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Feature: Getting DSL
I wrote this is in an effort to purge myself of experience in getting DSL service, and in the hope that it helps make us DSL consumers a little more informed about the machinations behind those slick adverts that are popping up around the US. (Disclaimer.. this is only a local interpretation of my efforts in new york, maybe some of this doesnt apply in your area.. however, 2 years ago, I had an even more troublesome experience trying to get DSL in Singapore, so the trials and tribulations below dont seem confined to just NYC!).
PART I: THE BACKGROUND. Ok.. lets begin at the beginning. I had assumed, before trying to get DSL, that ordering it was straightforward. After all, DSL is a technology that has been discussed endlessly in the press and on the web, and there are adverts around the place saying you can get it.. Concentric DSL and Red-Connect are marketing to NY pretty well, and Flashcom is in the national newspapers... but now I realize that almost nobody has DSL. probably a fraction of 0.1% of all internet accounts are travelling on DSL. Getting DSL, from a customer point of view, I now now believe is equivalent in difficulty to, say, rebuilding your car engine over the summer, you will learn more about phones, telecommunications companies, and equipment than you ever wanted to know, pretty soon you will start to hang out in DSL techie mailing lists listening to opinions on the differences between redback and assured access equipment and chatting to Bell vans in the street hoping to get the inside scoop on upgrades to your local switching centre. If you dont believe me, check out some of the previous tales from the frontline, for instance this article about the guy who tried to get DSL from Bel for his power mac...For some, however, maybe DSL is a simple experience, probably the same kind of people who order from a catalogue then forget about it and are pleasantly surprised when a parcel arrives 2 months later...
The big 56k lie.. in some areas, regular, quality, modems connected to regular, quality, ISPs, will not do more than 26400 (half their promoted speed). This is NOT because of bad wiring in the building etc, it is because your calls go through two digital/analog conversions, apparently this is not un-common in high density areas. Here is the scoop from a tech in the industry that I emailed to ask why my modem wont go faster than 26400, and the Bell guy told me I am on high quality "lightspan" fibre.
- "..... Bell is bringing analog lines out of the digital switch like they would on a standard phone line, then they re-digitize it, send it down to the equipment in the neighborhood(the SLC), and the equipment converts it back to a standard analog phone line. The loss from the D>A>D>A conversions kill anything above 26,400.."
Cable modems, in many areas, are 1-way data. Ie, you have to use a phone line for up-channel. In addition, cable modems are a shared pipe, you share it not with strangers, but with other rabid netsurfers, warez vendors, porn freaks, and quake server operators in your building or street. Your download speed, therefore, varies vastly and CAN be as bad as a modem at peak times in certain areas. In addition, the feeling amongst the isp operators seems to be that this is likely to get worse, not better, as more cable users come on line. Your cable operator has a number of potential bottlenecks that all must be managed correctly to give clean constant speed. In contrast, DSL providers merely have to do the math on backend bandwidth versus incoming DSL lines. DSL providers are pleased that the bandwidth hogs are all jumping into cable.. but you as a cable customer may not be as happy.
Radio and other wireless IP is not anywhere yet, at least in NYC, although there is at least one high speed data net coming on stream, probably designed more for mobile phone use than home internet. There are special exceptions, for instance there is a company that beams down data from empire state building, if you are line-of-sight.
Satellite, for example internet via digital satellite-TV dish, is also an option, but the latency (long ping times) makes less attractive, especially for interactive internet applications (like games) and there is only down-link. Up-link is via your good old modem again... Nobody can fix long ping times due to geographic distance... there is no intel chip in the works to increase the speed of radio waves or electrical signals in conducting materials!
DSL. This is what was left in the bag for me, and with my 26400 data rate thanks to Bells "super duper" optical fibre system, RCNs one-way shared cable modem offering, and time warners non-existant option, and my non-view of the empire state building.
PART II: CONCENTRATING ON DSLThere are two basic types of DSL around now for consumers, ADSL and SDSL. The first is asymmetric, ie, assumes you do more reception than sending. Typically uplink rates are 128 or 384kbps (ie, 1-3 times dual ISDN or 3-9x an average modem speed). Downlink rates are up to 784kbps or even higher. Potentially. Ping times are fast (thats good), probably 40-100ms versus 150-300ms for modems. Basically, this rocks compared to ISDN or any regular modem.
For any DSL service, you are tied to THREE parties. One, the ISP, which typically is your only point of contact, and the people who bill you. Two, the CLEC, ie, Bell Atlantic, which owns the rights to access your house and the wires into it. Three, the DSL carrier, which will be one of several national DSL companies who dont like to field calls from customers, and like to deal with either CLECs or ISPs, but carry your data, and are where 40-80% of your monthly bill goes. In the case of Bell Atlantics own DSL service, they are all three.. the CLEC, the ISP and also the DSL provider!
For all DSL types, your home modem needs to be less than roughly 20,000 feet from the "DSLAM" (DSL Access Muptiplexor), which I think is installed next to the SLC (subscriber loop carrier) equipment, en-route to the phone company CO (central office), and you must be even closer, down to 10000 feet, for buying higher DSL rates. Some DSL vendors can tell you on the phone how many feet you are from their equipment if you give them your phone are code and first 3 digits, and zip code. @work was helpful to me for that (the business side of @home).
There are three reasons why DSL might not be an option for you: One is you are too far from any SLC, therefore you will never be able to get DSL, unless your CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier), builds a new node closer to you. Two is that no DSL provider has yet installed equipment in your CLECs facility. Three is because your physical copper phone line(s) prove to be too old to be handle DSL modem signals reliably. If you pass on these three items, you should be able to get DSL now.
In NYC, www.redconnect.com is building their own network that you get to via Bell (of course). They are offering ADSL. Unfortunately, in my book, their marketing is ahead of their deployment.. they are happy to accept your DSL request, but then put you on analog 56k until the zone around you "lights up"... which may be next week, or next month, or next....? finding out "when" is almost impossible, so signing up is a matter of blind faith.
They are also firmly residential oriented in terms of using DHCP, limiting the number of IP addresses, and having an upstream cap at 120kbps ... Why is this a problem? well DHCP means your IP address changes, typically, about once every few weeks, but if you ever fancy serving any digital data, (http, ftp, or whatever) you dont want a dynamically changing IP address!
Do any DSL search in dejanews, and you will hear about FLASHCOM. An agressive sales oriented company offering DSL nationally via at least Covad and Northpoint (two big DSL networkers that resale their networks to "ISPs" to on-sell to the customer). Flashcom has, on the face of it, the best prices for residential DSL access, and will sign you up over the phone with a fast talking no-worries type sales guy. Technically, however, they are non-existant. They seem to out-source all the services you will be depending on (DNS, DHCP, news servers, pop3 mailboxes) to subcontractors with little accountability to you the customer, and no incentive to provide good service, and the terms and conditions of the contract are a straitjacket.. read the fine print first! They also have an explicit NO SERVERS rule which means if you do decide to get technical and run any kind of mini web server, remote access server, game server or ftp server, you are jeopardizing your whole contract and could be up for termination and end up owing them penalties. I read the fine print and decided I didnt like the tone, and found that backing out was almost as hard as getting in was easy. Trying to raise them again to accept cancellation (which the T&C says clearly can be made within the really super generous cooling off period of 24 hours and zero minutes), was impossible. Of course they ignored my cancellation attempt and placed the order with Northpoint anyway, so I had to tell Northpoint themselves it was supposed to be a cancel, and go back to Flashcom accounting department to find someone to re-do the cancellation... (flashcom reappear, like a reanimated corpse, later in my story) for me, anyway, Flashcom was NOT a pleasant experience. One positive.. in the process of "almost" getting caught by flashcom, I found out that Northpoint was the SDSL provider that covered my area, and that Covad (the other biggie) had not reached it yet (I already knew that redconnect hadnt reached it yet either, although finding that out for sure was very difficult).
Finding an ISP that would give me SDSL from Northpoint was my new mission, and armed with that, it became a bit clearer.. the northpoint website www.northpointdsl.com, allows you to find the list of "partner" ISPs in your area, and the next job is just one of elimination... visiting each website in turn checking dsl info and options...
Prices and DSL install fees vary incredibly for the same data rates! You can go from, literally, zero install cost and a low red-connect or flashcom type of price, to at the other end of the scale, $800 for install and four times higher per month price!
A lot of this may be because of out of date website info.. prices are changing fast. However getting someone on the phone to talk about DSL at the ISPs I tried is hard.. numbers dont answer, or there is voice mail that is never returned, email enquiries dont get answered either.. The better websites ask for your phone number, at least the first 3 digits and the area code, and produce a list of prices and/or even providers and speeds and availability dates. These automated facilities are very helpful in getting an idea of what is happening behind the scenes in your area!
Oh at this point, I should talk about the phone company... Bell Atlantic is trying to build its own retail DSL service, and they have some nice looking web pages on it, (it is called InfoSpeed DSL). However, the DSL number to call to ask them is as impenetrable as the smaller ISPs.. info I can glean on dejanews and mailing lists shows that they are lighting up areas, but the chances are they are not in YOUR area for another "few" months.. there is also the worry about your phone company (in the "we only understand voice" sense) operating an ISP type infrastructure reliably, and getting them to fix a problem if it occurs..
PART III: ORDERING DSLSo now, I found an ISP (i wont say which) to get me SDSL via northpoint, without caring about bandwidth used or servers, and at a price better than flashcom. So here is the process for northpoint and NYC and ISP XYZ.. You order it from the ISP, and fill in forms, pay money, and then wait. After a day to a week, depending on how lazy the ISP is, they contact Northpoint with the order. It then goes into Northpoints system and 48 hours or so after that, a "local loop" request goes to Bell Atlantic from Northpoint (ie, please link customer X to our equipment at your switching centre number Y). At this stage, there is a wait that seems to vary depending on the phase of the moon.. some people say weeks. This is a delay you cant check up on, for Bell need a work order number before they give out info on where you are in the queue, and your ISP is 3 steps removed from knowing that number. For me, I had an order for a 2nd phone line via RCN in the queue anyway, and the visiting bell guy saw the DSL request in the system also, and did both on the spot! The time for me between Northpoint getting the order from the ISP, and me getting a socket on the wall (looks identical to a phone socket by the way), was about 3 days! What is supposed to happen, though, is Northpoint gets some warning, and comes by to do the "inside wiring" and test the install. Inside wiring takes the line from where Bell left it, to the room you want it in. In my case, Bell Atlantic kindly did that also.
Equipment: for DSL, you need a "DSL MODEM", and a PC network interface card of some kind. The other option is a combined dsl-modem- router-hub, I think, which is better for small offices. DSL deals now usually allow you to rent the modem, or buy it outright.
For my case, I was presented (for my $20/mth), a 3COM DSL modem (they only make one, its on the 3com website). This is apparently supposed to magically appear at your doorstep, from Northpoint themselves, but in my case, I went to the ISP to pick it up, as this home modem delivery system from Northpoint hadnt really started yet. The modem is simple: plug it in and watch "das blinken lights". There are no local configuration options or diagnostics with this modem.. either green DSL light means go, or red means problem.. (I wonder if redconnect swap the leads on the LEDs ;)?
You also need a NIC, as I said, which you can buy for $29 to $100 from any decent PC store. Try to buy a popular one, because if you ever have any problems you are more likely to see other people on the net posting about it... you need a NIC because out the back of the DSL modem comes pure 10mbps ethernet, just like you have in your office.
Setup. Tthere are two important things here. One is the MAC address.. this is a unique number allocated to every IP card in the word... equipment makers get ranges, and then allocate them to equipment they produce. Amazingly, no equipment has the same MAC address.. but in reality, I believe, manufacturers re-use them, either by accident or plan, so conflicts on the same LAN do happen. The MAC address needs to be given to your ISP, so they can track you as you, and also, probably unblock your circuit... The IP address is the other important thing, or rather, whether or not your ISP is going to automatically configure your network options via DHCP, or statically allocate an IP to you. For my case, they gave me an IP, a subnet mask, and a default gateway, and a DNS server.. basically the same stuff as anyone who has configured networking for an ISP by using the windows control panel knows.
So now, you have a DSL socket on the wall, a green DSL light (hopefully!.. some people get this far to discover the line isnt good enough after all and have to unwind the whole order), and a NIC and a PC plugged in, and you can send packets to the modem by pinging your default gateway... if you are very lucky, you even get a ping reply and your machine is now active, live and on the web, and will probably get hacked by somebody because you know absolutely nothing about IP security... this DSL line will be up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (hopefully), and you have loads of bandwidth available should you need it, and a fixed monthly bill. For my case, I pay $139/mth for 416k SDSL, plus $20 for the 3com modem.. and thats basically it. Its expensive compared to AOL or a 56k ISP, but I will be able to work from home.. how much is that worth to you?
Part IV FOLLOWUPAlthough the green light is on, I cant ping anything. After poking around with my PC and doing everything else to prove it wasnt my problem, I have to query the ISP on what the problem could be. Here is where dealing with 3 companies really slows you down. The ISP says, basically, its NPs problem, and they, like me, leave a voice mail for NP. (-getting- northpoints number in NYC was very difficult anyway, I expect its classified information...).
After a week of effort to get in touch with Northpoint local technical guys, they finally come through and tell me the reason I have a DSL line, and a green DSL light, so quickly after application, is that it is connected via Northpoint to flashcom!!! the buggers didnt cancel the workorder with Bell! Northpoint confirmed this was not my fault, and are now looking to switch me over to the local ISP that I chose, rather than cutting me off, and having me start again. I am hoping this can happen in relatively short order.
After deciding over a month ago that DSL might be nice, I have got this far. I estimate I have picked over about 20 websites, read about 30 dejanews articles, joined several DSL mailing lists, written about a dozen emails, made about two dozen 1800 calls, listened to the sentence "for quality assurance purposes, this call may be recorded" about four dozen times, visited the new ISP twice, bought and configured one piece of equipment, installed a modem, written a cheque for $220, and so far, I still cant ping anything.
But I am still hopeful!
I just finished (yesterday!) getting DSL installed in my apartment in Des Moines, IA, USA. It took two weeks after we got the phone service hooked up. In that time, there were no big hassles getting everything installed, aside from having to wait two weeks. Last Friday we got the DSL modem and set up everything without a problem. Yesterday we got the information (IP block, gateway, DNS, etc) from our ISP. The line isn't supposed to be setup until tomorrow, but it works now, so I don't care what US West says.
The only hitch with our ISP is that if you go above 1G of data transfer per month, there is an extra charge. Luckily you can keep track of the transfer amounts using the DSL modem.
So, it isn't always difficult to get DSL (even when you're running a plethora of OSes on it -- at least they realized it doesn't matter that we are running Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, OpenBSD and OpenVMS).
My one recommendation would be to look around at the options from the different ISPs. Our main goal was to have a few static IPs for servers. With the default (US West) ISP, that required you to have a much higher (read more expensive) service plan. With the ISP we went with, it ran only $20/month for a block of 8 static IPs.
Dave
When I got ISDN, years ago in Austin, it took a month, from first call to proper connections. When I moved to Houston, it took two weeks. I now have 12 friends here and in Austin with ADSL and most of them had it up and running in under a week, some before the service was officially available.
The only problem is that the normal line phone monkeys cannot even spell ISDN. I am only sort of kidding. With SBT, ISDN and ADSL is still "business service" and you have to deal with another department. I have called the business providers now on and off for almost ten years and they are always, ALWAYS just flummoxed that you want a business line in your house. It just blows their minds. SO that takes some time, as you generally have to wait while they try to talk you out of it and get a nice second analog line. No, I am not kidding at all. Then you get to speak to their supervisor who is always concerned that you don't understand that you are getting a "business line" into a residence. After this vintage 1970 experience, the SBT line guys come out. Mostly, they are in and out fast and the line works right away. If there are odd circuit problems (as happened in Austin ten years ago), this may get trickier, as SBT will a)insist that there is no problem, there can be no problem, and that if there is a problem, it is your fault ("Thank you for flying Aeroflot") and b)they cannot get to you until sometime after the spring thaw (next spring, if it is mid-summer). They always come within a week, but I have never understood their policy of dashing your hopes.
One definitely nice thing about SBT is that if you have to go up the line two people or so, you wind up going DOWN the line, i.e., you will be talking to the guy in the truck, and a lot of those guys are gurus. Also, SBT tends to be very UNIX-friendly, and as far as they are concerned, Linux is just UNIX. You don't get any of that "we only support Windows" stuff -- if you want raw IP, you will get it (and often for a lot less).
So, at least in Texas, with SBT, things are a little better.
I've actually had DSL installed twice now, the first time last year when PacBell first offered it on an experimental basis, and again two weeks ago when I moved.
The only prolonged problem I've had was getting reverse DNS configured correctly in the first install (it took 2 weeks before they got it right on PBINet's end). And the occasional Bay Area wide outage of DSL for a few hours (once every month or two). The original hookup was pricey ($160/month) but I got 384K symmetric. PacBell quit offering 384K symmetric after the trial, but I was able to hang on to it until I moved.
After my move I was forced to pick between the two offered packages of 128K/384K-1.5M ($40/month) and 384K/1.5M-6.0M (a bit over $200/month). I chose the lower one. On the day of the install the installer came out, found the equipment closet, did the install, I tested it (with my Linux box) and it worked. No problems. And that is where it stands.
So, with two installs, I have had very few problems. As always, YMMV.
--
Benjamin Franz
I have ADSL through US west in SLC, Utah, and it was trivial to setup and works wonderfully. Sorry to hear you have had such grief.
why is this posted under "The Internet" topic?
DSL can be used to carry internet data, but it doesn't have to be.
I have signed up with Flashcom about 6 mos ago (they were the best option in my area at the time) and I am fairly happy but I think I am a special case.
Their SMTP server is running sExchange but fortunately I have other ways of receiving mail so I don't need to use the beast. Their NNTP server is outsourced to someone on the other side of the Net (supernews.com i think), but again, I have other ways to get my news.
my biggest gripe used to be that they didn't provide any kind of DNS service, not even reverse lookup, which meant that some FTP and SMTP servers didn't let you in, fortunately they have fixed this.
