in February. The day of the installation the install technician realizes that I am still on pair gain, and leaves a message to that effect. At this point I am really curious about what pair gain really is, call SWB, and finally end up with a technician from Advanced Solutions, which handles their DSL installations. He informs me that though I am within the required distance from the CO, the phone company is running fiber to my apartment (pair gain), but - but - there is an RT in my neighborhood, which should give me a really good DSL connection, ONCE THE DSLAM IS INSTALLED, which is part of SWB/SWB Internet/Advanced Solutions' Project Pronto. Pronto my ass. We now constantly get flooded with advertisement from SWB, saying DSL is now available in your area, and why wait on the old dial-up connection. Well, the first time I got the ad in the mail, I again reinstated my order, only to be followed by a very rude message on our answering machine from a fellow at Advanced Solutions named Steve, who, frustrated as he was, couldn't understand why the salespeople would keep taking [our] order, when [we are] on pair gain. So why am I still bothering with the telcos in order to get DSL? Aren't there other alternatives? Well... Yes and no. I can't get AOL Time Warner's RoadRunner, as our apartment complex has Optel. I can't get Optel's cable modem service as our apartment complex doesn't subscribe to it, and has no plans to. I can't get Sprint's ION, because they don't install it in multi-dwelling units. I can't get Sprint's Broadband Direct, because there is no direct line-of-sight between our balcony (which is the only place where the apartment complex will let us put up the transceiver) and the Sprint's central antenna. I can't get DirecPC's satellite feed, because said balcony is facing north and the satellite is due South. And finally, I can't get ATT Broadband (another fixed wireless technology, that does not require line-of-sight) because their antennae, on a building 4 blocks south of us either is not turned on, or they are pointing in the wrong direction, or they are simply honoring their agreement with AOL Time Warner to not sell to customers who are in an AOL Time Warner served area (which we technically are). For now, DSL is my only option. But since there apparently is no incentive for SWB to install the DSLAm in the remote terminal, I, and everyone else in our apartment complex, are screwed.
Classically, telephony has solid copper pairs from the subscriber to the central office, resulting in a huge number of wires terminating in the CO. This architecture dates from the days when active components were too unreliable and too expensive to have outside the central office.
Over the years, various schemes have been developed to have little substations of one kind or another out in the field, to cut down the number of wires running back to the CO. There have been mini-switches and multiplexers. Mini-switches, or concentrators, are somewhat out of fashion, because they meant that all the lines couldn't be active at once. But multiplexers are widely used.
The most common type of multiplexer is one that multiplexes 16 analog lines into a T-1. This is completely incompatible with DSL, since the upstream bandwidth is 64Kb x 16 lines. (ISDN compatibility is supported by some such units.) These units are modest pole-mountable boxes.
Newer multiplexers use fibre for the upstream link. This is potentially usable with DSL, provided that the appropriate multiplexer is installed. But these are bigger, more elaborate boxes that need more power than can be delivered through the phone cable. They're usually too big for pole mount. Some need a more protected environment. Many have battery backup, and some have small emergency generators. The industry is still struggling with where to put these things.
In some areas, you might be able to cut a deal with the telco if you're willing to have a large metal box on your property.
"Hello, Mr. Wherry?"
"Yes?"
"This is Ms. ___ with Bell Atlantic; I'm calling with the results of our engineering study."
"Terrific! What's it going to cost to get DSL?"
"$967,000 - would you like us to go ahead?"
Believe it or not, she asked the question as if there was a chance I might say, "sure, just put it on my bill." Since they didn't seem to have the option to pay in four easy installments of $250,000 each, I declined.
In retrospect, I should have realized that any answer that required an engineering study was probably an answer I didn't really want. I wonder, though: would my purchase of just under $1M worth of equipment have meant that all of my neighbors would then be able to get the service for $49.95?
I subsequently ordered high-speed data service from the local cable TV monopoly--and am pretty pleased with the results. They're shockingly incompetent as a cable TV provider, but their cable modem service has worked surprisingly well.
You are absolutly correct. The problem is going to be space to house that dslam. And the bandwidth to the dslam over the fibre. Instead of just riding on wasted wires (pots lines), they now have to allocate bandwidth on the fibre lines from the telco to each pairgain unit that is in those green boxes. Sometimes they are underground in a small 8x8x8 room that allows room for expansion and junctioning. Plus, dslams that do 24 DSL links aren't cheap. So if you can get 10 to 15 people that branch off that same green box, you might have a chance of lobying them into installing it. if it's just you, start praying if you are religous. They won't care. 8-P
What? me have a sig? don't be ridiculous.
Here's my view (I may be wrong, but oh well...)
Somewhere between the central office and your home there has to be a small building or large box that connects the fiber from the CO to the copper that runs to your house.
Why not house the equipment for the companies DSL access in this building or box?
So there would be DSL from the customer to the fiber/copper connection. From there it would be a digital signal (not DSL) over the fiber back to the CO.
Did I make that clear enough? I tried...
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Its an electrical signal sent at a very high frequency. If it were a radio signal you wouldn't need a wire to get it!
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Thanks for letting me know that high frequency signals won't travel over fiber, I'm going to go tell the engineers here at the cable company I work for to shutdown the system cause it will never work!
First off hybrid-fiber systems are the future, the problem is that the telephone company only wants the distribution plant and not the real technology to go with it because that would cost money. And why spend money when you get a licence from the government to make it( Read: Guarented 20% return on all investments). Second high frequency signals travel just fine over fiber if you have the correct equipment at the fiber termaination points. The issue here is that the phone companies equipment only is designed to pass a number of multiplexed POTS lines. DSL operates outside of the frequency spectrum of normal POTS lines. So once the signal gets back to the fiber node its never converted to light because the equipment doesn't know/can't see to look for it. Once they reallize that narrowband is a dieing tech, and the cable companies stealing there market share because they can fit 500 channels, internet and phone service all on the same wire, the phone companies will quickly come around and become communication companies much like the cable industry is doing now.
The main reason that the telephone companies are not willing to deloy DSLAM's all over the place is simple because of the cost.
I found a cisco 6200 DSLAM on ebay for $5000, and it's not even a new one!!! Here's the link http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem& item=1240953089
Secondly DSLAMS are way bigger then a bread box. They take up roughly half of most rackmounts... So they are BIG. Plus this is server room RACKMOUNT equipment... It must be climate controlled.
Your $49.95 a month isn't worth the equipment and hassle... Now if you had say a 10 or 20 other people in your neighborhood, then they may reconsider.I've always just wanted to comment that I think that Verizon's name is a ripoff of the band Vertical Horizon. I've never had any place to put this comment, so maybe it will be read here. :-) (Or maybe it will be modded down for being off-topic.)
The issue with you getting dsl is not likely the fiber itself but a device called a dlc read more here You should still be able to get idsl for the time being and it is much better than dial up. Also most of Northern Virginia has cable modems available through cox or comcast.
