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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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..
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?
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
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?
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.
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."
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?
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
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
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).
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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--
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.)
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!
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?
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
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.
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.
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In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
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
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.
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.
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Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
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Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
This broad spectral band transmission technology you speak of is what in electrical engineering they call "broadband". As opposed to putting a purely digital voltage level on your line, called "baseband" - that's what your network card uses hence "10base*" or "100base*". The problem with baseband is that attenuation scrubs the signal in pretty short order - however the circuitry for baseband is pretty simple. Not so with broadband, open up your DSL modem, I gaurantee you'll see at least one high performance DSP and a whole lot of RF shielding. It's a lot of work to take the wacky signal on your DSL line and convert it to 1's and 0's.
Now to create the broad spectrum of signal on a copper wire is fairly easy. We take fancy electronics and jiggle electrons on the line and the resulting wave travels down the wire - slowly degrading as it encounters impurities in the copper, bridge taps, and so on.
Now the analog of all this to fiber doesn't quite work. There is no reason you couldn't transmit a broad spectral signal over fiber, it is just difficult to generate the different frequencies of light quickly. What we can do is toggle on and off a particular frequency of light really fast. So what is done with fiber is we put an led at one end and it gets turned on and off millions of times a second and we put a detector at the other end. This is sort of baseband style transmission over fiber. Of course the fiber itself can handle transmission of more than just the one frequency given off by the single LED, but there are cost effectiveness issues in there affecting how complicated to make your emitter/detector pairs.
As for the voice and compression issues you mentioned... It really isn't that complicated. The cutoff for your telephone is about 4KHz. The telephone company generally samples everything down to 56kbps of digital data - that's what their switching equipment handles. Ever notice that old ISDN was 56kbps per channel and old T1 was 24 channels of 56kbps? Well, there is a reason for all that. It's all 64kbps now, but I digress. The phone company does a straight digital sampling down to 56kbps on your voice and then passes you through a bandpass filter to remove the artifacts when it puts your voice back together. This is why if you listen to one of those call in radio shows the person on the phone always sounds bad. Audio fidelity on telephones isn't good and there really isn't much difference in talking with someone across the street or across the country anymore. They don't need a supercomputer to compress your voice.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
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
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.
That URL is pretty lame... try this one instead:
www.verizoneatspoop.com
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
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, 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
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.
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.
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
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.