Bandwidth is pretty good, works as advertised most of the time (I'm paying for 256/64). There are short outages every once in a while but no worse than your average ISP.
IP is static for me but this might have changed for new customers, i have no idea.
You must have saint-like patience. When you compare the difficulty to "rebuilding your car engine during the summer" I assume you really meant "Instructing a workgroup of 7 wild chimps and one python to rebuild your car engine, with communication and control limited to semaphore flags. Chimps must also go to the dealer (python can stay at home) to order the needed replacement parts. The use of written lists is not allowed".
The dis- and re- assembly of a car engine should only take 3 days, not counting time at the machine shop, and that's if you are being careful...
I have had the experience of DSL, CableModem, T1 and T3 in Phoenix. T3 obviously is the best choice. :)
From there it depends. I have had T1's that had only 500mbps guaranteed and ones that had 900mbps guaranteed.
USWest is the provider for DSL in Phoenix. My experience with them was wonderful. They installed two weeks early. If you are a geek they are great!!! You can administer everything for your account through the web and DO NOT have to rely on them!!! Plus, their routers work great with Linux and NT together!!! Speeds of 256k and 512k are more than affordable and speeds are constant.
CableModems (@HOME) was a pleasant experience, and very fast 1.5-3mbps both ways! However, as more people get installed the speeds begin to slow. Also, you can not run your own web site, have a static IP, and many other good things that DSL or a T1 give you.
My advice is if you don't want your own web services (you don't plan on running a web server) then Cox is cheaper and easier to deal with. If you want to run a web server then US West is the better deal.
HOWEVER, both of these services are available in a LIMITED area in Phoenix. I have heard good things about speed choice the satellite provider for areas not having @home or DSL, but it requires a phone line and is kind of pricey for one high bandwidth...
My 2 cents.
delphigeek@forchrist.com
Sorry to hear about your troubles. Here in Colorado, I have 384kbps on the downlink and 128kbps on the uplink.
I was paying $40/month to US West for the ADSL line + $25/month to my ISP (It would have been $5/month cheaper if I had used uswest.net as my ISP, but I had heard stories about their practice of horribly oversubscribing their lines.)
On May 11, I got a letter from US West informing me that they were LOWERING(!) my rate for the ADSL line to $29.95/month. They claimed it had something to do with an FCC ruling about Internet traffic being interstate in nature, but I personally think that they're feeling the competition from cable companies.
So the bottom line is that I'm now paying $54.95/month for everything.
Hey Chris,
I got SWBs $80/month service and you don't need any router. You just plug the ADSL modem into the uplink port of your network hub.
The author states that 56K modems are hampered by TWO D/A conversions. This is not true. Where 56K lines are concerned, only the end user has an analog line. The back end connection to the ISP is pure digital, either via ISDN or leased line. Don't believe me? Try dialing to one 56K modem from another over a POTS line. The ISP must have special digital equipment on their end for 56K to work.
Well from my experience here are the things to do to make sure you have a good DSL experience:
1) Buy all your own equipment (if possible). Some providers (like USWest) will be nice enough to offer to sell you a DSL router (they're actually not modems) at a good price. Others wnat to "rent" you a modem. Don't let them. Not only does it end up costing you more in the long run but then you have to go with what they choose for you.
2) Buy a Cisco routers. They are simply the best.
3) Buy an external router. The internal models need drivers and often DON'T have those for linux.
4) Buy the Cicso 675. That's the external one. It is very stable, easy to use, works with all OSes and just hooks straight into an eithernet network. Configurable through telnet.
5) Get a good carrier (if possible). I use USWest because the deals on the lines really are very good (plus I don't think I have a choice). If you are paying more than about $40/month for 256k fo line you are getting screw in my opinon.
6) Shop around for different ISPs. Now all ISPs are going to have a different deal. Some will allow servers, some will not. Some will allow multiple computers, some will not. If you ask the company giving oyu the line they will probably tell you all the ISPs that can provide DSL access, then you can ask the ISPs what their particular deal is.
7) Learn up on your networking. Since the DSL router is actually a router and not a modem it is a bit more complex. Essentially what it is is a bridge between a LAN (or in some cases your computer) and a DSL circut. That provides a Virtual Circut to your ISP's WAN. There are different ways it can be configured (the Ciscos can be bridging or PPP) so you need to know a bit about it.
Following these tips I am happily supplied with 256k of DSL access for just $50 a month. I don't have a static IP but mine never seem to change and I can have 3 computers (mine, my roomate's and our Linux box) all running at the same time.
I also use USWest.... in their web information they specifically mention that you may have as many computers going through the ADSL line as you like. And each of them gets their own ip (DHCP for me... I'm not rich enough to afford permanent yet).
I've been running an ftp and web server since day 1 of adsl. I've only lost my ip twice. But since I have access to the server that does my DNS, it was quick enough to update it.
Don't know what's up with RCN and Boston, but I think M1 just bought out Time-Warner's franchise in Somerville. Good thing, since that's where I'm moving to.
Personally, I prefer the higher upstream bandwidth DSL provides to the wimpy 56k pipe cable provides.
Moreover, the only time I see the higher bandwidth of cable coming into play (when it's not being sapped by others in your neighborhood) is when you're downloading the 25MB demo of Q3.
Ummm, I have ADSL and I it uses my existing voice line. In fact, I can talk on the phone and use the ADSL service at the same time. I have a Cisco675 ADSL router.
You do not need to have a second phone line to use DSL. DSL reserves part of the bandwidth for voice traffic. So, you are always connected to the 'net regardless of whether you are using your phone or not.
I believe US West and AMUG (Arizona Macintosh Users Group) both offer it, with AMUG having better prices. Try www.amug.org; I forget US Worst's website, but I think it's www.uswest.net.
A fellow Houstonite!
I'm getting ADSL from SWBell as well (in 3 - 4 weeks, they say), and my roommate and I are trying to figure out the best way to connect both of our comptuers. Have you had any problems with ip masqueing? Or are you doing something else to connect all 5 computers?
If you'd email me at stc@rice.edu, I'd appreicate it.
Steve Carstensen
Even on a 28.8K modem link, your ISP's connection can have a huge impact on the speeds you typically see. If your ISP uses one of the four Mickey Mouse backbones -- Sprint, BBNPlanet, Alternet, Globalnet (M-O-U-S-E) you'll probably never see the full capabilities of your line. It's very important to find out who your prospective ISP is dealing with.
My experience has been just the opposite. Better than T1 downloads (from fast servers anyway...223Kbytes per second from ID downloading Q3alpha) and 50-60Kbytes upstream. I have two way. No packet loss to speak of (I've never noticed it anyway, and I play Quake, Tribes, EQ)and it's _always_ connected, just fire up whatever prog and your on.
I'm in portland too. I have adsl, my house has 2 phone lines and that was only an issue when uswest first installed the service on the wrong line. It took 2 months of struggle with varius issues, mostly uswest stuff but I'm finaly connected. Uswest atomaticly signs you up with uswest.net service wich I didn't want. That was one of the struggles (switching). I'm with aracnet.com now and very happy. They use linux so set up and configuration with them was easy. Nobody at uswest that I ever talked too seemed to know anything. At one point I had the folks at aracnet call them up to convince them that aracnet was a legitemate isp. Anyway 2 months of hard work seems to have paid off, I'm paying for 256k and I'm getting 500-600 down and 200-300 up.
On the contrary, wireless IP *is* available. Check out http://www.spectrumwireless.net - point-multipoint links at 11Mbps!
If you don't know how to do these things yourself, pay a middle-man like alldomains.com money to do it for you. They charge you for the "real" charges of doing this and some extra service fees.
Here in norway Telenor/TELIA (THE phonecompany) seem to have invested too much in ISDN. This mean no ADSL, no high speeds. *sigh*.
Seems like we're stuck with modem/ISDN for a while (cable is only available from a few cable companies in the big cities).
A side note on Telenor: They ship 56k modems, but you can't connect with anything faster than 33.6
Such a brilliant idea.
BellSouth has an interesting plan. They run most of their T1 lines on DSL modems and charge you out the wazoo for the T1. Why should they ruin their T1 racket by selling you a DSL line? I tried to get DSL from Bellsouth and they said "oh, we don't offer that, but we'll see you a T1." I tried to lease the copper but they refused that also. I finally bought a T1 and before I knew it they had installed a pairgain DSL modem hooked up to copper. Now of course I was pissed so I called Bellsouth to complain. I won't get into detail, but they refused to sell me tariffed line which is totally illegal. They conveyed to me that they knew they had screwed me so I should go ahead an sue. They had a large legal department that would be happy to drag the case out for 10 years or so. At least they where honest :-) So now here I am with my DSL line and huge monthly bill for a T1.
Actually Bell Atlantic the phone company controls, but is legally seperate from bellatlantic.net, the ISP.
When you sign-up for BellAtlantic's ADSL (which they call InfoSpeed) you are given the opportunity to choose an ISP, if you don't choose one you could still theoretically connect to some other network besides the Internet, for example your employer's private network, but you would simply not have Internet access. By law, Bell Atlantic cannot assign you to an ISP, not even (especially?) their own.
Bell Atlantic will make it worth your while if you DO choose bellatlantic.net as your ISP. They will rebate $50 toward the cost of your DSL "modem" and pay for all the installation work in your in house (there is still a service initiation fee), IF you agree to sign-up with their ISP for at least a year.
A new twist will be put into this when they start their arrangement with AOL (any day now) to let you use AOL as both your DSL provider and ISP, for $42/month, which will be $7.95 less than the combination DSL/ISP package Bellatlantic itself offers.
As always, your service depends on the ISP. Personally, the ISP I work for can install DSL in our service area for $50/month residential, connections can burst up to 3 megabit down, 1 up, and by default you get 2 static IPs.
Unfortunately, we can't compete with the cable marketing giant TCI, and most people have trouble understanding the $10 difference in price between DSL and cable modems. *sigh*
FTR, we use PairGain ADSL modems, and USWorst provides the line for $23/month.
My DSL experience was nothing like that. My phone
line provider, DSL provider, and ISP are all one
company: USWest. I already had an ISP for 56K
(28K really!) which was pretty bad. They also
outsourced their news server which made surfing
for pr0n a real pain.
I ordered via the web, and got a pretty good deal
on a Cisco DSL modem, self-installation, and
uswest.net as my ISP. I didn't use a different
company because all the other ones I looked at
wanted to charge extra if you used more than 1GB
of bandwidth. They don't charge by connection
speed either.
Later, I got a voicemail saying that they would
not be able to give me DSL until after June
because all the connections were in use (or
something along those line) but then the next
week (in May) a box from Cisco, including the
microfilters for the phones, a 3com ethernet card,
an external Cisco DSL modem, and step by step
instructions showed up. Woohoo! I connected
everything (following the instructions to
configure in via serial port) but then it didn't
work. So I called the help phone number and was
connected, it took about 5 seconds to find out
that I needed to set it to PPP mode instead of
bridging mode, which I could have done in about
10 seconds, but the guy walked me through it
very slowly ("now hit enter") and I stayed on
in case something didn't work, and voila! I was
on the net.
I get about 400 kbps which is not
the best but I don't care. It still it great...
Not to mention great pings to quake2 servers.
What I am wondering now is... there are two wall
plate phone jacks in the same spot in my apartment
and it just worked when I got the modem... could
it be that the previous tenant had DSL and it's
just already hooked up. hmm... Some
experimentation is in order. (like hooking the
DSL modem to the other jack, to see if the other
line has a microfilter) Anyways.
I wish they would offer @home in my area. Here in Wilkins Township we are at the mercy of Adelphia which has something like a two year wait for cable modems in this area.
ADSL was recently offered in my area by a local provider and within one week of signing up for it, the line was installed, live, equipment was set up and I was up and running. No hassle and only 70$ a month....
What about setup fees? I've seen a lot of fooDSL deals in which the monthly pricing is OK, but you're getting ripped to the tune of hundreds of dollars for the setup. $50/mo is pretty good - I'd be willing to pay even more - but not if it involves the big bucks simply to have some bejumpsuited fool come to my house to plug stuff in.
Wow. That sounds horrible. I use the phone company for ADSL, ISP and phone service, but so far they've been great. 180 kilobytes/second down, 30 kilobytes/second up, all for $65 Canadian a month (and that includes the modem rental).
They also give me an alias so that even if my IP address changes, my alias doesn't and people can still get to my web server.
I'm a student living in an apartment in Houston this summer, and two weeks or so ago we ordered a DSL line from SWBell. There's a horrific backlog, so it's not getting installed until June 17th, but at least the lady I talked to on the phone was smart and helpful. (Yeah, it blew my mind; I feared the absolute worst.) Anyway, the deal we got was sweet; you might want to double-check your numbers. We're paying $39/month for five static IPs and the minimum bandwidth (between 384 Kbps and 1.5 Mbps on the downstream, and 128Kbps upstream). Yep, five static addresses. Sweeeeeet. Finally, I'll be able to ssh in to my house from work and vice versa. Anyway, point is, there are good DSL stories out there too (well, knock on wood; the lines isn't actually installed yet, after all...:). Maybe this would be a cool project for the slashdot community - could we maybe compile a list of high-bandwidth providers (along with rate info, tech explanations, etc) and reviews from users? This would be an invaluable service, as I would imagine people spend an awful lot of time reinventing the wheel just looking through all this stuff.
-Patrick Hearon (and no I'm not registering)
Well,
I think most people are getting DSL but the Phone Cos is not "getting" it.
I live north of Chicago and called Ameritech for SDSL/ADSL service. The Cust Ser person asked what that was and if I was from a foreign country!!!
As for cable modem - forget it. We are lucky if we get cable service properly.
So I am chugging with a modem (33.6) and loaded up on RAM - that helps.
Remember we will win beacuse we are stuborn(er) (apologies to Wren & Martin/Webster)!!!!
Maybe it can't be easily detected, but if they start monitoring you because of suspicious activity (outgoing telnet or IRC, or especially ssh, or catching you running a server with a portscan), I'm sure that, if they're smart enough, they can figure out what you're doing.
For example, ports for outgoing connections might be allocated in an odd way (non-sequential, or two different sequences for real vs NAT'd connections). Or, they could just make guesses, like watching for what appears to be two separate web sessions, or web connections from two different browser versions. Or, multiple IRC, ICQ, quake, POP/IMAP connections. If they see any of that, if you're not doing NAT, you're at least doing something strange (like multiple users logged into one box), and that's definately the kind of thing ISPs don't like.
I am in agreement with this user. I wouldn't give up my cable modem for just about anything. The whole issue of shared data is such a funny thing. Corporations routinely put 100-150 people on a switched 10Mb/s ethernet without too much difficulty because network traffic is bursty.
The bandwidth that I have to share over my cable modem is with everyone on the distribution hub to which I'm connected. That distribution hub has 30Mb/s of bandwidth. I have 10Mb/s bandwidth to my house. The distribution hubs, at least in my neck of the woods, have a maximum of 500 houses on them. With 50% cable modem subscription (an extremely high estimate for the forseeable future) that's 250 people sharing 30Mb/s of bandwidth.
Given the bursty nature of networking, shared bandwidth is not really a problem. The biggest problem we've had in our area was when the cable company only had a 10Mb/s pipe ot the Internet shared amongst all of its users throughout the city! Now that they've installed an OC3 to the Internet, I'm consistantly fast again.
The shared bandwidth issue that is really a problem is the bandwidth to the Internet, not the shared bandwidth to my house. And shared bandwidth to the Internet is a problem for DSL, satelite, ISDN, and analog modems, as well as cable modems.
I just think that the shared bandwidth issue is a lot more hype than reality, and it's likely to remain that way.
xDSL around here is 1/3rd to 1/10th the price this person is paying. Sign up takes about 10 clicks on a webpage and some typing.
Most of the problems are COMPANY BASED and have NOTHING TO DO WITH xDSL. I.E. the same whining can be applied to buying a car, cable, satelite dish etc.
All in all the article isn't a good idea of DSL because what little information about DSL is in there is awash in specifics that this character has got himself into and just don't/won't apply to most people.
This is clearly illegal.
I don't care if you signed the declaration of independence, you can't sign away the rights they are violating.
80%-90% of Californians can get
xDSL service.
Kali love everytime!!
Let me show you how the West Coast Rocks!
SBT no longer offers raw IP (went home for lunch). They stopped a few years back because they had less than 50 users in Austin. So I was right, but now I am wrong. Sorry about that. I called to make sure on that and (as per usual) I had to talk to three layers of people, but the last person that I spoke with said that anyone who had been using that service had had to switch to a normal ISP account last year.
I live just outside San Francisco, and other than minor glitches, getting ADSL was a breeze here too. The first time I called, they said I was too far from the CO. But then I called back and begged, and they said, that I was fine for it. So for $50/mo, I get 128 up, and 500+ down.
I think that the author of the article, just needs to move from NY.
Here in Europe DSL isn't even an option, we have *huge* rates...
That's usually only true if you go with an ISP that is offering a flat rate. If you go for a metered service, they usually won't care what you do.
When did Rogers switch to DHCP? To the best of my knowledge they have (as opposed to Shaw@Home) always used static IPs, and certainly I was given a static IP when I got my account in January...
You do _not_ have to set your hostname to something else. I didn't touch the hostname on my NT server, which is what is connected to the cable modem.
There is an issue with accessing their special pages. I didn't want to go through their web proxy, so can only access their special @home pages from my server (connected to the cable modem) instead of from any computer of my local network, by temporarilly pointing the browser on the server to their proxy...
I would be HAPPY to waste large chunks of time getting decent broadband.
Too bad my options are: the non-option of the service not provided by Adelphia, the non-option of the service not provided by GTE and the non-wonderful choice of satelite.
Too bad DirecPC is such a RAPE! Seriously, do you have a better term for something that expensive that is A) one way B) useless for games and C) incredibly unreliable (yes, it frequently goes down even during perfect weather conditions)?