-- This Space Intentionally Left Blank --
hmm, where to start? I work for Verizon, in engineering no less.
PairGain is a company that makes several products, all of which seek to expand existing copper facilities. Their most commonly used piece is called a Digital AML, which allows you to take one copper line and provide another line. This is predominantly used in areas that are not "feed rich", and in urban areas are the default used when a customer orders a second line.
The ADSL problem w/ fiber is simple- DSL technology (as has been previously posted) is meant to utilize the unused bandwith that copper wires can carry, in a higher frequency than the human ear can hear.
Finally, the fiber/ copper problem you were fed over the phone. Chances are, when you are quoted such a thing, Verizon went and installed a fiber remote hut, which is used to extend feed out from the CO. Fiber is brought out of the CO (usually in two different paths, for loop redundancy) to a hut or ManHole, and then copper is run from that hut for feed. When this is done, it is to provide more feed pairs in a certain route (which is how Verizon tracks fill rates and such, by distribution areas and routes that they determine). The most common technology used w/ the fiber huts is LiteSpan, and LiteSpan is not a DSLAM. Newer LiteSpan shelves can provide DSL facilities, but it would be impossible to find out the specifics of a LiteSpan unit unless you knew your local Outside Plant Engineer.
Before you despair, there is one caveat to the fiber hut- there's copper run from the CO to the hut as well. We are REQUIRED to run copper, b/c there are special circuits that we can't provide over fiber facilities- the best example is the alarm circuits in the hut, which must be on fiber.
OK, last thing- customer service, and how to get what you want. When you call, you receive an associate. Ask to speak w/ their supervisor, they have to put you through. From there, be prepared to complain loudly, insist that you know there are copper facilities there- you may cite lotto circuits and security circuits. Tell them you are prepared to call the PSC (Public Service Commission) or call the Verizon President's Hotline (which really escalates things). Ask them if they can give you your local Engineering office phone number.
They may tell you the copper feed portion at the hut already has circuits that preclude yours from receiving DSL- it is true that we can only provide one DSL circuit in every 25 pair of complement of copper wires, which is due to DSL's inherent limitations.
I think that answers all the questions- hopefully, seeing the post a day late, some will still check this and understand!
If you and enough of your neighbors sign up for DSL service, they'll be turning a profit in no time.
I'm sorry, but I do believe you are mistaken. DSL does NOT rely "completely on the absence of telephone company equipment between the DSL modems on each end of the line." Granted, each switch you touch degrades the signal by X, but there could be any number of switches betweeen your modem and the DSLAM.
Also, just because you have a fiber local loop does not mean you can't get DSL. Read this for a decent explanation of the hybrid network issue. IF your neighborhood has new enough equipment (read: installed in the last 4 years or so), you may be able to convince them. In my experience with Verizon (on the left coast) the tier 1 support staff often has NO idea of what services are offered, where a certain service is and is not offered, or even whether or not they actually have a pulse. As a for instance: The company I work for (a medium sized ISP) receives a fax from Verizon stating that they would be offering enhanced DSL services in our area, so our sales department happily started selling these services. When installation dates started popping up, the Verizon techs denied for weeks that the service the customer had been sold was available. After many hours of sitting on hold, arguing with rude technicians (IMNSHO), and finally speaking with someone far enough up the food chain to know what was going on, our customers did indeed get their service. </rant>
Twinkies sure taste good for something that is 68% air.
This is a funny case of worse is better. Running copper wires to homes and carrying voice communications over it is extremely inefficient. You use very little of the potential bandwidth in those copper wires. Once fibre became reasonable, phone companies found out that they could be much more efficient by multiplexing many phone conversations over a single line. Then enter DSL, and we found a way to use all the inefficiencies in the copper wires. Those who got the more efficient fibre get screwed.
Whether or not anything can even be done depends on how much of the bandwidth is available. Presumably, if the phone company dedicates enough bandwidth through the fibre to allow every phone line to be in use at once, part of it could be used for the unguaranteed internet packets. But even that requires some major changes to the multiplexors that are doing the conversion from copper to fibre.
I would think, that customers with all-fiber connections could just be wired directly into the Internet.
Sure, if you're already paying to have a strand of fibre in the home, all you have to do is pay for the equipment on each end, and the bandwidth. First of all, I doubt you have a strand of fibre in your house. Secondly, the equipment and bandwidth won't be cheap (well, the bandwidth charges won't be bad if you only want DSL level speed).
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
instead of using energy, light is used
*sarcasm* and light is not energy now, hmmm? interesting. tell us more about this non-energy called "light" *sarcasm*
Before things looked so bad for them I would have suggested a dedicated line, instead of line sharing, from Covad or one of their resellers in your area. To get it you might have had to sign up for SDSL.
If you know a business with bandwidth, you might want to look up the Roll your own DSL article that was on slashdot last year. Request the line be run point to point with somebody willing to share bandwidth. Not, cheap, but workable.
In many cases this cost of operation is next to nothing, and they would never recoup the money it took to install it put it in. If they put it in at the request of a specific CLEC or ISP, the CLEC or ISP would have to pay for the installation. My understanding is with the situation in the DSL markets the regional telcos have stopped installng these.
The reasons for stopping are too fold. Many of the debts that Northpoint went under with were for these. Not installing them on their own helps squeeze the remaining ones out of the market, and the LEC's (telcos) don't want to spend money on uncertainty.
I don't know about that, I'm sure there's some way for Verizon to set up some kind of deal with the neighborhood to have like a fiber based LAN across several blocks that connects into the internet in one place. That's not a bad setup, and that's quite a bit of inexpensive bandwidth if you share it among a few dozen people.
By the way, I applaud you on having such a coherent first post. Bravo!
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Not exactly. Pairgain is also the NAME of a company that makes DSL products. I believe they originally got their name from the fact that they could deliver a T1 (which normally uses 2 pair) over a single pair using SDSL technology, and do this without repeaters (as long as you are within the length restrictions.) The result is that a telco with facilities shortages can recover additional lines for other uses by replacing traditional T1 boxes (not likely in reality, although most telcos have gone to this route for new installs.)
Parigain was bought by ADC.
The traditional problem with fiber / copper, and some copper / copper systems is that the telco has a massive investment in DLC infrastructure. DLC's are basically muxes that traditionally split a T1 into 24 voice channels in a box on a pole (more lines with fiber.) These systems were put in place during the era when modems and home fax machines were really getting a foothold. Neighborhoods were wired for 30 lines for every 25 homes. When people started putting in 2, 3, and more lines, the telcos were scrambling to find ways to provision them. Hence, DLC's.
For more info, just search google for "DLC phone line".
Frankly, the amount of foot dragging going on in facility upgrades by ILEC's really pisses me off. There is NO reason that the telcos are not upgrading facilities to handle fiber / copper, extended distance DSL, etc. They are taking the easy way out and just doing normal DSL. The FCC / PUC's REALLY screwed up when they allowed the telcos to sell a product that only a few could get. They should have required that the telcos upgrade facilities for ALL customers within X years of first DSL deployment.