Just so my post has some real content: in my area the cause of the 26,400 connections is not density (if we had more non-redneck population density we would at least have ISDN). The problem is that the lines just plain suck! One of my friends lives next to his area's Big Green Box and he gets 54k connects all the time.
My experience with cable modem (MediaOne in Cambridge, MA) is that it's virtually always the server on the other end that you're waiting for. Every time I see a slow transfer rate from a server I'll go to another server just to confirm I'm still getting fast downloads. It really doesn't matter whether your local pipe has "guaranteed" bandwidth -- the bottleneck is no longer in your neighborhood.
"You order it from the ISP, and fill in forms, pay money, and then wait. After a day to a week, depending on how lazy the ISP is, they contact Northpoint with the order."
In defense of ISPs, these orders are made almost instantly by local ISPs here in Virginia. What takes forever is the bueracracy between Conexant and Bell Atlantic.
ISPs can generally handle their work fast, since they really have nothing to do, other then give the hostmaster some work arranging IPs and DNS, maybe configure the router that the customer uses, and take care of its own little billing/paperwork.
But the circuit orders and providers take their sweet time. We have had the customer's gear and our system ready to fly in under ten minutes here, but Conexant and telco take up to six weeks. But of course, since ISPs are marginally easier to contact then telco or the DSL office, guess who looks the fool.
I am also using ADSL, as provided by BC Tel in British Columbia. I have been on the service for over a year and get excellent data rates. Just over 3 Mb/s downstream, and about 500 kb/s uploading. I pay $64.95 Canadian dollars, all inclusive. The service does have a 1 GB transmission limit, but it is not enforced. It was a smooth install once I made it to the top of the waiting list. A technician showed up, installed it made a couple of tests and I was off and running less than 2 hours later. I currently have two machines running off of it at no additional cost. It uses DHCP to assign IP addresses, with a 1 week expiry, so as long as I have my machine on once a week, I have that IP address forever. All in all, I have been very happy. All I could ask for is more bandwidth and a lower monthly bill. :)
I've had a shaw cable modem in toronto since early 1996. The speed has degraded since then to about 5x slower than it was in 1996, but it still is extremely fast. As far as cheap high speed connections go, shaw has been the best I've seen in north america. Most other cable companies go through @home which has a terrible backbone no matter what anyone says (MAE NAPS ARE EVIL). The exception is roadrunner which has fairly decent multi-homed backbone connections (mostly to cw [previously mci's backbone]). Even comparing shaw@home to rogers@home in the local market, shaw wins. Rogers again, gets the majority of traffic from @home, and shaw buys traffic from uunet, cw, teleglobe, sprint-canada. The backbone makes an incredible difference -- modem users just havent noticed this because they are slow no matter what.
:) Heck, i install freebsd at home over network at 300k/s from some virginia tech mirror site (cdrom.com has gotten slooow thanks to the new 5000 user limit) :)
As for DSL, I just don't think its there yet. It's extremely expensive if you want something comparable to a cable modem connection. I only pay 40 dollars canadian a month for a 2-5 megabits p/s downlink and 500kbps uplink (on average) -- and dsl seems to be charging around 60 for anywhere between 512kbps - 1.5mbps downlink and 96kbps - 256kbps uplink.
I for one feel extremely lucky to have had a home connection comparable to multiple t1's downlink and 1/2 t1 uplink since 1996. It's nice to be able to download files from work at 590k/s
-djp
They don't even HAVE to give you a routable IP address. They could just assign you a 10.x.x.x address and do NAT overloading on their router. You'll be able to browse the web and ftp, etc. but how do you tell your friends to ftp to 10.50.20.10 when no one will route those addresses? ;-) So much for your FTP/WWW server idea.
I'm gonna connect with MVL (multiple virtual line) soon. It's not an xDSL technology. It's made by Paradyne (www.paradyne.com)
It works with any phone wiring twisted or untwisted and send the signal at 100khz instead of xDSL 2 MHz so it's less prone to noise, different wire gauge, etc... DSL is very sensible to these things
The connection will run at 768 kbps on both sides. I won't have a fixed IP tough, it will run with DHCP. DHCP is less trouble for ISPs: no fucker will steal your IP address when your machine is turned off.
Anyway you can use dynip.com to get a domain name for your dynamically changing IP.
The whole stuff cost less than DSL equipment and according to Paradyne, can work up to 7 km.
The *whole thing* is really user installable, nobody needs to go to your house (saves $$$).
My ISP is also my telco and they have their own equipment so I won't have to fuck with 3 companies like the poor guy did!
Also, you do not need a POTS splitter but you have to install a special filter on each phone wire to remove noise, if any. That must be a simple low-pass passive filter I think.
So check it out. it's at http://www.paradyne.com
Just do a search for MVL on their website.
They are very expensive,
Yes.
and usually the T3 provider has transfer limits, if you go over these limits you have to pay for all the extra bandwidth you used.
Uh, no. If you get your line from a real provider, like AT&T or Sprint, you can use it as much as you want. No restriction except for the size of the pipe.
I have PacBell too. I ordered it and a couple of calls later, an appointment was scheduled for about 1 1/2 weeks in the future. The technician made the appointment (even called me ahead of time). My inside wiring to the phone jack I wanted to use was only two-wire so he had to run some wire along the trim of my house and then through the wall; he did this with a style of work that obviously indicated a good amount of experience doing this kind of thing. Two hours after he got here, I had a green light, and it's never gone red that I've noticed.
:)
My upload power is about 13-15KB/sec, which is just about consistent with the capped 128kbit upstream rate advertised, but my downloads usually max out at around 140KB/sec, which is a lot faster than the 384kbit/sec download rate. (512kbit/sec down is around 55KB/sec, so it's actually more in the T1 ballpark).
My only complaint is that the routing is not as smooth as what I got from Earthlink/Charter. Their cable modem access is slower at the same price, but for some reason I had zero routing problems; I guess they just go through different upstream carriers. With PacBell, there are sometimes problems which are apparently either on ibm.net or pbi.net, according to my traceroutes. They seem to have cleared up over the last week, though.
Overall, it's been a blast. I got ~50-60 ping to various and sundry close-by Quake servers with ELN/Charter; if I'm lucky, I can find 29-40 ping to the same servers through PB DSL. Not that it really makes any perceptible difference, but it sure looks nice.
It took a month and a half after calling flashcom to get it installed, but that was mainly bell atlantic's fault. Each install date that flashcom set with them they claimed to have done everything when they actually hadn't touched it. Once bell atlantic finally did what they had to, it works perfectly. And about their policy of "no servers", I signed a different one, that didn't have a "this can change at any time" clause. I also signed up during a special offer that gets me 384 SDSL for $60 a month. Not bad, imo. I don't know what I will do if I am forced to sign that new TOS after my current 1 year contract runs out.
For anyone thinking of getting xDSL or Cable you may want to check out this site I just found in Computer World. It basically tells you which services are available in your area.
http://www.getspeed.net
Ameritech seems particularly clueless with regards to DSL. I'm over in DeKalb, and have an order making it's way through GTE, at the moment. DSL is brand-new here, and the ISP I'm getting it through seems fairly clueful. They don't mind if you run servers or multiple computers over the same line, but they do impose a transfer rate limit of 1 gigabyte a month. As I don't plan on running any serious web servers or mp3 sitez (heh), I don't expect this to be a problem.
Of course, since I don't actually have the service installed yet, this is all conjectural...
They do stiff you on the hardware, it's true. If you go for a one-year contract, it's a free installation; otherwise, there's some outrageous fee you have to pay. And in either case, you still have to pay $198 for the hardware (splitter, modem, and ethernet card). You don't get to save any cash if you already have an ethernet card and would prefer to avoid buying one. I think it is, however, possible to avoid paying for any of the hardware if you have all of it already. This would be nice for you since you could maybe get your DSL line for a year, skip the install fee, and then sell your DSL hardware when you move out.
-Patrick Hearon
I'll start with a date last year.
August 18th, 1998
Another date:
April 26th, 1999
The first is the order date, the second is when I finally got dsl in. But that's not quite fair, since I did move once in the middle. My new place does not get cable modems, so I have to use uswest copper to connect to the net.
Chronology:
August: order DSL for my apartment, get told, October 12th. Uswest provides the wires, seanet provides the isp.
October: Order is gone, and in the meantime, uswest has royally screwed my voice phone bill.
November: Order is supposed to go in on the 18th, but doesn't. The line is finally in the day before thanksgiving. No equipment though, and there's a long weekend with no family in town. Shit. Phone bill is still screwed up.
Late november, I buy a house. When I started this saga, I was not even thinging about it seriously.
December 2, I get the equipment. Unfortunately UsWest hasn't told my isp that I exist.
December 7, I finally get up an running, and it is sweet. Three machines, 15 min setup time, dhcp/nat on the inside, fixed ip on the outside.
December 17, I call UsWest and tell them I want to move my service. (Voice, Voicemail, DSL)
December 19, They call and get me my new number.
January 7, I close on the house and move.
January 8, I find out that they gave me the number of Hansen's Lamps. And that the DSL wan't transferred. So the only thing they got right was the voicemail, which was listening on a number that I wasn't giving out, since I didn't know it.
Mid February. I'm charged for the DSL installation, which hans't happened. They still haven't told me when it will go in. I bitch and complain, and they take the charge off. I want to omplain to a manager, and the manager makes the install free.
End of Feb, They say that it will be may 1 before DSL is installed.
Mid March, The DSL Charge is taken off, and put back on my bill. We're running about 1 correct phone bill since september. I complain through many phone drones, finally find one that is lying like a rug and one that isn't (who confirms the lies and gets me in touch with a supervisor).
End of march, I find out that Flashcom is a possibility. They will let me have a server and will host my personal domain dns for me.
April 1 or so. I get a message from USWest that I'm actually in the queue.
Early April. I buy a cellphone, Order from flashcom, and cancel the USWEst order. I figure that it can't get any worse the uswest has done, and I was right.
Mid april, I'm slammed by Quest. Whoopie.
April 26, I get flashcom dsl in, it works ans it's fast. A little muddling with the dns numbers, since they were given to me wrong, but it works.
May 4, I call USWest and tell them cut off voice service.
May 25th. Uswest calls me to confirm that my order hasn't been lost, and that it is scrheduled to be installed sometimeafter june 1. I laugh in their face, and tell them that I'm already up with a competitor, and that I've dumped them for voice.
Anyone for uswestsucks.org?
I now am completely free of uswest, and it feels good.
eric
ADSL, if I remember correctly, began as this weird semi-useful half-forgotten technology that somebody at Alcatel or some defense contractor came up with one day while sitting around daydreaming about how much data could theoretically be pumped down a copper wire, right?
;-)
I don't think it was ever intended to be rolled out on a massive scale, and quite frankly I think it's pretty bloody amazing that it works at all, considering the infrastructure it's working over.
It's not the fault of the technology that it has apparently fallen into the hands of an incredibly wide variety of inept and/or evil marketing and implementation goobers.
Case in point: I've got BellSouth ADSL in Chapel Hill, NC. Yes, it took me a half-dozen phone calls and two separate visits from an installer before it would work. No, they don't seem to be able to simply tell you on the phone whether you're within 3 miles of the C.O. Yes, I did have to move closer to the C.O. in order to get it (well, I was moving anyway--the getting-closer part was a happy side effect).
HOWEVER, now that it's working, I'm paying $60 a month for 256k up/1.2mb down (they made me pay $300 upfront for the installation, including purchase of a 3c905 NIC, and the Alcatel ADSL modem, which I suppose I get to keep when I move again, for all the good that'll do me.)
Web pages & file transfers happen faster than they do at work via the corporate T-1 through the firewall. I can already sense that my web pages are liable to get accidentally more bloaty just because I'm not as likely to be testing them via 28.8 dialup anymore
I think the ADSL "problem" comes from the great swirling pool of massive disappointment that is being created because most providers, like BellSouth, seem to be physically incapable of presenting the risks/problems with the technology upfront. The facts are simple, once somebody tells you: You need to have less than 3 miles of good copper, with no fiber, between your house and the C.O.
I'd say that probably eliminates 75% of the population. BellSouth's problem (and the problem of all the other providers, apparently) is that they can't figure out how to track down & market to the 25% who *are* eligible, and they can't figure out how to put a happy face on what would appear to be rather depressing odds. So they just ignore the odds & under-advertise the service in an effort to avoid mass hassles.
What they end up with, of course, is thousands of pissed-off non-customers, and a piddly handful who meet the two criteria of (a) knowing what ADSL is, and (b) having a line that qualifies.
Bottom line: ADSL is definitely the Zen connect technology. It either works or it doesn't. No amount of kvetching or calling other vendors will fix that. Throwing more money at it doesn't even help. The little light is either green or red. For that reason, I find it to be simultaneously more infuriating and much more inspiring than the myriad of run-of-the-mill networking problems-with-solutions I handle at work all day.
I mean, you have to admit it'd be kind of fun, in a sick way, to be an ADSL installer & be able to just stand there & say "nope, sorry, doesn't work" when the light's blinking red, rather than having to spend the next 5 hours sweating bullets trying to fix it with an irate customer standing over you. Well, sort of.
grady
its $10 for Internet access + $40 for dsl line + $198 for equipment and installation + one year subscription required( for $10+40 per month) or read [ all info] from their web site
I've got zero problem with mine (Pacbell). I regularly get 150K/sec from fast servers, and I get a solid 10-13K/sec transmitting to the office...
:)
No complaints, and 1/3 the price to get a static IP compared to Roadrunner San Diego..
I run basic web and print for my homepage, and SMTP/POP3.
And how the hell can they tell if you're running NAT or not
That is a huge problem. There is no reason for them to block port 80 to force users to use the proxy. I have perfectly legitimate reasons to connect to port 80 on remote machines. I would normally use the proxy, but it is outrageous that I would be forced to do so.
This is what's been happening in Residential University networks for a long time. At my University, we are not allowed to run any servers at all. That means WWW, FTP, POP, Quake, whatever.
:)
They don't seem to enforce it very well however, since I ran Linux with FTP and Telnet moved off to obscure ports to slow down the script kiddies and never heard anything of it. Well, that and there are all the people who run Quake listen servers, Windows shares, etc. Most likely your ISP and my University use it as a "you screwed us out of bandwidth so we're going to screw you back" clause if you run a high traffic server.
Not that I would know anything about getting busted for having a high traffic server *COUGH*
On the other hand, if one enables promiscous on their NIC, they're in deep trouble. I don't think the Man at my U is as paranoid as reading our mail. Damn straight too, if they did half the campus would be rioting.
I am one of those central office guys who, among other things, connects cabling from the DSLAM block to the regular POTS line equipment and outgoing cable pairs. I also connect ISDN lines, and I can say, without a doubt, that ADSL is better in every way. Customers, who are close enough to the CO, also love it.
If only the company didn't lose money on every line, they might roll it out faster...
sorry, no.
Companies do duplicate MACs,
whether by accident or design.
I've had ADSL service through GTE (and a seperate ISP) in Wa state since november and never had a hitch with it. Call'd GTE, ask'd for DSL service, they ask'd for my ISP's name, gave it to them, 4 days later some fellow show'd up, plug'd the DSL modem in, and away I went. 100% uptime. It probably helps that I work for the ISP, but still. ;)
I forgot to mention, I paid $53 a month for 384/384 (786k total) service, and now pay $68 for 768/768 (1.5mbs total) service, plus $20 ISP, for a 15 IP subnet (what kinda deal is that? ;) Run'n 4 computers, 3 linux, 1 xterm offa it all... so. DSL modem is an orkit, actually a router if you wanta pay the money for the software, otherwise it's a bridge, which makes the whole deal pretty much seemless, unless the ISP doesn't know how to configure a bridge of course. ;)
I just signed up for Flashcom aDSL here in Southern California. I am interested to hear others stories about their experiences with Flashcom.
I had a bad install experience with PacBell (PacBell DSL+PacBell ISP+PacBell install techs).
Provisioning had failed to do their job before the techs arrived. About a week later, the line was provisioned but I still couldn't ping PB's gateway. I was on the phone every day to a total of five (or was it six) different groups in PacBell. It took forever to isoloate the problem and find someone with a clue in PB who was willing to *own* the problem and fix it.
This was a few months ago. I hope they have their act together now.
Mr. Renn
I'm not sure where your employer falls in the cable modem industry, but you are quite obviously not a neutral observer, based what you said in the discussion of a law regarding cable modem provision earlier this month.
Also, I would suggest you look at the usual cable modem terms of service, since they usually contain the exact same provisions, if not worse ones. I was told, for example, that I would not be allowed to hook up the cable-connected system on my home network at all. And TCI, for example, reserves the right to monitor, log, and block all of its subscribers' activities.
So please don't start spewing forth on DSL's TOS, when a) they don't apply to all, or even most, ISP's and b) the TOS available from your employers are often far more onerous.
--
No matter how hard you work to make something
idiotproof, someone will always come along and
make a better idiot.
I used to live in Union City (just a bit south of Erie PA) & any service had to be from erie or Endinboro (which was about as far away as Erie) & that would mean no DSL. No one I've heard of in the whole erie county region has even heard of cable wise is thinking of adding cable modem service. No one I know even offers ISDN unless you want to pay huge fees (hourly connect charges as of 1 year ago).
Now I live in Columbus Ohio while going to college & I fall into the worst location for access. Time Warner offers cable modem service, but not to my side of town (I guess we aren't 'priority' for them since they feel they cover enough of town with the north & west). Ameritech offers DSL, but not in Columbus. Coxial/Insight offers cable modems, but not in my area again (only north) & it's only cable downstream. I'm starting to be tempted into sharing a T1 with the lousy access just because the side of town I live in...