I really think you should talk to a laywer about matters like this and not rely on the advice of people at Slashdot that begin their posts with IANAL....
....
..oh wait.. nevermind, carry on.
NO CARRIER
Just buy an Engine Access Ramp from Ericsson and you can run DSL, ADSL, SHDSL, ISDN, normal POTS and whatever you like over copper, fibre or ether or any combination. The fibre could be run into the ANX and then DSL could be runover ATM all the way to the DSL/ADSL Nt on your side.
We are currently testing in South Africa.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Holy shit. Post number one modded up to +5 Insightful? Has hell finally frozen over? ----> Oddly enough, I think it was only modded up by +1, even though it shows +5 when you read it. There is only one mod-up listed for that post and my total karma has increased by one single point.
Strange, but there it is....
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
The phone companies don't just hook up a wire and a fiber at a terminal strip and have it work, even for voice. Optical transmitters are used to MODULATE whatever signal is to be transmitted on a laser that is then sent down the fiber. That signal could be voice, data, whatever.
Dielectric waveguides work just fine-- you could send "radio signals" over fiber if you could find a fiber big enough. Just like any other waveguide, the physical size of the guide determines the portion of the EM spectrum that it will propagate. Dielectric waveguides like optical fibers are discussed in most good Microwave engineering texts.
With all of these neighborhood DSLAM's lurking about, wouldn't it be fairly easy to open up one of those green utility closets and sniff your neighbor's network traffic. Wouldn't a laptop and a patch cable do the trick?
When we moved in, my roommates and I decided to set up a DSL line for out local LAN. Just like you said, the line test put us within the range for DSL - about 300 - 200 feet from the CO. Unfortunatly, Versizon (then Bell Atlantic) had aparantly added a coil of fiber inside the CO. That's right - according to Covad, there was fiber inside the CO, being used roughly as a patch cable. Thus, the whole Harbor Pont development (5000+ units, if I remember correctly) was unable to get DSL from anyone. Because of a patch-job that Bell Atlantic woudn't fix, Covad didn't have access to, and Flashcom... well, Flashcom didn't seem to be able to find it's butt with both hands, so they responded by opening three new accounts.
However, our tale of woe had a happy ending. Before Bell Atlandic owned up to the fiber thing, Covad came and installed a modem, and the thing couldn't find a link. So they came and installed it again, this time drilling more holes in our walls and breaking the phone patch box so that we didn't have a landline for a week. When the whole thing finally turned out to be impossible, we called Covad to give them their modem back. Covad told us that the modem belonged to Flashcom (which didn't sound right, since Covad was in charge of the actual installation). Flashcom told us that it belonged to ConcentricDSL. Concentric had no idea who the hell we were, so we started over with Covad, and repeated the cycle. After getting the runnaround again, we put it up on eBay, got $200 for it, and treated outselves to a nice dinner.
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Had the same problem in Los Angeles. Was tracked down to the fact that the box that converted the fiber from the CO to the copper going to houses was not capable of supporting DSL. This was with GTE before they became Verizon.
It wasn't that they couldn't upgrade it, it was simply that they couldn't justify the expense based on expected subscriber levels in my area.
So I was forced to go to Cable Modem, which has worked out OK so far.
I work in Verizons DSL division and honestly, you're probably stuck. If there is fiber anywhere on the line between your home and CO, no DSL. They're not going to run new lines, but they *MIGHT* switch you to an all copper pair if you manage to talk to the right people and there is one available. I've had it done for a few customers before, it's a right pain in the butt though. What people don't really know is that VOL (Verizon Online) is *NOT*, I repeat, *NOT* Verizon the phone company. They are two separate entities. Therefore, when we (VOL) try to get the phone company to switch a customer to a new copper pair, well, we have to jump through hoops, do a dance and pray to the BroadBand Gods. Depending one where you live this may be an option(If you're in NY, forget about it). The only problem is finding someone within Verizons mass of idiots that knows how to do so, and to be honest, it's worse then finding a needle in a hay-stack(I'm Mr. Pessimist today). Your best bet is to maybe do what I did and get cable. Best of luck.
plop
You could always set up a Seattle Wireless-type setup by doing an 802.11b point-to-point link from your office building (if you have line of sight) or get a few neighborhood friends to buy some access points & wireless cards, attach dialup modem proxies to the newly-created network, modify some open proxy software to somehow combine the multiple dialup connections into an equivalent of a DSL, OR find a nearby company with a fat pipe and an unsecured network and use a laptop connected to 2 wireless cards to act as a repeater stashed in a nice waterproof box and some directional antennas between you and the fat pipe.
OR, you could just get a cable modem.
This
Verizon would have to install some equipment where the fiber meets the copper in order for you to get DSL. There is already some equipment there (because you can't join fiber and copper directly). They could put an ATM switch (not bank machine ATM) at that point.
CO o--ATM over fiber (OC3)--o junction o--ATM over copper (DSL)--o You
This would allow you (and everyone else in your neighborhood) to get DSL.
Not totaly true. Lucent make the DSLMAX boxes. They simply take a fiber, or ethernet, or ATM line, and supply it to upwards 64 coper lines. My Apartment complex uses these boxes. They take a fiber link from the CO, and supply each apartment with DSL service. works quite well because the coper link is only about 50 feet.
This may help. At my work we are very near the limits of our DSL (this hole area is). So Pacific bell has started a program called Pronto(spelling?). They have installed FIBER into the area and DSLAMS so that now our office will only be about 500' from the DSLAM and we'll go from 768 down to about 2000(advertised speed won't know till it's installed 3-5 weeks). How this effects you is that they need to install a DSLAM at the end of the fiber run. This will only happened(my guess) If there are enough copper lines at the end of the fiber that want DSL. Btw the DSLAMS have been hot since December and they are only just now offering service (may) Look into sat service (if you can live with the latency and price)
What a pairgain (and there are other equivalents) does is allow the phone company to put two or more lines on a single pair of copper. A lot of these (the non-digitial ones) actually use the high-frequency part of the wire (where DSL lives) for the second line. Thus, it would be impossible to provide DSL across these.
Add to the fact that there really isn't a copper pair between point a and b for both customers. Even if you could put dsl and pairgain on a pair, only one of the customers would likely be able to use it, unless you do something funky like line sharing, etc.
Logically speaking, you CAN'T deny DSL service with the excuse of "half the line is fiber", because that would make no sense.
--
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
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Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Thanks for playing.
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I currently have a business class SDSL line in my house. It's 1Mbps up/down, and only runs me about 150/month with line taxes and everything. They even had me setup in two weeks from the time I put in my call.
Check out MPower Communications. They're pretty badass.
Here in NYC, when Verizon rewires a neighborhood with fiber, they typically leave a small number of pure copper lines per block, which are available first-come-first-served to those who insist on them for DSL and whatever.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I live in Boston, and when I called Verizon they told me the same thing; they couldn't wire me for DSL because there was fiber in the line between my apartment and the CO. We asked a few other DSL companies, and Flashcom said they could do it. When we spoke to a technician, he said that they could have Covad run a "dry line" from our location to the CO, and they did it for free.