Shadow99
but at work so I can't login to slashdot
I think that Canada has better high-speed access for sure. In my area (Edmonton, AB) I can get cable modem for $40/month or even better 3 different rates of ADSL through my local telco (TELUS for those who are interested. The ADSL rates are:
High-Speed Internet - Package 1
Download: up to 1.5 megabit/second
Upload: up to 512 Kbps/second
2 Dynamic IPs
Monthly cost $39.95
High-Speed Internet - Package 2
Download: up to 2.5 megabit/second
Upload: up to one megabit/second)
5 dynamic IP addresses
Monthly cost $99.95
High-Speed Internet - Package 3
Download: up to four megabit/second
Upload: up to one megabit/second
5 static IP addresses
Monthly cost: $164.95
All of the above require a setup fee of $75 to $200 dollars depending on desktop/laptop and speed required. These all include the required NIC that you get to keep if you cancel service. All allow multiple email addresses as well as other goodies. To make things better keep in mind that these prices are Canadadian $1.00US = $1.45CAN. Also when I had my 56k I never connected at less than 49,300bps. It may be cold sometimes, but we have great access packages!
I'm in Pittsburgh, PA and I got ADSL through bellatlantic.net a few months back. It's great! About a week after I placed the order a guy came out to my house and installed the ADSL interface in my basement. The next day another guy came out and ran the ADSL phone jack up to my computer. Total cost: $200+tax for the install & modem. (I own the modem.) And $50/month for 640kps/90kps access. (Which translates, for me, to a peak of about 4 Megabytes down per minute. Or a complete linux distro in less than 3 hours.)
The link is http://www.bell-atl.com/business/adsl/index.htm.
Caveat: I had to lie to the phone reps when I ordered ADSL. They wanted me to have a pentium win95 box so I could run their software. The ADSL installer was far more reasonable and compromised by letting me hook it into my $10 486/25 linux box.
IP-Masquerade rocks with ADSL! I recommend it highly.
Bell keeps threatening to switch to dynamic IP addresses. But currently they are using static IP addresses. (If they switch to dynamic IP addresses you can always get one of those dynamic domain names.)
You may have network problems from time-to-time. This is not necessarily a problem with bell's network. Use 'ping' and 'traceroute' judiciously. If there are problems, send complaints to: techsupport@bellatlantic.net
PS> If you know someone with ADSL already installed, you can use the "friend referral" program to knock an additional $50 off that $200 price tag. (The "friend referral" gives $100 to anyone who refers a friend. I figured in a 50/50 split...)
PPS> Be sure to tell Bell that you need a Network Interface Card (NIC). They'll include one in that $200 price tag. I asked for an ISA card and they sent me a brand new 3com 509-B card. (Which works great for linux!)
SDSL Is very nice, if you are within range. Under ideal conditions, you can get 1.5 megabits both ways, which means T1-equiv. speed. The ISP that I work at offers SDSL access in Wilmington, DE and Philadelphia, PA, And we have had very little trouble with it thus far.
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
i have dsl (256k) in tempe, don't use USWest... go w/ primenet. it's $5 more expensive a month, but you get a static ip (ie, it's not dhcp keyed to the MAC so if you change computer/network card you still got the same ip).
also, their connection to the net is faster, i had uswest.net for 2 months and have had primenet for 5, in the 2 months of uswest i had about 10 15-45 min outages (a router on their side would go down), other than one problem w/ primenet (a cable got cut or something sat night, fixed sunday noon) i have been very happy w/ their service.
i had a totally different experiance than justin, called up, got the stuff in the mail, called again to ask what day i was going to be turned on, it worked the day they said it would. the only thing that pissed me off was the $45 fee to change ISP (now down to $35) and it took a few calls to uswest to get that done (the magic words are "I want to change Mega Central")
henri
Does anyone have any experience with DSL in the Richmond, Va area? I know that mediaone does not offer cable modem access yet, and they can't give me a date. Also, I have a feeling it is going to be a dial-up upstream, which ruins it for me.
Thanks,
Jeff
We've had ADSL (and now also RADSL) up here in Regina, Sask., Canada for a few years now (we were one of the first in North America... or was it the first?). Reliability is great and downstream speed is good (1.5Mbit/s). It's all done by the phone company... almost.
The only catch is that you have to sign up through a separate dealer, who is responsible for coming out and doing the software setup, and whom you're supposed to call for support. Of course, they can't actually do anything about your problem; they just phone SaskTel for you.
Fortunately, this is changing. SaskTel's Internet help desk is now able to take calls on ADSL problems, and it may soon be possible to order it without going through them.
However, I'm using a cablemodem right now? Why? Because although SaskTel started out handing out static IP's, they now run everybody through NAT to give you a dynamic IP! Because your computer doesn't even know its own IP, it even makes it a nuisance trying to use one of the dyndns services. Fortunately, the local cable company seems to be improving service rapidly in the past month or so.
\\'
Ok, as mentioned there are several types of DSL. ADSL being what is geared towards consumers. HDSL, which is currently being used in about 60% of the T1 installations around the country, and SDSL, which is basically HDSL with 1 pair of wires.
ADSL and SDSL have a maximum range of 18,000 ft and ADSL has a maximum speed of around 8 Mbps, although VDSL a variation of ADSL can go much, much faster, but requires a very short distance to a DSLAM.
There are a few reasons why DSL is better than cable. The main reason is the bottleneck is pushed much further back. With cable, everyone in your neighborhood (up to a 15 square mile area sometimes) shares the cable's max bandwidth, so your neighbor can suck down all your bandwidth and ruin your latency.
With DSL, that bottleneck is pushed all the way back to the ISP itself. So instead of a 10 Mbps maximum cable bandwidth bottleneck, you have a DS3 or more bottleneck. People checking their mail and accessing the local web proxy cache won't affect you at all.
The major problem with these highspeed technologies is the money you are paying. ISPs will have to oversell their bandwidth roughly 30:1 in order to make a profit on DSL and cable. In some areas it's even worse, upwards of 300:1.
The fact of the matter is, don't expect a great
service for the small amount of money you pay. The
old saying is true, you do get what you pay for.
Don't go for the cheapest ISP, look for a provider which doesn't provide their customers with outrageous amounts of bandwidth for $5/month. These types of ISPs will not give you good service.
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
A CLEC is a competitive local exchange carrier. That is, a phone company that competes against the local monopoly. Companies like Bell Altantic are ILEC's, or incumbent local exchange carriers. They are the monopoly. The CLEC in the DSL equation is actually the DSL provider. Typically, these companies lease co-location space in an ILEC central office (CO), then lease what are called "unbundled loops" to the customer location. The unbundled loop is the pair of copper wires from the CO to your house. The DSL provider terminates this on the DSL equipment, then delivers it to whatever ISP they've partnered with to provide the service. Some DSL companies are their own ISP, or are selling their own branded service. Others are a silent partner to an ISP, providing just the DSL access portion. Others do both. When Bell Atlantic provides DSL, they are handling everything themselves: the copper loop, the DSL equipment, and the net access.
I cannot agree more with the "read the fine print" suggestion in this article. Every DSL provider I have seen has very onerous terms of service that make it difficult to use the pipe to its fullest. In fact, I consider these deals quasi-scams. The DSL provider wants to brag about giving you this huge pipe, but they they basically make it impossible to use. That's why the price is so much more attractive than a T1. TANSTAAFL! Here are common restrictions:
-- No servers. That's right, no hosting your own email, web, ftp, etc. Also note that some companies don't even give you a "real" IP address!
-- One machine only. You are not allowed to put multiple machines on the segment. You are not allowed to run NAT.
As you can see, this makes DSL less than useful for a home network. All it basically lets you do is download porn faster.
Well, Southwestern Bell here in Houston started offering ADSL April 1st, 1999. However, they say I'm unable to get it. The reason is that my area has fiber optic phone line. Mind you, the cables in my house are old-fashioned copper, and I connect over a slow analog modem that won't go over 26.4, but the lines buried under the street are (supposedly) fiber-optic. SWBell says that ADSL doesn't work on fiber optic lines, that something called "iDSL" does. iDSL won't be available for another 9 months, which probably means it won't *really* be available for at least another year. So it goes.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Amazingly, no equipment has the same MAC address.. but in reality, I believe, manufacturers re-use them, either by accident or plan, so conflicts on the same LAN do happen.
No, they don't reuse MAC addresses. The MAC address consists of 6 bytes broken into two parts of 3 bytes each - a manufacturer ID and an node address. Even if a manufacturer got only one ID, that means they could produce 2^24=16 million unique addresses, and manufacturers can get more than one ID (there's 16 million IDs available too).
What can happen is that you can override the address and provide your own 6 bytes. In many companies that have address-sensitive software (SNA on IBM mainframes, for one example), the burned-in address is overridden so if you have to replace the hardware, you don't have to reprogram the host. It's that over-ride that can cause a conflict.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I'm in easter MA (along rt 128) and I have to say that M1 has what sounds to be the best cable modem offering around. Uplink is about 300kbps, downlink is about T1 (1.44Mb).
I do notice some slowdown at night and on the weekends, but never enough to make it slower than a 28.8kb modem. Plus the fact that it's always on, so I don't get busy signals, no dropped FTP connects, etc. I even installed RedHat a few times over the net with it.
The total cost for the service (including the cable modem box) is $39.95. If you buy the cable modem from Circuit City for $200ish, the price drops to $29.95. It's $10 more if you don't have cable service with M1.
Given the price I'm paying and the speed I'm getting, cable modems are far far better than DSL.
On a side note, 56k modems work the following way:
The uplink is still 28.8 or 33.6 or whatever. The remote side has to have an ISDN or 56k modem on the other end. The downlink goes digital as far as it can until it goes analog at the CO, hopefully nearby your house. The important point is that the 56k downlink has no error correction built into it, which is one of the reasons that you can get a higher speed out.
Posted by dea2e:
:-)
I signed up for Bell Atlantic's 640K (download) DSL service a couple of months ago in DC, and have been very pleased. I had about a two-week wait between my order and the installation, but when the install happened, the guy who did it was there right on time and got things done quickly. I had already been Fed-Ex-ed or UPSed the DSL router, and had it hooked up to my Mac clone. All that remained to be done after the inside wiring was done was to configure the networking software. I could have been done the same day as the install except for a typo in the IP addresses I was given that I didn't get straightened out until the next day.
The service originally ran $60/month for the line and ISP service from BA (which gets you a huge deal on the router -- much cheaper), but they chopped $10/month off the price of service about a month into my term of service.
There have been a grand total of 2 service outages since March, which I was told were due to router problems.
I like the DSL service because of the "always online" feature, having my phone line free, and, of course, for the great download bandwidth. I've had no hassles whatsoever, and BA's customer service, although I've heard it maligned, has been stellar for me so far.
There's a substantial initial outlay for the installation and equipment, but the monthly charge ($50 for now) isn't a whole lot more than you'd pay for an additional phone line and an ISP account, and the extra bandwidth is worth that difference for me.
If you do decide to sign up for it, BA also pays a $100 referral fee, so keep me in mind
--Eric
dea2e@virginia.edu
Posted by dentyne:
I have had ADSL service in Vancouver, Canada for over a year now. I pay under $50US for upstream speeds of 640kbps and downstream speeds of 1.5 - 4 Mbps.
When I first got ther service, I was lucky enough to live less than 1/2 mile from the CO and got speeds over 3.5Mbps. Unfortunately, I am a little farther away now and am down to 2.5 Mbps.
The service is provided by my local phone company in partnership with my ISP. The ISP takes care of support, email and website and the phone company takes care of the rest.
My experience with ADSL has been great. The only troubles I've had was when I move and wanted to do the installation myself (avoiding having to pay the $70US installation fee). They put up an argument, but when I informed them that the CRTC (the Canadian equivalent to the FCC, who regulate Phone companies and Cable companies) dictates that the customer be able to choose there installer, they relented.
ADSL has been and continues to be a great experience.
I went with a cable modem, since Bell Canada hasn't wired my 'hood for DSL yet. I got it installed the morning I moved in, the technician ran new cables 'cause the old ones looked shabby, a 3Com NIC was included, and everything worked the second I plugged it in.
It was all free, even the first 6 mo. rent on my modem.
But I can sympathize, 'cause I can see myself sticking with it the same way you did.
One hint to those who find themselves behind DHCP and want to run a server... bigfoot.com will forward email and http traffic to the IP address of your choice. I just set it up to forward http requests to my current IP, and have my linux box send email to my wireless phone on every reboot (damn power company) so I can check that my IP hasn't changed.
It's manageable, and it works - check the URL above...
OTOH, other places have cable companies who haven't been in the same time zone as a clue for years. (the same holds for DSL) I think we need to setup a clueful provider registry so people can check to see who to avoid.
I am extremely pleased with my RoadRunner cable modem. There were a few months of screwiness, but now they seem to have the kinks worked out. I consistently get T1 speeds during the day and pretty low latency (40-80ms for close sites, less than 20ms for other local ISPs).
Installation did take weeks, but I was in the early access program; it may have changed at this point.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
I have finally been connected by Red here in Manhatten, and it only took 3 months from when I signed up (including dozens of phone calls, outright lies by their sales and provisioning staff, and getting Bell to install the copper in the morning).
However
1. I get a real, static IP address.
2. My ping is around 35-40 for most Q3A servers
3. The terms and conditions don't rule out servers (or at least my signed copy doesn't).
4. My d/l speed peaks around 112kb/s
Overall, I think I'm happy.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Here in Canada telcos have to allow co-location so that individual ISPs can put their own DSL equipment (DSLAMs) where the phone switches are. So the ISP deals with the telco to get you a phone line if needed, remove line conditioning, worry about monthly line charges, provide modem and routing equipment, and give you bandwidth on the backend. All with you filling out one piece of paper, and paying one charge.
Would not the DSL providers also offer Internet services in the US? Why would you deal with both an ISP and a DSL company, and the telco to boot? If the telecomm regulations down there allow for it, the market is ripe for an all-in-one DSL provider.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
My ISP is very aggressive about no servers. They don't firewall anything but portscan, packet sniff, and traffic monitor the hell out of you. They read your email, look at where you're surfing, what you're uploading, what ports you use. It's very fast but as far as we're concerned, it's a half duplex, non private connection.
Pacbell is so lazy! They haven't upgraded a single CO in Santa Rosa (there are like three or something)!!! Argh! I want ADSL!
A program is a device used to convert data into error messages.
Hi
Its available in Hull (via Kingston telecom) and limited access in London (via BT). The BT London access is a 'trial', they are not promoting it heavily and seem to be having problems - I think they are trying to get people on the homeHighway connections rather than DSL.
I know there are lots of people in the UK shouting for DSL, but BT is dragging it's feet and as there ain't much competition in this area.....
Martin
I'd consider getting ConcentricDSL but their map of cities with coverage is extremely geographically challenged.
I'm not sure I would want to order DSL from a company that doesn't know that Washington DC is not in North Carolina and Chicago is not on the Mississippi.
Of course there isn't a email address on any of the web pages to let them know that their map is severely wrong.
They're based in California too so that explains why they have trouble with geography east of Lake Tahoe.
Looks like the map has been fixed since the last time I saw it...
:)
Washington is still in North Carolina though.
I am in Canada (Winnipeg, MB to be exact) and have ADSL. I am moving to cable modem very soon. ADSL performance is very poor and crashes often and hard. Many weekends, I have been without internet access due to my ADSL connection being down in such a manner that resetting the modem doesn't fix it (this is my ISP and phone company's solution to all ADSL problems) and there is no one to phone to get the problem fixed, as no one is in at the phone company on the weekends and my ISP won't do anything but tell me to reset the modem, and if that doesn't work, they will create a Trouble Ticket. I have also been told by someone who agrees with my opinion of ADSL who works at my ISP that ADSL in my area crashes when it rains and thunders, and a lot of the time lately that my connection has dropped, it has in fact been raining.
A friend of mine's wife has ADSL in her business as their connection to the 'net, and two days out of the week, their ADSL connection is down. I would consider this very unsatisfactory for a business customer to have to put up with.
As well, with the modems that we are using (Pulsecom WavePacer) there is a hardware problem that causes the connection to drop when doing batch FTP downloads. In fact, the connection drops often when only doing SINGLE file FTP transfers.
Another problem is that I can set my machine to have 1 of 2 IP addresses (192.168.100.101 or 206.45.92.84) and if it is set to the former, some services work (like reverse lookups) but set to the latter, those services don't work, but others do (like Samba and Apache vhosts).
Nonetheless, I am very unhappy with ADSL in my area, as are everyone I know who have it as well, and I will be moving to a cable modem business plan very soon. I warn anyone considering ADSL to research performance in their area and look at other options before investing in it.
jaraxle
I live in Denver and I'm planning to get DSL (when US West get off their lazy arses... they'll be 6 weeks late by the time install for me).
Anyway, who's your ISP that serves up static IP addresses (mine serves them to DSL customers using DHCP)?
If you work for another telco, please come here to Denver as you will be able to take huge chunk out of US Worst's market share! Life's better here [at US West]... but where the hell's that?
Anyway, more on topic:
US West are completely shit compared with other telcos with respect to DSL. They offer 256kbs + internet access for $50pm. Other telecos, such as PacBell offer 1.5mbs + internet for the same price. US West's best is half that bandwidth for $100pm. Where the hell the cable companies with their fast modems when they're needed.
Get this, customers in the Denver Tech Center can expect all sorts of problems get their lines to qualify for DSL... hmmm, one would have thought the Tech Center being new and, well, a Tech Center, would have the best options.
US West want's to install DSL withing two weeks for everybody. That would be nice once they get their heads out of their arses. EVERYBODY I know has had to wait 1-2 months for there DSL.
I feel that I should comment on this, given that I am running a company that is going to be offering ADSL in NY this month. (shameless plug: http://www.acecape.com)
First off, here's the current picture of DSL market in NYC:
The only thing available RIGHT NOW is SDSL. There are two major providers for DSL, that is, Covad and NorthPoint. They operate by putting their DSL access multiplexors (DSLAMs) into Bell central offices, and leasing physical copper from customer to their DSLAM. Since DSLAMs are quite expensive, both Covad and Northpoint are knee-deep in debt. Correspondingly, they do not orient their services for consumer use, they are competing with normal T1 access for business.
There are many ISPs in NY area who offer SDSL access. Most of them are acting as resellers of Northpoint/covad, that is, your traffic does not even enter ISP's network. Some (like flashcom, globix) actually have deals with Northpoint/Covad that ISP provides internet access, and northpoint/covad provides physical connectivity to customer. At any case, ISP's cut is relatively minor, and northpoint/covad gets most of the money, and sets lower bound on price.