Then Flashcom tanked, we switched our service to Speak Easy, and everything is smooth as silk. Of course, now everyone says Covad is about to tank as well, so who knows if they will still do this. But it might be worth a shot.
-- Have you ever noticed that at trade shows, Microsoft is always the company that is handing out stress balls?
I first thought that central PA was getting left behind by Verizon but a town not far from me has DSL so it's here just not here
We had DSL running fine until our DSL provider went bankrupt. We thought we'd switch to Verizon who came and checked out our line and measured great speed & quality - we're close to the Verizon station and already had DSL running sucessfully over the same line for 6 months. For many months Verizon indicated they'd hook us up any day, but as time passed, we persisted, we were eventually told our number was "not in the data base" because DSL was "impossible technically". The Verizon installer/tester and his manager said "no worry" as they'dd personnally make sure the data base was updated and that our line had no problem as all the tests were favorable for DSL. Despite their efforts, the datya base was never updated and we were eventually told it would never be updated, and not to believe the Verizon technical people (installers, teseters and their managers). As you say, one part of Verizon doesn't know what the other is doing, and worse yet they seem to have no repect for each other. This leaves the "customer in the lurch. We were even told that if the White House phone number was not in the Verison data base, even if the installer who tests the line and his manager said the line was OK, the data base could not be updated and it would be impossible for Verizon to install service to the White House. Needless to say, we figured if a company was that mixed up we would switch to another phone company, Cavalier Telephone which works fine and costs less, and use their 768kbits/sec up and down til cable came to our area. We've had Cox Cable running flawlessly in excess of 3.5 million bits/sec measured by Speed411.com, 5x faster than DSL, at a cost of $29.95/month. We note that Verizon rates very low on DSL Reports which we'd consider an excellent reference compared to a Verizon employee. Bottom line: You can believe recent press reports and our experience with 2 DSL providers and 2 cable providers that DSL is fading fast as Cable is dominating!
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
Try Cavalier DSL. We had a great experience with Cavalier phone and DSL @ 768Kbits/sec up and down before Cox@home (cable) came to our area at 3.5 million bits/sec measured by http://www.speed411.com
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
DSLREPORTS is an excellent web site containing all the info you want or need related to high-speed DSL and cable, specific for your zip code. DSLREPORTS has plenty of information worth sifting through that is much more meaningful than contacting most DSL "providers". You'll find Verizon is rated very low and Cavalier DSL rated very high for Virginia. All around, however, most people seem to prefer cable if it is available in their area. One possible exception is Pinole, California (near Silicon Valley where everyone hops on their @home PC when they arrive home). However, Pinole is not typical of the U.S. and as I understand it, even in Pinole, cable is addressing the oversubscriber problem and most people stiull prefer cable to DSL even in their extreme case.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
Perhaps it's an improvement over what you currently have, but we'd consider 350k/sec to be relatively slow! We're used to 10x faster on a regular basis via our cable modem. We have a window on our computer monitor with live TV, so we can watch TV while on the computer, but perhaps not the quality of TV channel selection that is available via satellite TV??
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
It's a fact of life: nobody is ever screwed for long - at least not when it's a good thing. But if it's a bad thing, then it lasts damned near forever...
So you're a karma whore, eh? For the right price, I'll be a karma pimp...
SIG: HUP
The converter between copper and fiber focuses on the relatively narrow spectrum that voice communications are in and discards DSL as mere noise, thus not sending it over the fiber. The two solutions are to move the CO (not gonna happen), or by a converter with a greater range (also not going to happen - at least anytime soon). Look for a flavor of DSL known as G.lite - I think it fits into the range of the converters and will run over fiber.
So you're a karma whore, eh? For the right price, I'll be a karma pimp...
SIG: HUP
Why you can't get DSL even though you are less than 3 miles from the CO is because your line rides over copper to one of those big green Verizon cabinets sitting along the road somewhere. At that point, your copper is multiplexed into hundreds of other customers phone line connections and beamed to the Central Office over fiber...much more cost effective than running thousands of pairs of copper to begin with. There is no DSLAM multiplexer in those cabinets, thus that is why your copper phone line cannot be powered by a DSL circuit.
Verizon really does think they actually own the entire internet by their attitude and political lobbying.
They are buying access to the ftc to screw local ISP's, they are suing everyone who even offers access in their so called turf, they want to collect a charge off every local isp in existance because they actually think they own the backbone and have bought access in the both parties to take it.
In New York City, I can't get dsl service because local isp's are afraid they might piss off verizon. I can't even get cable modems becuase AOL-Time warner claim they own the cables in my building and taking the wires out somehow violates intellectual property rights!!
I HAVE F@cking HAD ENOUGH WITH THESE ASSH*LES! A friend at work ordered Convard DSL 3 months ago and STILL HAS NO SERVICE BECUASE VERSIZON CLAIMS THEY OWN TEH BACKBONE AND ARE TOO BUSSY TO INSTALL THE DSL! If I want dsl I have to use verizon. Oh ya, all the dsl rates went up in the area after the elections last fall. Gee, I wonder why. By switching you are hurting local isp's and carriers and building a monopoly for versizon so they can raise the rates again and again and cut bask support.
Verizon dsl is slow, unrealiable and barely faster then an isdn from what I heard from most people. You think @home sucks, just wait for verizon dsl. ITs pretty sad when the good guys are losing and the bad guys here are winning record profits.
Sorry for the emotions, but I would rather use MSN internet access then verizopn. That is pretty sad.
http://saveie6.com/
The fiber line goes to the miniram, and copper goes from the miniram to your house. It's basically a small DSLAM wired directly to the ATM network.
Rather simplified, but tell them about minirams and see what they say.
The engineering points are good ones. They are, however, not insurmountable. For an example see http://www.transact.com.au/index.asp. This company services the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) which is the Australian equivalent of DC. There system is a fiber to curb and DSL from the curb to office / home. It is not clear to me why there are not more systems of this type being rolled out now. If telcos do not address the bandwidth avaliable to their subscribers they risk being irrelevent in 10 to 15 years time. Of course all this is of no immediate use to the original poster.
Why couldn't the phone companies use this as an excuse to run fiber into a small number of homes? They are going to have to do it sometime... For us it will be expensive but at the same time an investment in your home. The same way it was expensive to get copper to your home a hundred years ago. The phone company will have a reason for customers to pay for upgrading that last mile. But I can't imagine it costing more than $2000. Around the same as they charge to install a T1 to most locations. The incremental approach is the best approach.
If fiber is that close to homes/apts, how difficult would it be just to go fiber all the way? It seems like we're close to getting over the last mile.
No more of this pussy 600kbit stuff, let's go for 100mbit!
OK, go ahead and moderate this (Score:0, Redundant)...
;)
The fact that there is fiber essentially in your local loop really has nothing to do with it actually.
The DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer) is essentially the phone company side of the DSL loop. Think of it as the "modem" on their side.
For all intents and purposes, DSL "modems" *have* to work with only copper between them. To be more accurate, the Analog to Digital conversions must have copper between them. The customer's modem (called CPE - Customer Premise Equipment) has Analog to Digital circuitry in it (called a front-end), and the central office has the same equivalent circuitry in the DSLAM.
The fact that you have a hybrid loop is most likely because the subscriber density is high enough to support (possibly force) the need for a Remote Subscriber Terminal somewhere away from the central office.
What's nixing your ability to get DSL is the fact that the telco's DSLAM is physically located in the central office. Therefore, since your physical copper pair does NOT terminate in the central office, but in a remote subscriber cabinet somewhere, there would have to be a DSLAM (or a smaller equivalent of it - more on this in a minute) in the remote equipment site. Chances are that although the customer density may be high in the area, there probably isn't enough customers to warrant the purchase, installation, and support of a full blown DSLAM in that location.
There are smaller scale DSL equipment solutions that are ideal for this sort of scenario. Advanced Fiber Communications makes one (kinda expensive), as well as Next Level, amongst others. They make line cards that have most of the DSLAM's functionality on them with your ordinary POTS SLIC (more acronyms - POTS Plain Old Telephone Service, SLIC Subscriber Line Interface Circuitry). They are generally used in low population density areas, digital remotes, or rural areas. Transport back to the central office is generally over the existing network installed to the remote site, usually ATM based at some point. These options are generally more expensive per customer, but a lower cost investment that a full DSLAM for certain, given the low possible customer count.
Chances are that your telco has neither AFC or NLC equipment installed, in which case you are still screwed, but at least you know that there are options
Brad
Nope. ADSL, at least any chipset I'm familiar with, does not operate within audible range.
Our chips start at bin 32, Alcatel at 38, and TI god-knows-where, but above 30. Bins are 4.325 KHz wide, so bin 30 is 30*4.325Khz, or about 130 KHz. Not audible.
The reason you need to have the filters is to keep the DSL signal from jacking-up your phone. Side effects from the gain imparted on the signal by the DSL transceiver can cause audible artifacts in your phone signal and may even cause damage if your phone doesn't employ decent filtering.
Tim
Ok, the link is kinda good, but out of date.
Its been pretty-much assumed for the last year or so that any VDSL solution is going to be DMT based, except with the number of bins expanded to 1024 (and therefor going to 4 MHz).
The biggest problem with it is that it simply isn't economical (currently) to make a DSP that can FFT 1024 frequency bins in 250us (as per the DMT spec). Not to mention the fact that you will be cramming many more bits into each frequency bin, further wrecking the signal-to-noise margin.
In the end, say about 3-5 years, I expect to see VDSL in a lot of places, but it will require major infrastructure overhaul. Because the SNR margin will be reduced so dramatically, the range of VDSL will be *maybe* 10 kilofeet at the most. So either you'll have to live close to your CO, or the CO will have to move a DSLAM closer to you.
Tim
I run the network at a small ISP that provides DSL over Ameritech copper. Ameritech is pretty noncooperative in my area about pretty much everything, especially DSL. I've run into the same problem and under the suggestion of my ameritech rep I had an "all copper" POTS line provisioned to several customers then run the DSL over that. This does add about $15 to the cost, and had not worked every time. Worth a shot to ask Verizion though I bet.
nb
There is a possibility for IFITL(integrated fiber in the loop) to work in this case maybe? Though that would require the fiber to go all the way to the curb, then terminates at a box by the house(which connects to your system via regular 10baseT). Bellsouth has this in some areas, though I have no idea if they are still installing it or have killed the project.
http://www.rayvaughan.com/bellsout.htm
has interesting pics/details of an IFITL installation
Not totaly true. Lucent make the DSLMAX boxes. They simply take a fiber, or ethernet, or ATM line, and supply it to upwards 64 coper lines. My Apartment complex uses these boxes. They take a fiber link from the CO, and supply each apartment with DSL service. works quite well because the coper link is only about 50 feet. Not totally false either. Your situation is similar to any other DSL setup. The fiber is the data feed to/from the ISP, and the Lucent box overlays the DSL on everyone's copper. You have unbroken copper between your wall jack and the DSL point of origin. In your case the fiber comes before the "last mile", so it's not material to the DSL portion of your connection. What he has is a length of fiber between his home and the point of origin. If you had (say) a MUXer consolidating the fourth floor lines down in the telco, piping it up to the fourth floor, then deMUXing the signal and distributing to each apartment, you'd be just as screwed as he is.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The neat thing about an all-copper run is that the Central Office can easily house all the DSLAMs that are required, cost effectively. If there are a few other providers co-located at the CO, it's much easier to offer multiple DSL solutions to the market.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7)
However, because your're being served off a fiber aggregate circuit, probably an OC-3 or greater (which is later demultiplexed into several dialup lines, or DS0's), there's no way to carry the high-frequency signals that DSL requires.
Now, some readers have already suggested that it can be done, and that with enough complaining DSL may even be possible for you. This now presents a new challenge.
Those little green or beige or grey telephone huts (or SLIC huts as they're called...SLIC = Subscriber Line Interface Cabinet) are nowadays often fed by fiber. It's cost-effective, cheap, and maddeningly port-dense. However, they're not often provisioned to server more than a single DS0 worth of bandwidth (64kbps voice channel).
Also consider the limited space available in those SLIC huts. There's going to be virtually no way to throw in a ton of DSLAMs to serve every subscriber line that leaves the hut on copper. Even if it were possible, the hut would probably need to be upgraded to a faster fiber line, an OC-48 or so, and with the help of an ADM, break out enough bandwidth to serve the DSLAMs.
It's easy to switch providers in the CO, simply by moving a jumper from one DSLAM to another. (however, proper provisioning makes this process horribly complex and time-consuming). That is not necessarily the case when SLIC huts are involved. There's not enough space for one, and it's more expensive to deploy additional units for use in the field that serve a more-restricted geographical region. Given the number of require DSLAMs for a subscriber region, port utilization efficency is greater if there are fewer aggregation points. Economics takes over here.
So yes, it's possible, but it's not as simple of an issue as one may have hoped for.
/* ---- */
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
I have one example - website I found on IFITL... created by a BellSouth customer to show his install and provide some background on IFITL. Here, the handoff seems to occur RIGHT outside this guy's appartment.
Good Luck!!
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
I was gonna do the ironic thing and mod you down one for offtopic, but there was no way to include the smiley so you'd see it was a joke. Here it is anyway ;)
Check this out:
http://www.sprintbroadband.com
We've always been fighting over DSL vs. Cable modems, and here Sprint comes along and shows us all up. Rats. :-)
P.S. Just cut and paste if you're afraid of the link.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
But I worked for Rhythms for about 10 months developing the trouble ticket system and other sundry items, so I have some reasonable degree of familiarity (and yet I can't explain why my line from Qworst goes down several times/day). Hybrid == no DSL. Pure fiber is fine, pure copper is fine. Put them together and you've got expensive uselessness.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
In the former East Germany there is the same problem. The Deutsche Telekom is unable to provide DSL there because most of the telephone lines are fiber. The fiber was installed in the early 1990's when the German government pumped millions of DMs into East Germany for upgrades.