You can expect paying around 400-500$ for SDSL 1.5Mbps service with any ISP. While this is very competitive with T1, its not for consumers.
Enter BellAtlantic and Acecape.
To compete, BellAtlantic decided to just add DSL cards into their existing switches, which is much cheaper than what Covad/northpoint doing.
Also, with this approach, it is possible to have both phone and DSL service on one line, using a low-pass splitter. However, with Bell being a stubborn telco, it takes them ages to do it. Also, in this regulated industry, it takes regulators ages to approve any consumer services. Well, finally, tariff for DSL was filed about 2 weeks ago, and expected to be approved Real Soon Now.
Pricing is very competitive with normal phone ISPs. BA charges 40$/mo for physical connection, and we charge 20$/mo for internet service on that connection, total being 60$/month. This is about as much as you'd pay for second phone line and internet, so it really makes sense for heavy users.
We, as ISP, have OC3 connection from BA to us, which will be live mid-June. BA promises to start installing DSL for customers mid-june as well. So, given enough luck, we'll providing services soon.
Any questions, contact info@acecape.com
-alex
For those of you in Southern California, I would suggest Interworld for an ISP. The prices and terms of service are reasonable, and the president of the company is himself a tech who is willing to take the time to make a specialized deal. He also gets on the phone himself and harasses GTE when the service gets cut. If anyone is interested, I can give you his email address.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
How much did it cost you for installation? I live in an apt in St. Louis and when I talked to SWBell it seemed installation was expensive.
I'll be moving out in a year so I'd rather not shell out $200 for the install.
Also, did you buy a DSL modem/router from SWBEll or from someone else?
Any advice would be appreciated....
I'm still waiting.... Ameritech offers the lines, and ISP but, no, I can't get it and they can't tell me when I can. Grrrrr...
It's ironic in a way: they've been trying to find ways to get an extra $10 a month out of me by flogging some service I don't need, and here I am practically screaming at them that I'd happily give them $50 to $75 a month for a damn ADSL line.
In Liberty, Rene
You need to have TWO nameservers, on separate nets, to resolve to your IP address.
Since small organizations (like you) are unlikely to have the resources to do this, there are outfits that will do it for you -- generally for $50 to $100 a year. Some allow you to change your own DNS records.
Check out http://www.dyndns.org and http://www.granitecanyon.org (free). Search the Net -- the above sites are by no means an exhaustive list.
Hope this helps.
In Liberty, Rene
The quality, performance and price varies from one service to another. I've heard horror stories of ADSL and Cable modem suppliers. Personally though I have ADSL service by USWest in Boulder,CO and the service is outstanding.
,a web site and ftp site and in the last year had only 2 outages each lasting less then 2 hours.
For $29.95 month I have 512Kbit connection that is on all the time. I run a Q3Arena server on it
I don't doubt that many people ARE having problems. DSL is a relatively new technology, in that telcos are just now begining to deploy it. But I'm sure that as the service spreads and they gain more experiance in this it will improve signifigantly. (Same goes for cable modems).
Think back to the early days of Dial-up.. it was hell back then too.
Ex-Nt-Users
DSL service consists of two parts: the DSL line,
which is provided by an incumbant Local Exchange
Carrier (LEC) or a competitive LEC (ILECs and CLECs). For example, in the SF Bay Area, the
ILEC is PacBell and the CLECs are Covad, Rhythm
and BrightStar. When you purchase a DSL line,
you're just getting a pipe. If you want service,
you need an ISP. In fact, unless you are a
corporation buying service for your employees,
most of the CLECs won't even talk to you. Instead, you purchase the service you want from a local ISP. They are the groups who put limitations on the service, such as not providing fixed addresses or prohibiting certain types of traffic. However, most of them likely offer the service you want, if you are willing to pay for more than the cheapie service package. Sirius (a SF based ISP) truely rapes you on service pricing (worked out to $125/month for a 384kb line), but with PacBell offering the same, with three addresses and a phone line for $75/month, I don't expect the ISPs to be able to keep the prices that high.
Cable modems are different animal. The two-way cable systems weren't constructed with high bandwidth traffic in mind. Many of them are one big fiber trunk that serves an entire town (this is due to noise concerns), which means that they may not have that much extra bandwidth to spare. Thus, they do things like putting web caches all over the system, and prohibiting the operation of servers. They are learning, however, and since providing digital cable (what a misnomer) is forcing some new thinking on system design, I would expect that one will see some improvements in the long term. Remember, however, that cable companies are capital-poor and move at a snails pace (or slower).
Although the southwestern bell guy had to spend two afternoons and re-route some of my phone cable I now have ADSL. I average about 5mb even though live right on the edge of service. I have my ADSL terminal connected to a hub and all five of the computers on my network access the internet with blinding speed.
The only difficulty I had during setup was knowing that you need to either use a crossover ethernet cable to connect the DSL terminal to the hub, or if you use a 3com hub, flick the switch that does crossover. Other than that everything works great. All of my linux and windows boxes work fine.
I live in Houston, TX BTW.
I've seen lots of ads all over San Francisco for CoVad or Concentric, but they charge $50 a month for service which may not be all that great -- they were out for almost an entire week once in January.
PacBell charges $10 a month for DSL, but you have to find it here. Yes, that is $10 a month. Be prepared to be put on hold a lot, but it works great when it's in.
I also had some concerns about Flashcom's over-the-phone bit and their contract, but I bit the bullet. I am on the Westside of New York, and I've been using them quite happily now for over three months. I have had one billing problem in the first month and another query, which was quickly answered/ cleared up, and two technical support issues, ditto. So the phone support is as good as any other ISP I have dealt with, and better than most. The service is super fast and very consistent and reliable.
My understanding of the no server bit, is that you can't use it to set up a web server. I have a masquerading server set up for my internal network, and specifically asked both their sales and tech people and was told there is no problem (because I was deciding if I want more than one IP or not, and with the masquerading server, one is fine).
I should mention the installation went very smoothly. A few weeks after I signed up, Bell Atlantic showed up and installed the line to my house. The next day the Flashcom guy came, and 5 minutes after he left I was up and running.
They recently went public so they have cash in their. I imagine they will be around and doing well for another 9 months, at whcih point I can decide whether or not to renew my contract. If they continue as is, I will stick with them.
I also live in SoCal (Lancaster) area and GTE is my provider. A week ago they installed ADSL but it has not worked right yet. To their credit, I am getting good feedback from them. Last night I swapped the Orckit (Fujitsu) modem and the problem persists. Today they will test from the CO and look to see if a Load Coil is on my line. The local people I am talking to on the phone are very courteous and answer my questions honestly. I give them brownie points for this, but I wish the line had worked in the first place ;-).
And of course some tools like to show the overall rate, taking credit for the compression factor.
The only reason for this line is to operate a server. Dspeed gave me two 4-day downtime events in two months, and then went out of business, leaving me with a fast wire to nowhere, on a weekend, when I was away from home. Covad took 10 days to move the connection to another provider. Hopefully Internic will fix my host record today. Total 1/2 month downtime.
If you want to use DSL for business, have two of them. Make sure that they use two different CLEC's (Covad and Northpoint, usually), and two different internet providers. Make sure that the IP addresses for both wires are in your DNS records and internic host records.
My new internet provider is in the same town, so at least I can bang on their door when something is wrong.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Well, I have been having troubles getting ADSL too. I live in Portland, OR with USWest as our wonderful and helpful phone service . I can't connect higher than 26400, and they say ADSL isn't available. On my 3rd call to them asking "Is it here yet?" I got a guy with a little more of a clue, and he said that since I had 2 phone lines I wouldn't show up as ADSL-available anyway, even if I was in range, because there's a doohickey that runs those 2 lines from a single drop to the house. But my close neighbors aren't available either, though my friend *farther* from the station has it.
I am guessing it is all this conversion that is screwing me over as far as connect speed and ADSL. How would you get the phone company to actually switch you over to the old copper needed for ADSL? Anyone have any good ideas?
TIA.
Eric Anholt
anholt@teleport.com
My story has been posted on Linux Today and has drawn a good bit of attention. I've received many emails from people who've written to BS, provided suggestions for me, etc. A reporter from an online new source has contacted me, with plans to do a story about problems in general with telcos, linux, and DSL. Hopefully, BellSouth will see the light of day soon.
BellSouth advertises ADSL here in Atlanta, and they show a huge map on their website showing their impressively large service area. Last fall I tried to buy ADSL service. BS tested all three of my residential phone lines (which are all cursed with multiple analog/digital conversions) and told me that exactly zero of them would support ADSL. Nobody I know who has tried to order BellSouth ADSL has been able to get it. I think it's all marketing, with no deliverables.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
"Ok, so tell me again about the net access?"
"Net access is fast there, but it's not 100% fast, I mean you can't go into your home and start serving. I mean they want you to use it for web surfing or other designated services."
"Those are ASDL modems"
"Yeah, it breaks down like this. It's legal to subscribe to it, it's legal to use it, and if you're an business rate customer it's legal to serve off of it. It's illegal to NAT, but that doesn't matter, get a load of this, if you put a port sniffer on it it's indistinguishable."
"Oh man, I'm goin, that's all there is to it, I'm goin..."
--I hate people when they're not polite -"Psycho Killer", Talking Heads
Heya
I use to live in Millersville (ourside of Lancaster) and currently live in Exton (near Valley Forge) and I know exactly what you mean. Bell Atlantic seems to be the only game in town, and we are at their mercy.
All I want is my DSL, a static IP address, and to be left alone with my servers!
--T
_____________________ This Space for rent.
I was looking around the bell atlantic infospeed site, and they offer a "business" version of their service. It was difficult to tell what the real difference was, but it seems like the same thing, except you get a static IP. Am I missing something, or is this the solution I need?
--T
_____________________ This Space for rent.
I don't have experience with Patriot, but I do with Covad. I currently have an IDSL (DSL over ISDN lines) connection through Concentric and Covad.
It's a big pain in the neck. Everytime something goes down, they start out blaming it on me. "Try resetting your router...try rebooting your machine.." etc. After a while, I tell them it's not my fault.
They invariably ask for me to bring in my router for an exchange. I did this once, and ended up with a nicer router, but no network.
Finally, after days of telling them it's not my fault, they go down to their equiptment and find something wrong and fix it.
My complaints in a nutshell: it takes days to fix anything, I'm not allowed to talk to Covad (who causes the problems), they treat me like a moron, and they refuse to take responsibility for their broken setup.
I'd avoid having any contact with Covad if you value your sanity. Currently, I'm looking to get away from Covad. I was about to go with Flashcom/Northpoint until I heard this review. I don't know what the solution is, but all the available options seem to stink.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Anyone know if this is available in the UK or not? It sounds sweet, if a little expensive.
--
The other two have a background of static. Kind of like recording a conversation with an auto-level tape recorder at the beach. When there arent any voices, the static increases, when someone is talking, the static gets less.
My other friend has his fax connected to the same line and reports no ill effects. I suspect the connect speed is slower, but haven't been able to prove that. I'll probably put a fax listener on that line when i get ambitious, so it's ok.. So I'm actually paying:
$40 to USWest for the ADSL (not sure about the $29.99 mentioned - will have to check the bill)
$15 for my second voice line
$19 to my ISP
=====
$74 total.
Sure it costs more, but I'm happy with the service, I was the first on my geek-block to get high speed service (my home network is the envy of the BUG and both my wife and i get to surf fast at the same time.
-bob anzlovar
Restrictions are prohibited. Be well, get better.
I live in the Houston area as well. Since I live in an apartment complex with a T3 attached ( Walden Internet Village), I haven't needed to purchase ADSL from Southwestern Bell, but have looked into it for friends or on the off-chance that I need to move from my current apartment. My friend called for ADSL service and then after about 5 weeks they came out to hook up his line since their maps indicated that he was in an area where service was possible. Upon arrival, they discovered that something about the way his apartment complex was wired precluded the possibility of getting ADSL. Of course, they then suggested ISDN instead. The sad thing is that he was going to move into my complex with the T3 but decided to sign another year lease when he heard that he could get DSL. The moral: don't get your hopes up. There are lots of variables. Treat DSL like the article mentions: like a package ordered from a catalog and forgotten until two months later. The tech guy from SWB said that on average, about 20% of apartments or homes that look like they would support ADSL actually cannot. However, the few friends I have that have ADSL love it. While they haven't been getting the 900K that the above posting purports, it is much cheaper and quicker than ISDN ever was for them (especially since here in the south, ISDN is so expensive compared to other areas).
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
In a moment of weakness, I decided to get DSL, since I was sick of the 150+ pings I was getting in QuakeWorld.
I chose to remain with my ISP, Best Internet, which was recently acquired by Verio. The Common Wisdom is that Best, under Verio's ownership, will start to blow chunks, but since Matt Dillon (not the actor) designed and built the infrastructure, I figure it will take about a year for that to happen. I also wasn't yet ready to change my Web and email address again.
Verio's Website on DSL is badly designed and ridiculously unhelpful. You have to have JavaScript turned on in order to use it (dumbasses). Once you clear that hurdle, it will tell you everything except who the DSL provider is and how much it will cost, which makes shopping inconvenient.
Anyway, I called up, got a quote, had an argument with my checkbook, and decided to go for it. I signed a one year contract with them. In that time, I plan to change my email and Web address one last time, and transition to my own domain, hosting my Web and email locally. (O'Reilly security books, here I come...)
Fax 'n Figgers
Phone company: Pacific Bell
DSL provider: Northpoint
ISP: Best Internet
Distance to CO: ~2000 feet
Maximum possible data rate: 1.5Mbits (heh heh)
Selected DSL plan: 416K SDSL, "Workgroup" plan, 16 IP addresses (14 usable)
Highest observed download rate: 47K bytes/sec.
Lowest observed QuakeWorld ping: 30ms
DSL equipment: Netopia SDSL router
Monthly cost: More than I care to admit (> $200/month)
Usage restrictions: None. I can run a server if I wish.
The DSL signup contract I got from Best/Verio had a little clause in it saying effectively, "You agree not to reverse-engineer any of the software or hardware we provide." I crossed it out and initialed it. Didn't hear a peep out of them about it. (Heh heh)
It took about four weeks from the phone call until the Northpoint techs showed up and did the inside wiring. Alas, they didn't bring the Netopia router with them; that got sent to me the next day via overnight shipping.
I plugged in the router, turned it on, got a Green Light, and... Nothing. I could talk to the router, but I couldn't ping anything beyond that. I called up Best, and whined, "It doesn't work." They called Northpoint, who evidently threw some magic switches, and suddenly the Internet opened up before me. Yay!
I've successfully configured DSL for Windoze-98, Linux (Slackware, kernel 2.0.35), and BeOS R4. All three are happy as clams.
QuakeWorld pings have been as low as 30ms; Quake2 pings a bit higher. I don't have a 3D card (yet), so I can't report on Quake 3 Arena.
One weird thing I had to get used to was the "always on" nature of DSL. I'm paranoid about accidentally leaving the phone line connected (I only have one phone line), so when I'm "done" using the net, my instinct is to hang up the modem. Well, I don't have to do that now, and it feels weird.
Apart from the waiting to receive it and getting it to work, it has been overall a successful and pleasant experience.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I live in Hoboken. Called Bell Atlantic. Got the "DSL modem" and NIC in the mail a week later. A week after that, they came out and did the wiring (converted my main phone line to DSL and disconnected my second line, which I no longer needed). They were supposed to have another tech visit the following day and set up my PC, but I did it myself and cancelled the visit.
Works great.
Before DSL:
Phone Line: $20/month
ISP:$20/month
Total: $40 month/56k
After DSL: DSL: $40/month
ISP: $10/month
Total: $50/month
Ten bucks a month more, for 640k rather than 56k is a great deal in my book.
Does anyone have experience with SWBell in Austin? I've heard that if you use them as an ISP, you're asking for really bad latency... in the 800ms range. But they are CHEAP - $10/month compared to $20 at texas.net and $30 at jump point. I suppose this is a case of getting what you pay for, but... anyone have a GOOD experience w/ swbell?
I saw a couple of traceroutes posted on one of the Austin newsgroups and the latency looked really bad. Maybe not 800ms, but much worse than ISDN. I've heard really good stuff about Jump Point's service. They really seem to have it together. Now if SWB would just fix the pair gain problem in our neighborhood.
when you say $40/month to uswest, is that in addition to the normal $20 or so phone service fee?
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
I use USWorst as well, and since I was one of the first to get DSL in Minneapolis, I went with uspest.net. Bad idea. The service is great when it is there, but the ISP seems to lack knowledge about how to keep their systems up. The gateway (which is not the modem, BTW) goes down for a few hours at least once a week, maybe more. At the time I purchased the service, usdreck was the cheapest by far, but now other ISPs are competitive. I run 512kbps with statics, and I have to run my own DNS and mail servers (at least if its down its my fault :).
Also, ufwest outsources their tech support, and they don't tell them anything, which is the most frustrating part of the whole experience. If something is down, I know more than the people I am calling!
I could go on about general incompetance (hmm, MX record, CNAME, what are those? Whats the difference between a subdomain and a hostname?), but as usual with the telco, its reams and reams of paper.
Does anyone have experience with SWBell in Austin? I've heard that if you use them as an ISP, you're asking for really bad latency... in the 800ms range. But they are CHEAP - $10/month compared to $20 at texas.net and $30 at jump point. I suppose this is a case of getting what you pay for, but... anyone have a GOOD experience w/ swbell?
:-)
My strange DSL experience was calling a few ISPs with inquiries, then having the telco van roll up to my house to install... nifty, except I hadn't yet ordered it from anyone! They're really pushing it, I guess.
I recently (less than 1 month ago) had aDSL installed at my home. I live in Houston, TX, and Southwestern Bell *just* started offering services. The only real problem I've encountered was that during the wait for line testing, they lost part of (not all) my information and had to start over. From Order date to install was 3 weeks. Priced at $49 a month ($39 for the line & $10 for ISP services) I am getting well over what they call their guarunteed service level (384k down / 129k up). My actual thoughput has hit over 900k down and 300k upstream. My "DSL Modem" lost sync once and didn't come back. A call to Tech support and it was fixed before I got home from work. All in all I'm very happy with the speed, service, and reliability that I get for the cost. Stephen L. Palmer Sprint Paranet Houston, TX
In Raleigh, NC many many many homes are 1 ADDA inversion, b) they can't/won't/can't figure out how to run ADSL over fiber.
Also they don't price ISDN for residential usage eg. $275 setup + equipment + $112/month for a 2 year service contract. Their flavor of ISDN doesn't use sideband signalling and you have to give up your analog service so basically you get 2x64kb channels for voice and data -aka- you lose half your bandwidth everytime you pick up the phone + you get saddled with features whether you want them or not like voice mail multiple phone numbers, etc. most of the low end PBX functions. they can't guarantee or even sugggest if some of your mode space age cutting edge devices like fax machines will or will not work on their digital services. But if you're brave enough to ask how long it would take to get ISDN the answer you get is along the lines of 3 months to 9 months to who-knows.
And if you press them they're not real sure if/when/how any of these services could or might be available to you or where for example you're located in relation to any midspan repeaters they're not real sure they have installed between your house and a CO. They also can't explain how any of this would be billed or even if you managed to get ADSL or ISDN whether it would work with the ISP service they themselves are simultaneously trying to market to you.
And oh yeah - the once monthly event where all or most of my phone service to my home craps out for no apparent reason, the initial stated turnaround time is 24hrs which they make about 50% of the time with a low of about 4 hrs and a high of 48hrs.
In Raleigh, NC many many many homes are less than 7 years old so fiber runs everywhere. Therefore a) you can't get 56kb at most residences what with >1 ADDA inversion, b) they can't/won't/can't figure out how to run ADSL over fiber.
Also they don't price ISDN for residential usage eg. $275 setup + equipment + $112/month for a 2 year service contract. Their flavor of ISDN doesn't use sideband signalling and you have to give up your analog service so basically you get 2x64kb channels for voice and data -aka- you lose half your bandwidth everytime you pick up the phone + you get saddled with features whether you want them or not like voice mail multiple phone numbers, etc. most of the low end PBX functions. they can't guarantee or even sugggest if some of your mode space age cutting edge devices like fax machines will or will not work on their digital services. But if you're brave enough to ask how long it would take to get ISDN the answer you get is along the lines of 3 months to 9 months to who-knows.
And if you press them they're not real sure if/when/how any of these services could or might be available to you or where for example you're located in relation to any midspan repeaters they're not real sure they have installed between your house and a CO. They also can't explain how any of this would be billed or even if you managed to get ADSL or ISDN whether it would work with the ISP service they themselves are simultaneously trying to market to you.
And oh yeah - the once monthly event where all or most of my phone service to my home craps out for no apparent reason, the initial stated turnaround time is 24hrs which they make about 50% of the time with a low of about 4 hrs and a high of 48hrs.
Maybe it's just because I was one of the first, or maybe it's because there is less demand for it out here, but I didn't have any problems (at all) getting my DSL service.
/.'ers in the Lincoln area I highly recommend them.
I live in Lincoln, Nebraska, and my ISP recently dropped all support for dial-ups and went strictly DSL and faster. I'm sure they were aiming at the business market, but lo and behold they got me and my home LAN.
Here's a brief summary of what it took for me to get ADSL.
1. Bitched and moaned about them dropping dial-up service and having to consider other ISP's and changing my web site, my e-mail address, and in general having to do a whole lot of crap that I didn't want to do.
2. Did some quick math on current monthly cost vs. ADSL monthly cost. ADSL came out $.50 more per month over 2 lines and modems.
3 Ordered ADSL, signed a 1 year agreement to get the Cisco 675 for free (no monthly fee). Got locked into the promo rate for a year (39.50/month for the line).
4. 8 days after dropping off my paperwork I get a call that my Cisco is ready.
5. I stop by and get my Cisco, and get a pleasant surprise. I have a range of 30 static IP address that I can assign as I see fit on my home LAN.
6. Go home and hook my Cisco into the uplink port on my hub, assign IP addresses, call my ISP because I forgot to get the DNS address, finish configuring my computer.
7. Begin surfing.
I have to say installing ADSL was probably the most painless thing I've done in a while for what it gave me. I have a 384K/120K which costs me a grand total of 59.50 per month.
I have found my ISP (binary.net) to be probably the most lenient, customer oriented, ISP in Nebraska when it comes to ADSL service.
I can:
* run servers on my LAN
* assign my own IP addresses
* register my own domain and they'll host it for no additional charge.
If there are any other
I guess sometimes it pays to live in the middle of nowhere.
Rand
I don't know about your ADSL provider, but here one of the big advantages of ADSL is that you don't need a second phone line. The ADSL traffic is a high frequency signal that runs parallel to your voice traffic. They even provide filters for your phones if you get noise on them from the signal.
Wow, after reading the article and many of the comments, im surprised at how restrictive dsl is elsewhere. Things appear to be much different here too, from installation through usage. There are only two parties involved here, the phone co provides the line, and then our choice of an isp. The only phone co is USWest, but there are several isps to choose from. I chose to also get my isp services from USWest to simplify things, and they seemed to have fewer restrictions as compared to the others. :) :) :P
When it came time to order, that was very simple. One initial call proved that both of my analog lines at the time were capable of at least the lowest bandwidth rate, 256k/256k. I could have placed the order at that time, but i had to come up with some money to cover the $110 install fee first
When I did get the money, I made the call to order, which was very simple. The line was tested once again, and then they told me to expect the equipment in the mail within the next couple weeks, and an install date set for about 3 weeks from that time.
About a week later, equipment started arriving. First was an analog modem (apperently part of a promotion running at the time) then a box conataining the cisco 675 dls router and a 3com nic arrived several days before the instal date that i was given.
I decided to hook it up and see if they were early on the installation at the co, and they were, it trained the line no prob!
From there it was just a matter of installing the nic and hooking up the short ethernet cable between the two and configuring dhcp on the computer. One reboot later and i was on the net!
I have since reconfigured everything, adding a hub and a few more computers (all of which is allowed in the agreement), one of which is the linux server from which this mail was sent
In all, i am extremely happy with the quality of service, and the prices. My initial cost was $110 for the install (which included ALL the equipment above, plus a $100 speakerphone), and thereafter the monthly charges of $39 for the line fee and $19 for the 256k bandwidth (which actually trains at 640k/272k). The line fee was recently dropped to $29 though, so now i am even happier!
So anyway, theres my story, since im probably out of space on this thing
---------------------------- DevNull - a discernible void in the province of Saskatchewan
I've got that exact same service, and just about the same complaints. :) I wish they'd lower their prices to keep in lock-step with PacBell (as then I could upgrade my speed to something a little better), but their technical cluefulness more than makes up for things. I wanted them to delegate my /28 to me for DNS purposes (not a trivial task; you need some decent DNS clue in order to do this), and they set it up for me within a few hours. As for phone support, they never gave you their number? Drop me an e-mail and I can give it out to you.
Read the other comments. I have heard this elsewhere. Even if you use nonstandard ports to get around their blocking, if they find any services running, they just disconnect you.
--
Infuriate left and right
I recently decided to go with Flashcom for one reason, they were the only people that would put DSL in at my house. Okay. Easy enough, I call and tell them to set it up. They never call back. So I call to ask when its going to happen and suddenly the install is set for the next day from PacBell. Now this is the funny part, PacBell themselves won't install DSL ay my house but as a subcontractor for Flashcom they will? Bizarre. The even better thing is Im 996 feet from the CO. Mmmm blazing speeds... Flashcom won't return my calls to get reverse DNS setup, or email or news. In fact they haven't even bothered to bill me at all yet... so Im not complaining... but only because I don't need any of their services, yet.
F /...
---
Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
I was a little wary of getting the service, as I had read the horror stories about that guy with the Mac, and all I have are Linux boxen. When the first person I talked to at BA got to the dreaded question "what operating system", I said Linux. He said "Hmmm... we don't seem to have that listed." I asked him if unix was listed, and he said no. Then I asked if it was anything more complicated than configuring the NIC, and he said no, that was what their technicians did. I assured him I could do that myself, and that was that.
The only other time it was mentioned was when the second guy came to activate the service. He looked at my machine (a homebuilt dual PPRo, all black, no identifying brands or features :-), then looked at the monitor, which was showing a Gnome/E desktop with the Apple Platinum theme. "What is that?" he said, a bit puzzled. I told him Linux, and he went, "Ah, so you've got it all configured then?" It was a riot.
[sidebar: Does anyone else find that as soon as you mention Linux around computer people, you instantly get to cut all the Win-Idiot bull? Like computer stores, for example... I went to CompUSA (of all places! don't shop there by the way!) for a modem a while ago, and I asked for a 56k modem that was jumper-configurable. The sales guy hemmed and hawed for a minute, so I said "I run Linux, so I don't want any of that win-modem garbage." His face just lit up. He showed me one that his linux-using friend got, and it's worked perfectly. Well, until I got DSL. It doesn't do much now.]
Also, they never asked for my MAC address. Perhaps because BA owns the whole route, they have their own ways of determining it or something. Dunno, but it was never mentioned.
So the summary is, Bell Atlantic ADSL==good. I don't think I could get by without it anymore.
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Resetting your modem to fix ADSL problems? Thats almost as bad as a past T1 circuit provider's solution of resetting a CSU/DSU to fix line problems eventually determined to be caused by dyslexic technicians screwing with our circuit.
Heh. There is something to be said for getting away from the computer and listening to the radio, watching TV, reading the paper, etc. Had you done any of the above in the past year, you would have been swamped by the USWest DSL ads (the "Mega*" services). There are also quite a few ISPs for the DSL if you don't feel like going 100% USWorst.
That said, getting DSL with USWest is often easier said than done. I couldn't get it at my first apartment since I was "too far" from the switch. I can't get it at my (new) house since the wire is fiber-optic right to the house and DSL only works on copper (so far). *sigh*
Bellsouth offers ADSL in the Raleigh-Durham
area. http://www.bellsouth.net/external/adsl
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
Apparently you don't understand how adsl works, then... ANY A/D conversion breaks it. If you have anything other than a copper pair back to a DSLAM (or Mini-RAM when Alcatel get's it's act together and can provide a product that won't overheat in the hut), you're outta luck. That's the facts.
Check www.adsl.com for the FAQ's.
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
my US West DSL connection in downtown Salt Lake
working. As nearly as I could tell from stories,
the first two months of delay were lack of DSLAM
capacity in the CO, and the rest were the US West
cable crews trying to get the cable to carry data.
For US$40.35/month, I get 256kb/s from an Ethernet
port on the back of a Cisco 675 "modem" with a
fixed IP address. The Cisco unit plugs directly
into my phone wall jack, and the phone plugs in
in parallel thru a low pass filter. I can plug
the phone into a low pass filter on the back of
the Cisco, or directly to a wall jack thru one
of several low pass filters supplied with the
Cisco.
US West also sent me a bundled Ethernet card,
and instructions to install it in a PC. Since
at the time of my order I had only a Sun
workstation the PC card was redundant. I now
have the Cisco plugged into a small Ethernet hub
where I also connect my Sun, an HP printer, and
a PC running Linux that I bought a few months ago.
Linux is configured to do IP masquerading, so
that Linux reaches the net directly and the Sun
reaches the net thru Linux with a remapped IP
address. This all works just fine. Neither
US West nor XMission has attempted to get in the
way of this setup.
The biggest part of the problem was getting to
this stage. Fortunately I have a few connections
and I was forced to use them to the fullest to
get the thing to work. First, US West quoted me
some ridiculous distance from the CO and claimed
that DSL would never work. By my measurement,
my actual distance is *well* within their limits.
It took me quite a bit of work to convince them
of this however. Ultimately, from what I can
gather, they found that the cable to my house
carried a 60Hz common mode voltage large enough
to interfere with operation of the DSL modem.
The US West cable department apparently did some
rework on their grounds or something. Eventually
they got it all working reliably but the delay
was so long and the billing so confused that
one of their executives decided to "forget"
about the installation fee.
The bottom line is that I have now had months of
highly reliable operation from this arrangement,
and am very pleased with it.
As an entertaining side note, a few weeks ago I
was at a party with a bunch of US West people.
They were amazed that I had managed to get DSL
and one said that US West had told her she was
too far from her CO to get it at her house.
I told her my story and suggested that she
measure the distance herself
I was getting married, and figured that the higher cost would be offset by eliminating my and my girlfri^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hwife's dial-up accounts. (Okay, so that was just an excuse.8^)
Well, I did have a bit of a rough start -- they didn't show up for the first install appointment and when I called, the gal on the phone made another appointment, but didn't tell anyone about it. But the third time was a charm. A guy from Southern California (up here specifically for DSL installs) showed up, knew what he was doing, hooked things up, and voila.
I've got a splitter on the wall in the garage (along with all the other phone line stuff) which runs upstairs to my office/mess where it plugs into an Alcatel modem. The DSL modem is connected to a Kingston PCMCIA ethernet card in an old laptop with a broken screen. This runs Linux and serves as the gateway to my new home network via a Linksys PCMCIA ethernet card.
The PacBell guy was able to get a connection right away and start downloading stuff; it took me a little longer as this was my first time using Linux seriously. (Don't stick your toe in, just jump on in! 8^) But, I did figure it out, and now have another Linux box, my DOS/Win3.11 laptop, a Win3.11 box by the bed, a Mac, and a Win95 box hooked up, with my wife's big mac and my dad's pc coming on-line soon.
It works great -- I've had only two problems: one, PacBell was having a problem and was up again in an hour (like any ISP might have) and once the modem had to be reset. So, yes, I'm quite happy. PacBell provides the DSL Modem, the NIC for whatever type of computer you have (PC or Mac, ISA, PCI, NuBus, or PCMCIA) and sets it all up for you. The guy that did it for me handled everything except setting the card up under Linux -- he was a windows guy (nice nonetheless). I already had wiring in place, but he would have run it if I didn't from the garage to the attic.
The best part is the cost. The setup (includes the modem and NIC) is $199, but the monthly fee for 384K download/128K upload is $50 ($39/mo for the DSL and $10 for the ISP stuff) and includes a static IP. However, that's a minimum guaranteed download speed -- I've regularly gotten over 1.5mbps download speeds.
So, I have to say I am most happy with my PacBell DSL service and can recommend it highly, if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
I have to add to the story posted by Justin Beech in regards to the various woes experienced by nyc-area folks in getting DSL. I've been in the process of getting SDSL from Concentric Networks/Covad for the last 9 weeks. By in the process, I mean that the initial install date was supposed to be April 12th. I have had 5 on-site visits from Bell, 4 from Covad, and so many phone calls from reps from all three companies involved that I can't even count.
The problem with my line at this point has been pared down to "Bell Atlantic wired the wrong pair in the basement of your building -- the loop tests good from the CO to your building, but doesn't test in your apartment. Apparently another apartment in the building is receiving DSL." To say the least, this is somewhat frustrating. Judging by the trials that co-workers have gone through dealing with RedConnect, Bell Atlantic InfoSpeed DSL, and NorthPoint, I don't think the situation would be much better with another provider.
I'm supposed to receive an on-site visit _again_ today from Covad, with another Covad tech at the CO, and a Bell Atlantic tech in my basement.. i'd say the odds of this actually happening are somewhere between slim and none, but i'm keeping my fingers crossed. With any luck, i'll have 1.5mbps synchronous to my apartment by tonight!
I have to add that both Concentric and Covad have been _amazingly_ helpful and apologetic in regards to the various blown meets/bad installs/other idiocy that Bell Atlantic has put me through. If only they could get Bell to do what they're supposed to...
sigh,
-s
---- noi non potemo aver perfetta vita senza amici -- Dante
Your concerns about BA running an ISP may or may not be founded, but I thought I'd point out that they already do, with traditional analog modems: bellatlantic.net. I've spoken with some of the people in their NOC, and they were definitely ISP people, not phone types.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
I loaded up USWorst's ordering page (still the poorest excuse for a business in the west), filled in my vital info, clicked submit.
USWorst rep called me the next day, verified my info, told me 10 days.
Cisco 675 DSL Router/Bridge arrives on my doorstep free of charge the next week. Cisco lists these at $399 on their ordering page. I'm not renting or leasing it, I own it. Far be it from me not to accept a loss leader.
I check with my isp (XMission, best in the state of Utah), make sure everything's hunky-dory. They give me my static IP, no extra charge, no bothering around with DHCP.
My installation target date arrives. I haul out the little thinkpad that could and hook it up to the ethernet and serial ports on the Cisco. Plug the Cisco into the phone jack. Plug the phone into the jack on the back of the Cisco.
I talk to the Cisco through the serial port, follow the configuration instructions in the booklet USWorst sent me, reconfigure the tcpip on the thinkpad, and I'm able to ping the world.
In all the excitement, the fresh (not frozen) pizza I had baking in the oven burned to a big carbon slab. Didn't even notice the smoke pouring out of the kitchen until well after I'd installed my 2nd nic in my server, made the requisite changes to my firewall configuration, and started ooing and ahhing at the download speeds and ping times.
All in all the roughest part of my DSL experience was related to installing the filtered phone jack on the wall of my appartment. I figured I'd pull the plate off and find a nice little up-to-code connection box. I discovered that that wall was constructed of 3/4 inch plywood, and that they'd installed the jack apparantly by chizzling a hole in the plywood with a screwdriver or something until they could pull the phone cord through it. Used one of those cheezy flat wall jacks with the punch-down blocks.
The filtered jack is surprisingly overengineered. Printed circuit board with a few capacitors on it and two sets of screw-down terminals, jumper wires leading to a set of screw-down terminals next to the actual jack. Another set of jumper wires leading to a set of screw-down terminals on the backside of the plate. Another set of screw-down terminals attached to those.