I have a similar set up in Lawrence, KS. I have fiber in my back yard that supposedly runs to a nearby box that converts it to copper. I was trying to improve my dial up connection (I was only getting 28.8). When the techs told me about the fiber in the path, i asked them how they were going to provide me with DSL. Their response was that they'd have to swap cards in the boxes (they had already done this once to provide me with ISDN when I worked for a different company.
Perhaps they just don't wan to pay for the card changes. I went with cable and haven't looked back.
pf
The way things work here is that fiber is run to "nodes" which then are translated to coax, which is then brought to your home. And at the bandwidth we get (3mbps down, 1 up) and the price (how's $25 a month sound), you'd probably be in for a better deal.
Of course, your telco would need to invest considerably for the hardware, but at the current price of fiber, they could almost certainly do better for less than any silly DSL hookup. My suggestion would be to contact someone at the telco who has a brain as well as decision-making authority (I know this might be asking a lot), and see if they're even aware of the concept. It's worth a try - at worst, they'll say no, and at best, you can show those DSLers what's up.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
sorry to say, but most cable is NOT PPPoE, how could it be? The cable box/router NEVER touch a phone line.
Another reason DSL often doesn't work is because the fiber they talk about often is already running another kind of DSL (Same name, different tech, leave it to the telecom industry...)that is used only for muxing voice signals, and is limited to ~64k/sec speed. These DSL segments are also part of the reason some people on modems get such crappy speeds...
Yes!
I hope the telcos read your post to.
Maybe they don't go into curb boxes, but they do go into the neighborhood DLC remote terminal....
I'd be happy to put one of these in my basement if the street cabinet is not big enough. Maybe the poster should get a deal with Verizon: rent verizon a part of your basement for the price of your connection. Every other DSL connection on that machine is pure profit to verizon.
120 chars is not enough!
Unfortunatly, DSL was never meant to run on, actually, can't. It sends a high frequency signal down your copper phone line, using it like a big antenna. You have to have conductive material (e.g. POTs copper) for this to work. If there is any fiber, which is plastic, it only converts the 8 khz voice signals in order to transport them -- all other frequencies on the line are discarded, which is one of the great reasons for using fiber in that it prevents and is resistive to noise, acting like a bandpass filter.
There is a possibility that such a technology exists which takes the DSL signal and also puts it on fiber, but this probably isn't so. This would eat up your telco bandwidth for voice lines, which probably isn't meant to handle high speed singal sourced access, let alone an IP transport.
It looks like your only options are T1 (about $250 a month), cable, satellite, or 56k...
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Indeed you're screwed and, for once, your favorite telco is honest about it. The problem is that your phone's copper pair doesn't reach the central office but a small box somewhere in your neighborhood, probably on the curb of your block. And in this box, there's a satellite exchange, which digitizes your phone line and connects it (along with many other POT lines) to the main exchange in the CO over optical fiber.
So what ? Can't they place the DSL termination (DSLAM) in the curb box ? Well, the answer is flatly no. It's a tiny box crammed with electronic and directly exposed to the sun, wind, heat, cold, etc. So 1) there's no room for a DSLAM in this kind of box, and 2) the equipment sitting there has be specially designed to resist the environmental conditions of this box: at least -40C to +85C (-40F to +185F) and 0% to 100% humidity. DSLAMs are already expensive in the CO, I let you imagine what would cost a hardened compacted DSLAM.
For your DSL to work it needs a rack of expensive equipment called a DSLAM to be at the other end of the copper line from your house. From that rack, the phones will go one way towards the Central Office and the data another. Many DSLAMs are not suited to mounting outside of the central office.
The convertion point between your fibre and the copper will be a simple mux. Mounting a DSLAM there will require better power, good environmental controls and appropriate conectivity, and most importantly enough customers nearby to justify the large cost.
It can and is done, but not very much at present, though it is likely to become more common in time, as demand grows, or when the existing mux needs upgrading.
You know this brings up a paradox for the DSL providers. If DSL cannot travel through fiber, then the more fiber laid means that much less DSL service. Doesn't that predict the end of DSL as more and more fiber goes down. I assume that fiber all the way to the home would be great, but it will be a while and in the mean time lots more fiber will be in the ground and hence less DSL. In fact they will have to cut off customers as they replace copper with fiber! Hello cable stock.
hmm 64 DSL circuts on fiber? These are the same SPs that put 64 DSLs on a T3.
Maybe I missed your point, but having only 64 DSL customers on a 45 meg T3 would be EXCEPTIONALLY good. SBC has been known to route several thousand ADSL customers through a single T1.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
BTW, my mother has an SBC DSL modem, and I regularly can get 6 megabits worth of concurrent traffic, so they must be using something much bigger then a T1.
Southwestern Bell in Kansas City ran their ADSL customers this way for over a year. They have had service in this area since summer of '99, and just recently moved from a a single T1 to a partial DS3. SBC is betting on the fact that 90% of their customers are going to spend 90% of their time doing simple web browsing, which uses very little bandwidth. This allows them to justify such little incoming bandwidth, since most of their users wouldn't use more than a 56k modem anyway. They get to charge 40-50/month, and not offer any better service than analog, and most people won't notice.
You mentioned SDSL has a better ratio of users:bandwidth. This is true. It is also apparently a money losing business, as SDSL companies are dropping like flies.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
It is possible in this situation but the carrier has to be willing to dump some money. Most likely the fiber run terminates at a remote serving node where the copper run then starts. If Verizon was to install a DSLAM at the remote node then you could get the service. A lot of equipment manufacturers make DSLAMs small enough to fit in a remote node. Now that I've said it's possible, it's quite likely that the remote node is full just with POTS equipment and to add DSL capacity they would have to give up some of the POTS capacity.
its just a medium just casue its fiber dosent mean that it is piped in to the backbone of the internet. The fiber is just a high capacity line used to transfer the data (your voice)
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I had DSL service from Verizon before they changed their name from GTE (at least here in the here in the midwest). Their service sucked (very slow. Lots of latency and connectivity problems, and it wasn't on my end) and there's not a word in the english language suitable to describe the service I got from them.(Horrible? Sickening? Infuriating? Abhorrent? All still a little too tame...)