Had to get a shallow connection box from Eagle. That was sorta hard to find. You'd figure it'd be with the electrical stuff, but you have to go past electrical and past lighting and into plumbing to get to the conduit supplies. Go figure.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
"In addition, cable modems are a shared pipe, you share it not with strangers, but with other rabid netsurfers, warez vendors, porn freaks, and quake server operators in your building or street."
This is true. But how does this differ from all the DSL lines going into a shared pipe at the local exchange?
It sure doesn't sound like they're giving you a guaranty on your 416Kb for $159 a month. I've got a cable modem, which almost always blazes - I've had big downloads come in at over 200KB/s. The limiting factor almost always seems to be somewhere other than the last mile of copper. And I get it for $50 a month - yep, modem & access included.
Even if I had to use a phone line for the uplink (which, luckily, I don't), I would have to think real hard about shelling out 3 times as much money for a comparable service. Especially when the cable companies are eager for your business, while you practically have to beat up the phone company to get anything done.
InterAccess is good for chicago area DSL for a number of reasons. In particular, reasons pertaining to the article above. The annoyance of dealing with 3 different companies is a moot point, since IA is an ISP and a CLEC.
Odd that you have to wait until october. That's most likely an issue with your CO. They aren't turning on areas until there appears to be sufficient demand for it in that area.
On the bright side, they aren't overselling.
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
I live in Santa Barbara, CA and have ADSL service from a local ISP called Silicon Beach. My CLEC is GTE. The install was totally painless and the service has been running well for months at very competitive prices!! Can't say enough good things about ADSL!!
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
I ordered my first ISDN line in Lawrence, Kansas in the spring of 1996. Southwestern Bell had the line installed into my old house, sitting in a neighborhood of houses built before the turn of the century, in one week. Install back then was free as long as you signed a 2 year contract, and monthly usage was $104 unmetered.
I moved to Connecticut in the spring of 1998 and began working at a factory in Chester, Connecticut. I called SNET, the telco for all of CT, and asked about ISDN for the business. I was told it wasn't offered in my region of the state. After chasing my account exec for over a week, I finally was given a number, which led me to another number, which led me to a third conversation with a fellow that told me it could be done.
SNET, to this day in 1999, does not have digital switches in most of central Connecticut. My options for ISDN are as follows:
1. purchase a "link extention" which bypasses my local switch (Deep River, CT) and routes me to another switch located 35 miles southeast (in Groton, CT). cost: $200 install, $75/month.
2. purchase an ISDN line from SNET. cost: $300 install, $54/month, plus $.01 per minute per B channel for data calls.
3. purchase a dial up ISP account from Javanet, a local ISP owned by RCN. $25/month unlimited usage.
I worked out the amount of usage the line would get and found ISDN would cost the company around $600 a month. Of course with the local loop charges for T1 as they are, ISDN is still cheaper. But not cheap enough. For now we are using a Webramp router and a 56k modems, which connect at around 26k.
I am hoping that now that Southwestern Bell has "merged" with SNET, as the SNET people like to tell me, that a new switch will be installed and the rates will become more reasonable. But I doubt it.
When I signed up (Dec 1998) they had a different contract than they do now. They appear to have broken down the service into two offers. One is for home use and has the "no static IP, no servers, and no NAT" clause. The other (more expensive) is less restrictive.
I ended up getting SDSL 384k for $90/month with a less restrictive contract. Southwestern Bell/Pacific Bell has some very good deals for ADSL in this area as well, but I'm in GTE country.
Installation went smoothly. GTE showed up, installed the in house end of the phone line in 10 minutes. They brought the DSL modem plugged it in, waited for the lights to turn green and said "I'm done." Luckily I knew to call FlashCom and request an IP address and gateway. Time from order to on the net was about two weeks and installation was $99 with the modem thrown in for free.
Another key point to be aware of with DSL is the CIR, the certified information rate. The phone company will tell you the maximum data rate your line can carry. Ask them what the CIR is. This is the minimum rate that they guarantee. You'll find it to be much lower. From what I've seen the CLECs give you a better CIR at a higher cost than the RBOC.
Your DSL line connects to an ISP and the ISP connects you to the net. So, how your ISP connects to the net is very important (like any ISP). Are they multihomed? Where are their exchange points? Do they get network service from the major players?
Overall I've been very happy with it. It would have been tough if my wife and I weren't extremely knowledgable on the topic. Hopefully this is useful as a comparison for other people looking at DSL.
- |Daryll
I am just starting to look for DSL ISPs and obviously I would like a good one. What are some good questions to ask them to help me ensure they are not giving me the same old runaround.
US West customers will recognize the company slogan that is the subject of my reply. In this case the advertisements are telling the truth.
My aDSL experience is at the other end of the scale.
It was ordered in late October, delivered in early November, been working fine ever since. I get 512K symmetrical bandwidth and occasionally test it with bing to verify that I'm really getting it.
US West doesn't care, and has an announced policy of not caring, what you do with your bandwidth.
All in all they're delivering what everyone has promised.
There's more to it than this.
I fully agree. I've been a cable modem customer for about a year and have never had a problem with speed. I had an outage for a couple of hours once but I lived. I think the service is great.
It's 2 way as yours is and costs about 45/month including the modem lease.
My IP has only changed twice in that year. I run a Quake arena for my friends and the way I got around the changing IP was to set up my server to automatically respond to a specific e-mail requests with my current IP. That way, if they can't get in for some reason they send and e-mail, wait a few minutes and then my new IP is automatically sent to them.
Bottom line, cable is better for some and in some areas. Check all your options.
M
MG
Have you ever looked into bandwidth prices for something like say...a T3? They are very expensive, and usually the T3 provider has transfer limits, if you go over these limits you have to pay for all the extra bandwidth you used. The reason they dont want you using your DSL as a server is because you may have several gigs transfered in a month which is over their transfer limit and they have to pay for all of that. Everything transmitted over the internet costs money. If you want to run a server from your house buy a dedicated line (T1 or fractional T1) which is meant for servers and don't hog a provider's bandwidth. Or you could pay for a co-location which you can run your server on. I dont want my monthly bill going up to pay for your overextended transfers.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
First, DSL is NEW TECHNOLOGY at least in the sense of an ISP offering it to home subscribers (yes I'm aware it's been around for years in T1 connections). If you can't get service, don't complain and wait a few months like I have to.
Second, if you happen to currently live in a place where you cant get DSL (like me) dont complain. You just have to be patient.
Third, never expect the service advertised, if you believe advertisements please go hit yourself in the head with a shovel. Companies will do anything to get your business, it's safe to go with a larger company that you have at least some trust in, not a little startup (I have nothing against small startups) that may or may not be legitimate.
Fourth, if you're upset because you can't run a Q3A server from home because of a "no server" policy, think about how you're connected to the net. It all goes back to a T3 (in some rare cases a faster connection) which is very expensive and usually has transfer limits. You say "well I couldnt transfer that much data", think if everyone had the ability to run a server and half of them did, you would easily go over the transfer limits.
I have a cable modem which I just had installed two weeks ago and I am very happy with it. Like most people with cable modems I have to use a regular analog modem for upstream data. I don't mind this because in a few months the service will be upgraded (for free) to no return path and I will be really happy. I have also noticed that my upstream transfers are about 10-20% faster which I attribute to faster downstream packet acknowlegements but I may be wrong. My average download speed in about 400kb/s which translates to about 50 kilobytes per second. This is about the same speed as I get using the frame relay at school on a node in one of the labs. I got my service on a deal and only pay 20$ a month which includes modem rental, a static IP, my Earthlink account and cable service. The normal price is about 45$/mo which isn't unreasonable. I can see where some people would have bandwidth problems but a majority of people with cable modems shouldnt have much difficulty with bandwidth. The office's conenction is a T3 and they have a user cap of about 3000 (a single modem is limited to 512kb/s downstream) but currently only has about 600 users. If the user cap were hit they would just add another T3, something I assume most providers would do. When my service becomes two way I may not switch to DSL, DSL is alot more expensive than my service (it's more expensive than a regular cable price) and may or may not give me a good connection in my area.
I dont complain about any fast connection, it's faster than my v.90 connection
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This morning on my way into work, while stuck in traffic here in DC, I was thinking of DSL. I heard the Bell Atlantic Commercials. I wondered about how difficult it is, and what was involved, and how expensive it is also.
After reading this, I am not sure that I want to do it at this time. I don't spend that much time on the internet.
I also noticed his remarks about 56k modems. I guess 3 com will use info like that in there defense of 56 k access and X-2 technology.
Hey I spend about $0 on my 33.6 an dthen upgraded it for another $50. I am ocntent with my 56k access. I have had transfers from 300 to 70k with my 56k modem.
Only 'flamers' flame!
I had an experience with DSL much like this one posted here, except while his looks like it's working, mine never did, and I'm right here in the Silicon Valley.
... went out of business, and Covad's asked us to provide continuing service to anyone who wants it. *click*
;-)
I spent some time shopping around for DSL, and finally settled on one company - their prices seemed appropriate, and they offered the services I needed. (/28 subnet, no NAT) They generally only offered Flowpoint Routers, which were complete overkill for my needs, especially as I would be using a firewall and my own router on my side of the connection. They agreed to sell me a Speedstream Bridge, instead - much better match for me needs, and save me some $400.
Well, took about a month of no word back from them, but the line was finally installed, with very little warning. (They never called to schedule an appointment, as I was told they would) and the tech went to install a Flowpoint. After talking to him, and the ISP, he installed a Speedstream Bridge, and the line didn't seem to have any problems - all lights green, everything looked good. But I had no IP addresses to use yet.
One more week, finally I got the IP addresses I needed. (The person at the ISP didn't know how to do a setup for a bridge, although it's supported by Covad, the DSL provider) Finally, things should be working, no?
No. I had the IPs, but pings wouldn't go through (although I do see the lights blinking on the bridge with each attempt), call customer support and let them know it's not working yet. They spend awhile (a week) working on this, and then tell me it's fixed. It's not. Pull out tcpdump, and monitor the line to see what's coming over it, and indeed, I can see pings from outside, but they appear to be unknown packets.
I send this information to them, tell them the line appears to be setup wrong, and to verify it - suspicion is they set the line up for Flowpoint. After a week, I haven't heard back from them, so I call them again - oh, they need to have Covad look it at, give it a few more days. Another week, I call them back, and check the status - Covad says everything's fine.
It's not. About this point, I pull out my TCP/IP book, and RFCs, and start pulling the packet's I'm seeing from the bridge to see what's in them. After a very short amount of searching, I find they appear to be very nice IP packets. Nice, that is, except they are missing the first two bytes of an IP header (version, packet size, type of service) and that they are coming in without an ethernet header on them - on my ethernet port.
How rude. I download a copy of tcpdump source and hacket to speak this corrupt dialog, and can view these packets with ease now. I write all this up, and include all sorts of packet dumps of the raw data, the real data, etc, etc... I call them, tell them what I saw, and then email it per their request.
No response. What, that wasn't enough information? I contact efficient networks, makers of Speedstream, and describe this to them. They tell me the problem is the line is set for Router, not Bridged DSL, and is set for VCMUX, not LLC. This would account for the packets the way I am seeing them. (The Speedstream is stripping 16 bytes off the head of the packets - Bridged adds 10 bytes, and LLC adds 6. An ethernet header is 14 - thus my missing ethernet header, plus 2 bytes of the IP header) I contact my ISP again, and talk to one of their support people, again. He says they're being bought out and their account with covad is locked temporarilly - they can get it fixed that week. Okay, I wait.
On Monday, I receive a call from Flashcom... Hi, ISP
Oh, and they charged me for a Flowpoint, not the Speedstream. I disputed that charge, being it's on my credit card and it's incorrect, but I'm not holding my breath, with them having gone out of business.
So, what do I have for my efforts to get DSL? Two months of wasted time, one Speedstream 5250 Bridge, and am, atleast for now, out $650 (Flowpoint router, and one months non-functional service) Atleast they never charged me the setup fee.
Anyone want a slightly used Speedstream 5250 Bridge? At $650, it's a great deal. Not.
My SO & I were waiting for Rogers @Home cable modem service in Toronto, and getting more and more tired of it being put off in our area. When the January storm hit and we wanted to work from home, we decided that this was the time to press the issue -- to find that cable modem service had been pushed back *two* months yet again. So we opted for Bell Sympatico HSE (High Speed Edition).
We had only one problem with install: their switch was full and we had to wait an extra week for them to get a new card in to handle more connections. Other than that, it went in fine.
We've had one problem with service, too: HSE was down for five days at exactly the wrong time (The Residents did their first ever live videocast of one of their performances -- I do their website, I should have been watching). Aside from that, it's been wonderful.
We run three boxes with IP masq on a Linux server, and I have various services on my box (though not open to the public). Bell's attitude is, "We don't care -- just don't expect us to support it", which is fine with me. We do have to put up with DHCP and changing IPs, but it's not a big problem -- I just have my box email me whenever things change.
-- Meet the Residents -- http://www.residents.com/
Hi,
I also have an IDSL connection through Concentric/Covad. I placed the install order on February 26, and my connection went up today (just over two months later).
The fact is that both concentric and covad did their best to help me out. Both companies have been very courteous, prompt in returning my phone calls and keeping me abreast of the situation.
Covad always showed up for their appointments when they said they would (unlike bell atlantic who says "we'll be there some time on wednesday, so stay home all day sitting by the front door and ready to answer the phone").
Covad delivered the router and installed a wall jack about two weeks after I placed the order. From that time I waited on bell atlantic to deliver my loop. There were wiring problems both at the street level (telephone pole next to my house) and at the CO, requiring equipment upgrades at both locations.
These equipment upgrades did not begin until the 1st of June. Bell atlantic repeatedly scheduled appointments to complete the loop and repeatedly failed to keep those appointments.
This is not the first issue I've had with bell atlantic. Prior to DSL, I used bell atlantic ISDN. At its scheduled rates, my monthly bill should have been $120. But my bills were routinely over $400. Each month I had to call to receive a credit for improper billing, but even with the credit the bill was usually close to $200.
Concentric is providing two months of free service due to bell atlantic's failures.
Joseph
I used to work for an ISP. The problem with DSL is there's too many things that have to go right for a DSL install. In my experience with Ameritech it works something like this (X is the Ameritech competitor who is providing service to the ISP, and you):
-ISP calls up X for a new line.
-X calls Ameritech.
-X installs the line.
-Ameritech sits on work order for 1-14 days, finally does install.
-Line does not work.
-Call ISP.
-ISP blames X.
-X blames Ameritech.
-Ameritech blames X.
-You pressure ISP
-ISP pressures X
-X concludes it's not their fault.
-X pressures Ameritech.
-Ameritech takes 1-14 days to figure it out and get it fixed.
There's a lot of room in here for communication breakdown, and surprise it happens alot. Not just for DSL, but for T1's too.
To add more fun to the equation, Keep in mind it can be anyone's fault. Could be Ameritech, could be X, could be the ISP, could be you. It's not easy to solve a problwem invoving 2 phone companies an ISP, and the user. Good ISP's are well equiped to get the right answers out of the right people at the respective phone comapnies, but you cant always count on that.
-Rich
Sorry to hear about your woes - I'm living in intown Atlanta (Ponce) and had no trouble getting ADSL through Bellsouth, except for the fact the dingbat contract installer guy had no clue about how to deal with a Mac - I had him write down the procedure to get a MAC addy for future use. Heh.
It seems to me that older neighborhoods tend to have more luck - older copper, less/no fiber. I've heard noise that they're working on getting ADSL to work with the rest of the world (i.e. those who have fiber between them and the CO).
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
I think someone's yanking your chain. AFAIK, Flashcom and others (Comstar, DSC) can't supply you with xDSL unless Bellsouth can, as the signal would still be travelling over Bellsouth's lines. (Bellsouth itself just has no plans to offer commercial xDSL - they're letting others do it over their network, though. They might get into it later if they see enough $$$.) To read some of the other venting re: Flashcom, it wouldn't surprise me if they're not full of excrement.
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
Cox@Home hands out addresses on a daily DHCP lease, but it's more of a convenience for the non-geeks than anything else (Windows defaults to asking a DHCP server for everything). They NEVER change the IP once issued.
Shortly after I got hooked up, I had to call into tech support because I couldn't lease my address, so they gave me my static address/mask/GW/nameservers and sent me on my merry way. (Turns out their DHCPd was getting clobbered by some rogue running a WinNT DHCP server on their net.)
If that ain't a stamp of approval, I don't know what is!
Ask your doctor if getting up off your ass is right for you! -- Bill Maher
I've had Pacific Bell DSL service since February (basically when they dropped their prices from ridiculous $89 a month down to $49 a month), and have had few complaints. I think installation was $200 and included the modem+setup fee (requires a yearly contract though).
:( )
It took 2 weeks (just as they promised) between order and installation, however once the technician (who did all the wiring, etc, and even drilled extra holes for us) left, the service stopped working. After that it took me 4-5 days of constant phone tag to get the tech support people to talk to an engineer who fixed the problem withing 3 minutes (our router went down 10 minutes after our service was installed, and lo and behold, the routing tables were restored from backup, without our entry.) The line worked fairly well after that (I have 384-1.5 Mbps downstream, 128 Kbps upstream. Speaking of which, does anyone know how they do this "variable downstream bandwidth" stuff? Some sort of sharing scheme, ala cable?).
In about 2 weeks the service stopped working, but I was able to resolve the problem within a half an hour tech support phone call (they changed my static ip without notice.)
There are interruptions of service sometimes, but they dont last over 2-3 hours, and usually happen at 2 am or so (when I should be in bed anyway, not online). The good thing is they provide you a static IP, and don't require to register the MAC address (I remember this being a pain in the ass in college).
All in all, I would say their aDSL is good right now. (We'll see in a year, maybe they'll oversell their lines
Heh, we have the symmetric 384 kbps Concentric service at work here, and yes, similar complaints. In cases of packet loss the bad guys are always concentric routers, and often its impossible to use a shell interactively due to latency problems. My Pacbell dsl line at home is so much better :)
I failed to read the fine print, so it was partly my fault. I signed up with Flashcom in November of 98 since they promised me that they could have my DSL up and running in two weeks. Well, February rolled around, and after a dozen phone calls to their office, being put on hold for almost as many hours, and constantly told "it'll only be a couple weeks now" I said screw it. I cancelled my order and went with another service. Whew, glad that was over.