plenty of 80% answers on this posted. Short and pithy... DSL only runs on copper as a high-frequency sub-band in parallel with the voice-band signals. It's an encoding method. To get DSL, you need copper to the user. Now, all DSL Access equipment (DSLAMs) run higher speed back to the central office for a combined series of customer virtual circuit paths, and use the lower DSL speeds over copper to the customer. The customer side is muxed on the copper via highpass/lowpass filter units called splitters, the lowpass side going to the traditional voice band. The way to settle the hash for customers who are noplace in ordering DSL because of being too far from the DSLAM or having non-copper facilities between the CO DSLAM and their house is to move the DSLAMs out to the customers. This is just starting commercially, with SBC in the lead, and Qwest fka USWest getting heavily into it this summer. Newer generations of DSLAM and some add-on cards for certain types of pairgain = DLC = SLC = high-density mux/demux systems for voice band channels make it possible to push DSLAMs into a second equipment cabinet next to the DLC cabinet (these are the size of a couple refrigerators usually, but some drop units can be the size of TV sets.) Ameritech has limited deployment of this method, and unknown how fast Verizon is joining this new parade by the Bells to be better neighbors to the data set. Nobody has enough of it out there to boast yet, but SBC and Qwest are making the biggest noise in terms of deployment to percentages of the potential customers. until/unless this occurs in your neighborhood, you are limited to the one pair in a 25-pair binder of copper that can carry DSL without cross-interference with other services (including standard 2-pair T1.) if the wire is 26-gauge, loaded with 88 mH peaking coils for longer and stronger voice coverage, old and rotten with leaks and noise and broken insulation and half the pairs unuseable, the Laws of Physics say you are Stuck Outta Luck. I provide data and support DSL-backhaul high speed links for a Bell, and I couldn't get DSL for 5-1/2 years myself, until a cable replacement on a chunk of roadwork finally put me into compliance at 15.2 kilofeet from the CO. I still had to get a manager override on the sales order. works great at the edge for me on my 1970s pairs, but as always, YMMV. stay informed, keep trying, question authority, wave your money... eventually the gods may smile.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Time Warner's RoadRunner here used to be PPPoE or some variant that required the users to log in before surfing. Due to several customer complaints a few years ago (back when almost everyone on RR here in Columbus was a techie), Time Warner dropped that requirement. Now the cable boxes act just as any router would (well, any router that takes in a cable signal and turns it into Ethernet that is).
Oddly enough, Time Warner also used to require the users to go through the Proxy servers. That too was dropped at the request of many customers.
I think most companies really do care about the customers, they just need to hear what the customers want. And no, bitching at the L1 techs does not tell the companies what the customers want, that just makes some minimum wage lacky's life hell.
Still, the effect is you get DSL at your premises which is of course what he wants. I have to assume that some phone companies have been using these among other tricks to get DSL to people. The area of DSL coverage in Tucson that Qwest provides has increased dramatically since they started offering it and often people who were before told they couldn't have it, have been able to get it now.
This is a regulatory problem and it is very complicated. The phone company uses a fiber drop to consolidate many phone lines together. They put the fiber transcevier in a cement box underground and fan copper out to a whole block from one fiber. So in order to provide dsl, they need to upgrade all the fiber tranceviers in the field. Meanwhile the rboc (regional bell operating companies) were obliged by the government to allow the competition into their Central Offices so they could locate equiptment. If they upgrade the tranceviers in the cement colverts, they will need to offer the same access to the competition, something that is difficult and not desireable. I think some one is testing it in court and every other rboc is sitting on there hands waiting for the results. One trick is to ask for an alarm line. They would then run copper the whole way back to the co. Then check if you qualify again
I've been reading about a lot of different types of DSL, and one is VDSL. VDSL is "very high bit rate DSL". Downstream it is capable of 52mbps. It's different from ADSL in that ADSL uses copper lines and VDSL uses fiber. So basically, you're not screwed, Verizon just has to get on the ball and get things rolling. I'd love to have VDSL....
I called the cable co., and I had 1Mb/sec bandwidth the following Tuesday. Its been working great for over a year.
Funny thing is, I wouldn't have considered a cable modem before this episode because it seemed like a kludge. Live and learn.
Once upon a time, I worked for a company called Marconi. Marconi's DISC*S MX product muxes a bunch of ADSL modems (also DS1's, POTS, and video) together on a single fiber. I was fascinated by the technology. Check out the marketing data!
Anyway, the technology is definitely available to go from copper or coax to fiber. After reading all the commentary, I am curious whose solution the telco companies will chose, and whether they will pony up the money anytime soon. As far as the equipment is concerned, the engineering has been well under way for quite some time.
Verizon uses hybrid fiber/coax networks in the St Petersburg area in FL and in Ventura County CA... cable modems. These things have been hybrid since the beginning of digital cable deployment. This is why cable modem systems deploy so much faster; fiber good, copper bad.
Try working for Lucent or should I say soon to be Alcatel. :-)
From what I have heard, IDSL and g.SHSDSL should be able to run copper/fiber hybrid modes. However, there are several factors involved. IDSL can work with an ISDN Repeater to extend the ISDL loops to 36000 feet. If anyone knows of any company that can make a ISDN Copper to Fiber Repeater/Converter, and be able to backhaul it accordingly, DSL would NOT need to be placed in Central offices and therefore can be centralized like current modem bank solutions. g.SHSDSL has the same specs to function with repeaters however, it is still not a standard spec. The current problems is that phone companies DO NOT like the fact that there are cheaper alternatives to high speed communications and therefore will not like to see these technologies deployable within their networks. Telcos hate the fact that you can order dry copper and run T1 speeds over it, bypassing their thousands of dollars of monthly revenue network for about $40-70. If the global communications bodies can allow DLECs and ISPs to create a neutral xDSL network with the hybrid mode functional via a governed, regulated body (bypassing telcos in general) then xDSL will be able to be a viable solution for ISPs to deploy. Only DLECs and ISPs should be able to use this type of network. It would be a private network that would only handle the switching for xDSL services which would function through repeaters. A new body called BHLEC (Data Backhaul Local Exchange Community) should be introduced to regulate the cost of the last mile to a customer. However, to ensure that this can be possible, the government MUST step in to ensure the ILEC/CLEC offers the repeaters/converters to the BHLEC and a regulated low price. The other problem with xDSL right now is the cost of equipment. Vendors overcharge for their equipment by a factor of 1000% of the actual cost of building hardware. If you have ever opened a DSL modem/router, you will see that there is not much circuitry involved. Look at Cisco hardware. Their prices have not gone down in price over the years for equipment that is 5 years old. Why? Cause they want to reap the fruit of profit. Greed is the major killer of technological advancement. Same goes with the modem industry. USR/3COM has a modem called V.Everything. It is a 56k modem however, the unit costs about $200-300 dollars. You can purchase a GVC 56k modem that is similar to the 3COM modem at around $40. Functions the same, except it costs much less. WHY? Greed. plain and simple. Computer parts and hardware has dropped in price significantly over the years. Because of this, the consumers have reaped many benefits from reduced prices for products. Tens of GB of IDE hard drives around $100-150, DVD-ROM drives around $75, Alternative recording formats at reasonable pricings. But the cost of Routers and Switches still remain at outrageous prices. If the world was not as greedy, then maybe the whole world would be a much better place to live and offer every country the efficent cost of expanding faster.
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ADSL over Copper Voice Line actually works within the audible frequency range. The reason why you have a line filter is to ensure that you do not hear the DSL noise being produced. If you did not have any noise, then you would NOT need any filters. The filters are ONLY for the voice phones to ensure you do not hear the "modem" type sounds of your DSL modem.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
Guess you never used an Inductive Amplifier. You can hear the tones SDSL makes on the line. Also, if you remove your inline filters on ADSL, you WILL hear the DSL tones over your phone. Try it and you will see.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
OK let the flames begin 'cause I know you're all gonna send 'em my way anyway, BUT, I'm just gonna say one thing! Ok, well maybe a few, got Requiem for a Dream on pause here and I gotta hurry...man that Jennifer Connelly is a fox! So here goes...get cable internet if you can !! You may have Adelphia in your area if I remember correctly, but you can find that out at cablemodeminfo.com , I've had it up here in the Buffalo suburbs for almost 3 years now and the best damn service I've EVER had....and that includes all the growing pains we've had !! I have for the last 2 YEARS read nothing but CRAP about DSL and have almost never read anything any where's near positive. From what I've seen the companies just don't really care about the customers, unlike Adelphia, which USUALLY goes out of there way to get problems taken care of within a couple of days, at least up here. Adios !
the combined wit and wisdom of Slashdot
hahaha. tell me another.
Its not just the trailer parks that do it to you. I live within a 20 minute WALK of a Cal-State College. Across the street from the college DSL is available. But 20 min. walk away and we're screwed. I can't get DSL, line attenuation is too high, and the local cable company, Charter Communications, hasn't made cable available in our area yet. Its not like we live in the boon-docks, or near trailer parks (no offence intended), we live in a middle class neighborhood. This is an area rampant with school-age kids and, I'm sure, enough disposable income to be able to afford high-speed internet. But good old Verizon (whom I would leave if I had half a chance)doesn't have a clue about when they are going to get DSL service in our area, and Charter told us "try back in a few months." I would go with satelite, but it either requires a dial connection for the send portion (would like to avoid tying up the phone line, and it sends at 56k.) or costly equipment (about $1000 to get Starband set up.) And while I make enough to be able to go this route, $1000 dollar start-up, then $60 a month is more than I want to pay for 128Kbps. End result $10/month dial-up and a lot of curses about Verizon. (Is it just me, or is Verizon Customer Service an oxymoron?)
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
VDSL should be providing a solution to this problem as soon as the standards are figured out. See how it compares to other DSL standards here.
This is the same story I got from my phone company (Qwest). My entire neighborhood is on 'pair gain'. The best dial-up anyone can get is 28.8k with 26.4k being the norm and the phone quality (voice) is noticeably poor. An honest sales guy at Qwest was nice enough to tell me DSL will *never* happen unless they invent some entirely knew technology.
Several of the people on my street complained about the line quality in a concerted effort to make something happen. Really quite hopeless I know but it caused Qwest to send out contractors, on Easter day no less, who replaced all the lines on our street. Just the copper from the poles to the houses. Of course it didn't help at all but it was interesting to see the telco reaction and we were really excited (stupidly) for those two hours while they replaced the lines.
I really think I should only pay half price for my phone service because that's about what I'm getting.
Personally I use ADSL (Avian Digital Subscriber Line). With this protocol, you don't worry about whether the lines between you and the telco are copper or fiber. The birds don't really care, just as long as they can sit on them.
But watch out for DoS attacks on this protocol. They're particularly nasty as pointed out by Hitchcock in his prescient masterpiece, The Birds. Most DoS attacks target your network, but these packets go after your hardware and YOU!
I've been working in ISP tech support for about 3 years now, and have been able to be fairly involved with the telco end, thanks to working for a small ISP where you HAD to do everything. The answer I've always gotten from GTE/Verizon, and Southwestern Bell, is that you cannot run DSL over anything but copper until it hits either a CO or a DSLAM. Those squat green boxes you see in some housing developments are usualy a bad sign. In my area (North Central Texas) SWB often runs copper from homes to those boxes, and then fiber from the box to the CO. This lets them run thousands of phone lines, but no DSL for you. One of the upscale housing developments in my hometown was recently put in that situation. They put in a box, and fiber to the CO. They did leave about a dozen copper connections from the box to the CO, so the first 12 people in that development that tried to get DSL, got it. After that, there was no more copper left and everyone else was SOL. I remember hearing somewhere that iDSL (which emulates isdn, complete with the limit of 128k speed) functioned over fiber. However, I've never ever seen anywhere that talked about offering iDSL. The only hope that you have is that they put in a DSLAM in the box where your phone line transfers to fiber. Not working in telco, I'm not sure what this entails, but the SWB guy I've talked to explained it like this. The DSLAM basicaly turns the junction between fiber and copper into another CO, and then routes your data over the fiber like they do at the phone company. Sorry I cant be too specific on the details, maybe someone in the telco industry can give a better explination than that.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
I dont think I saw this part of your question addressed, but forgive me if I missed it. T1's, T3's, OC/12's 48's, etc all have something in common, they pass frames. They can be of anything, voice, data, whatever. As for your question about people on 100% fiber connections, they might not necessarily be able to hook directly into the net. If those fiber lines are only running telephone lines, or they don't have any more available channels on it then without adding more cables or changing their encoding and totally redoing the hardware, there's no way you'll get fiber internet. But here's the other problem, even if they got a fiber line carrying internet out to your closest litle green box, it's not fiber all the way to your house, it gets demuxed into copper anywhere up to a mile or so from your house. They would have to stick in a router and fiber distribution gear and then run fiber to your house. They could run the fiber to your house, yes, but they wont and they also probably won't want to figure out how to stick all that gear in one of those boxes. The boxes get broken into all the time, and they would be more often if kiddies knew there was a Cisco 2501 or something sitting in there. The boxes aren't secure and mostly, not big. I hope this helps some, but don't count on straight fiber runs. Good luck, do check into the G.lite like one other guy mentioned.
I had SouthWestern Bell tell me 6 months ago that I was a victim of the hybrid fiber/copper problem. They blew me off for 6 months then admitted that the problem was negotiating a contract with PairGain for the hardware. I don't know enough to tell you if they were telling the truth but they say DSL is now available. Good Luck!
I believe the problem lies in that despite making the necessary modifications for Internet access locally, Verizon is unlikely to make the required counterpart modifications in the specific fibre/copper switching station(s) to his location. Go cable... for now.
In the beginning of the 90's, Telekom thought it would be doing everybody a favor when it completely replaced the ancient and worn out telephone network in eastern Germany with fiber.
Now, Telekom is really pushing DSL (the only alternative for a flatrate here), which half of the country can't get.
Thinking about it, it really sounds as if DSL were just a interim solution...
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I am also out of DSL Range, suppose to get it later this year, but that was last year. Cable Modems are not going out where I live either, Does anyone know what Sat internet services are out there??