Not quite. My company got an invoice from Flashcom to the tune of $200. WTF! It said it was a "cancellation fee," and that they needed my signature to authorize it! I called them and said yeah right, we never got any service, how can I cancel something I never got? I'm not authorizing any "cancellation fee!" Well, two weeks later we get our credit card statements, and lo and behold, Flashcom charged us. Eventually we went to Mastercard (God bless their golden hearts) to try to resolve this, and Mastercard took the charge off our card and took up the dispute.
We're with GTE now, which began offering DSL to GTE phone customers at half price. I got GTE DSL a week after I ordered it, and am very pleased with it now. They said they only officially support Windows95, but I got it to work fine on a Mac office. I even recommended it to CmdrTaco, but it seems that GTE's DSL coverage is extremely limited, and will not be coming to residential areas any time soon.
I talked to GTE directly, and they're giving away the service to GTE phone customers for half off! I'm paying $45/mo for 384/384!
Been in conversation with Flashcom since Dec. Constant refrain is "be here any day now", interspersed with "won't be available" and "you can have it right now if you sign up now."
My old man is looking into them and has been burned five or six ways to breakfast by their constantly shifting policies, offerings, prices, and doubletalk. Another buddy of mine who is suffering under the onus of ISDN sticker-shock (he's had ISDN for 2 years and the fees are killing him) was all ready to sign up for Flashcom until he read the terms: You are allowed to do nothing that they don't specifically permit (no servers, IPMasq, etc.) and your guaranteed line speed is...NOTHING. They commit to nothing, but lock you into a year long contract that you can't get out of for any reason because they don't promise to deliver anything. (How do you justify to the court breaking a contract that doesn't promise you anything? Riddle me THAT, Batman!)
rant_on
The stupidest part of this whole sorry mess is that my region (Southern New Jersey) is home to many very wealthy communities (they work in Philly and retire to their Mansions in Medford Lakes) that would love and use these high speed services. So far, no CableModems, no DSL from BellAtlantic (which won't even return calls), and no other options for higher speeds other than BellAtl's larcenous ISDN prices. Naturally BellAtl doesn't want to provide DSL speeds at competitive prices: ISDN service nets them more $ per sucker without having to be competitive.
rant_off
Flashcom is being watched very carefully by consumer advocacy groups in the Delaware Valley and their service in the next several weeks will be detailed in a forthcoming report. I'll have a copy posted at my website: www.webwrench.com.
Anyone else who has encountered FLASHCOM, please contact me to add your input and I'll pass it along to the advocacy group.
flames > dev/null
I agree. I've never had anything remotely resembling a satisfying experience dealing with US Worst. When I lived in Central Phoenix, they managed to screw up the billing on my ISDN line for five months in a row, and at least five days out of each month was "down time" for the ISDN line.
Now, I'm online with SpeedChoice, but using a commercial account so that I can use their bidirectional wireless link (not yet available for residential installations.) I get 10MBit downstream, 32kbit CIR on the uplink, burstable to 256kbit on the uplink. This translates roughly to a saturated link at between 5 and 7MBit due to the nature of the loop.
But it doesn't require another phone line, and it doesn't require stepping into that pit of Hell known as US West.
I can't get DSL (MegaBit, or MegaWait, or whatever you want to call it) from US West in this area - apparently, Scottsdale isn't very high on their list for updating equipment, despite the upcoming need for new lines in the Los Arcos area. I can't get @Home, because Cox has slipped their delivery dates for about fourteen months so far.
I can get SpeedChoice. So I did. I like it.
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
Red Connect had information on their website that running personal servers was allowed. The web site also seems to indicate that a static IP address is supplied.
I could go with the SDSL (synchronous i.e. same speed in either direction) from my current ISP, but the cost is 4x the Redconnect price.
So I've been on the Red waiting list for 6 months now.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I saw this link over on Linux Today. Bell South refuses to install DSL for a Linux user after telling him they would. Lots of weasel words from BS on how Linux is "incompatible" with DHCP.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I just had to give up my cable modem after a year (we moved), but it was a wonderful experience.
MediaOne in Cambridge, MA provides modern 2-way cable modem service. The speed was sometimes faster than the real connection at work, and never
seemed to get overloaded, despite the shared bandwidth. They limited upstream to 300K, with downstream over 1Mbps. The IP numbers are assigned by DHCP, but only changed every few months. The connection was extremely stable--it only went down twice.
The best part was the price. $40/month (since I also had cable TV from them), and I was able to eliminate my old ISP and second phone line, so it saved me money.
They didn't let you run commercial servers, but they didn't seem to mind personal stuff unless the traffic started ringing alarms. (That was never an issue for me.), and you had to run IP Masquerade if you had in internal network.
For residentail customers, you can't beat cable modems.
This is grossly off-topic (I would moderate myself down to 0 if I could), but I'm just amazed that there are two people on Slashdot with usernames from The Dark Crystal. And not only that, someone from Raleigh! (I go to Duke). Ok, prepare to be moderated . . .
One correction, it is ADSL, just starting at 256K up/down... scales to 1M up, 8M down.
---
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will deserve neither and lose both."
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
I currently live in Ottawa, and in the 8 months that I've spent in this city, I had cable internet at two places of residence, and ADSL at one of them.
I was shocked to hear the horror story above, I have had inconsistent service before, but nothing that came even close to that. It was always easy for me to sign up for cable (and ADSL), it was always just a matter of checking if the area was ready, ordering the installation, and that's it.
I've been an internet cable custommer for about three years now. I used to live in the city of Kingston in Ontario (roughtly between Montreal and Toronto), population 130,000. They ran cable trials there as one of the first places in Canada to offer it.
The quality of the service has been ok, it goes down every now and then (I would say often), but it's usually fixed quickly. I do get packet look in a lot of Quake games, but it's still quite good most of the time.
With ADSL the service isn't that reliable either, and I've had the same amount of low-ping servers...
There's one important difference though, cable here (Rogers @home) gives you a static IP address, and ADSL uses DHCP.
Interestingly, both my ADSL modem (which I don't have any more, cancelled it) and and my cable modem are made by Nortel Networks.
"Still, compared to the nightmare I had dealing with Cogeco in Kingston"
:P
Really? What was your nightmare scenario? I've been a Cogeco custommer in Kingston since they introduced the service, and my parents still are (I'm in Ottawa using Rogers now).
There has been ups and downs, but hey, it worked. When there was trouble, they sent technicians. Overall it was very much worth it.
I've used Rogers in two locations so far, in Kanata and Ottawa, and in both places I've had a static IP. I hope they aren't moving to DHCP, static IP is the reason I picked the service, despite the fact that I can get the 1-Meg modem installed for free (still have to pay monthly usage fees) since I work for Nortel Networks
I recently attended a talk by some Academics who study Internet technologies - the talk was aimed at giving us a general knowledge of Internet routing leading up to IP telephony, but we received a lot of information on the topic :
Cable modems - Cable modems are great initially. If you're living in an area where not many people are using the cable modem service, then go for it. However, as more people subscribe to cable modem service, the service itself degrades, and you will get frustrated. This has to do with the way they are providing the service and the fact that you will be sharing a cable "channel" with many other subscribers. The only hope for cable modems in the future is for the cable companies to start adding more boosters throughout their network so you aren't sharing cable with so many other subscribers.
ADSL - There are 2 major pitfalls with ADSL - the first is that you need a second phone line brought into your house.. not too bad, but it causes a high installation cost. The second is that you need to be fairly close to your Central Office in order to actually use the service - the falloff rate for service is exponential as you move away from the CO. However, if you are close to the CO and don't mind getting the wiring done, I've heard that it is worth it.
new DSL - This was mentioned before, but Nortel Networks has come out with a new modem called the 1 Meg Modem. It is a great advantage over the ADSL modem, although in some cases, it can be a bit slower. It does not require a new line to your house.. your phone provider simply has to change the line card that your line goes into at the Central Office. I'd also probably assume that you need to be connected to a TelCo that uses Nortel switches (DMS).
It is also limited in distance from Telco, but it is not as bad as the ADSL modems. The dropoff is not as bad as you move out, and it has a larger radius to work with.
Anyway, I began this by mentioning that I was attending a talk by people who study Internet technologies, and there feeling was that the 1 meg modem technology will be the breakthrough for home Internet use.
As far as how far its usage has spread, I'm not sure - I know Bell Canada's Sympatico is offering it in some areas (Ottawa, for sure, since the modem was develloped there..), and I know some Universities have started using the technology to run their "dialup" connections. Anyway, you can read more about it at .
Good luck,
hairyA
I can't believe what I'm hearing here! Hundreds of dollars, plus all these hassles? I've been looking (only through curiosity, as I live well outside any city, and won't be able to get xDSL for many more years) at the options here in New Brunswick, Canada, and it seems they blow everything else out of the water.
For 39.95 CANADIAN - that's probably under US$30, you get everything - the connection, the modem, 5 gigs of bandwidth (upgradeable to 20 for another $15)...
As well, you have free reign for running servers,etc, and connections within the service don't count towards your overall usage.
The IP situation is a bit odd - you have a static IP for within the service, but if you make external connections, you have a different one, that changes after half an hour of inactivity. Apparently this isn't a big problem, however, since it's very easy to just have a process pinging something every 10 minutes, and you essentially have a static IP (until you reboot). A real static IP can be had for a few $$.
Of course, on top of that, you get mail and news, etc.. from the phone company's ISP, which has been VERY good. I've heard almost no complaints, besides the usual very occasional downtimes.
All in all, I'm reminded of how great this phone system is. We get all this in a primarily rural province (though the ADSL is only in larger communities so far). Meanwhile, in Montreal, a teeming metropolis, most of the city can't even get a dialup line that doesn't disconnect every half hour or so. A great deal of the city can't even get an overpriced cable modem.
Now if only they expand into the country...
NBTel has a similar thing - the service is called "Vibe". It makes a *bit* of sense, since the Vibe network isn't all ADSL. The first bits that they put in a few years ago use some sort of fibre straight to the house. As well, they're allowing for other technologies (SDSL?) on the same plan in the future. However, they don't mention any of that anywhere on the web page. I had to check with some other users to find out. Grr....
If you are using dhcpcd, you can use the "-I" switch (DHCP Client Identifier) instead of the "-h" switch.
Using the "-I" switch you can retain your hostname.
Usually just setting up a static IP works with an @Home account. They use DHCP to simplify setup for naive Windows users, not to establish dynamic IP addresses.
Richard
After Bell Atlantic rolled out ADSL service to the New York City metro area, I visited their web page for several months, waiting for the page to say that my phone number "qualified" for ADSL service...
:-)
Then one day in April, I put in the number of the Dominoes pizza around the corner from me. It came up certified as good for ADSL service. Hmmm... Dominoes can get ADSL, but I can't?
I called up Bell Atlantic and asked them to check my line, just for the fun of it. Two days later, they called me back and told me it certified for ADSL. WOO-HOO!
First hurdle cleared. Next hurdle - getting it installed, physically.
Bell Atlantic does EVERYTHING - from line installation and certification to installation of the splitter to the shipment of the ADSL modem to the ISP end of things. I was warry of them being my ISP, as I had used them before for 56k dialup, and the dial-up speeds had sucked. However, from what I understand of it, they outsource their ISP stuff to Iconnet. I figured Iconnet's modem banks just didn't understand V.90 back in the day (last year).
Installation is a two-step process. The first day, they install the splitter. The second day, they configure your computer.
Before Day One: Bell Atlantic sends the Westel modem to me via UPS. They never told me they were sending it, and I'm of course not there to receive it in the afternoon on a weekday (gee, I work - what a shocker). What's worse, UPS doesn't bother to leave me a note until the SECOND delivery attempt. I get UPS to reroute the package to my Boxoffice address, and pick it up the following week.
The package contains the ADSL modem, a 6 foot Ethernet cable, a 14 foot phone cable, a 3Com Etherlink XL 10Mbit PCI network card, a booklet on Bell Atlantic.Net ISP service, and the power adaptor for the ADSL modem.
Day One - a Thursday, from 8am to 12pm: Bell Atlantic ADSL certified lineman comes out to install the splitter. This took about 45 minutes. At the end of the installation process, the splitter (which is just a fancy bandpass fliter, but MUST go before all of your phones) was stuck to the wall next to my phone outlet. The ADSL modem plugs into the splitter, and the phone plugs into the wall outlet. So far, so good.
Now the fun part - the ADSL modem is plugged into the line and powered on. Based on the rather scarce info about the Westel ADSL modem, it seems that the modem has to first connect to the CO gear on the other end, then download its config, then synch up. This doesn't happen.
Three hours later, the people back at the CO finally fix a patch and the link comes up.
BA had sent my IP info to me in a letter. I had all this info entered into Win98. I was all ready to go. As soon as link came up, I plugged the Ethernet cable into my computer and the modem and rebooted Win98. Sure enough, after rebooting I could ping the local router (well, what they said was the local router).
Turns out BA gave me a router interface that wasn't in my local subnet. I promptly changed that (the ping worked because of proxy ARP).
Day Two: There is no day two. Day two is only for people who can't set up IP, Netscape, etc. This didn't apply to me. I called Bell Atlantic and cancelled the second appointment. Of course, that info never got to the tech, who left me a little note stating that he had stopped by. Oh well, Bell Atlantic's loss.
Third hurdle - outtages:
Outtage One: My first ADSL outtage was that very Saturday night, at 12:30am. There was an as yet still unknown problem upstream of the ADSL gear at the CO. How do I know? The ADSL modem stayed linked up to the remote end, but I couldn't ping the default gateway. D'oh! This behavior is apparently the norm, as it happened on all of my outtages so far. Anywho, I wake up Sunday morning to find things fixed.
Outtage Two: My second ADSL outtage was more severe. The outtage was at the same time, 12:30 AM on Sunday. However, this time when I woke the next morning, I still couldn't ping my local router...
When I got home Monday night, I called BA. They checked things out, and by 12am, they said that they'd have to refer it out to the systems group (which isn't 24x7).
Tuesday I had a long day at work, and wasn't looking forward to coming home to a non-working Internet connection (I had become hooked on multiplayer Half-Life in the few short days I had my ADSL). However, from what I knew from Monday night, I knew that the problem wasn't on the physical layer. It was at layer two or higher.
I tried pinging my IP periodically throughout the day. It became pingable in the early afternoon. I called in to BA to find out what the problem was, and to verify that it was MY machine I was pinging. About 15 minutes into the call, I found out that the problem had been that I was in the wrong VLAN. It took another 30 minutes to get to the layer 3 people to VERIFY on the router that my IP was matching my hardware address in the ARP table on the router.
Outtage Three: Again at 12:30am on Saturday. Came back up Sunday morning. Still no idea what the problem was.
Outtage Four: This was an emergency work window from 12am to 2am on Thursday morning, so I really shouldn't call this an outtage. But by this time I was pissed at BA...
The past two weekends, I've had no problems. I've had the service for going on my fourth week, so I'm relatively happy with it. I work in network operations, so I can understand equipment problems (especially with cutting-edge gear).
Bell Atlantic does not lock in your MAC address anymore. They do static IPs for now, but will be migrating to a dynamic IP system. They may sell extra IPs in the future, but for now you can only get one.
BA didn't give me a problem when I told them I ran Linux as well as 95. They really don't seem to care, as long as you understand that they don't support Linux.
When you get down to it, all you are buying at this point is a one port Ethernet hub that uplinks to the Internet at 640kbit (downstream is 90kbit). It doesn't matter what machine you use, as long as it understands IP, can be configured, and can understand DHCP in the future.
My ISP, Bell Atlantic.Net has good tech support. I've never had to hold for more than 10 minutes, and they are there 24x7. The ADSL hardware side of Bell Atlantic still has a way to go - they're VERY stratified. The layer 1 people don't talk much to layer 2, and layer 2 talks even less to the router guys. This makes getting non-layer 1 problems fixed an annoying matter.
Still, it is definitely far superior to a 56k modem. I consistently get 60kBytes/second on my downloads (provided they come from a server that can support that high a speed), and multiplayer gaming is awesome!
Anywho, that's my experience so far. I think it's good on the whole. I didn't expect the ADSL link to be without outtages, and I still have my 56k modem and separate ISP for those times when the ADSL goes down.
Just my $0.02.
-- Perry Ketter, a.k.a. IceStorm
There is a company here in Utah County, Utah called AirSwitch (www.airswitch.com) that will run network cable to your house for an $80 hookup fee and you can get an ethernet connection and ISP service for $19.00/month.
That beats the socks off all of the alternatives that I know about.
Those who open their minds too far often let their brains fall out.
Anyone know of a company who offers DSL service out here in the Wild, Wild, West? Specifically, Phoenix?
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware.
As a prefix to all of this, I live in Santa Cruz California, My office is located in Los Gatos California. For those who don't know, about 30 miles, and a small mountain range separate the two.
About January of this year I was poking around the PacBell web site and I came across some information on their DSL plan. They had an aggressive roll out plan (100% coverage by the end of the year) and reasonable prices ($200 install, $50/month), unfortunately at the time I was not within the (still small) coverage area. Then about a month ago, my father, who lives near by, told me he'd been poking around there and had used their automated phone number tester to see if he could get DSL. He was not in a coverage zone (but since then that's changed, and he now has his work order in to get DSL). Out of curiosity he checked on my number. He found that my CO did have DSL hookups. Since it is only about half a block away, I knew I was within the required distance (which, as a side note, is approximately the same as the distance PacBell can supply ISDN in Ca). I called and got a work order in to have a DSL line installed at my home. I was told I would be contacted within 48 hours by a technician who would arrange for my install, I missed the call, but the appointment time they picked out for me was easy enough for me to make. About one week later (at the scheduled time) the technician came by and worked for about a half hour setting up a splitter on my line and wiring a second jack in the room I wanted it in. I plugged in the modem, plugged it into my NIC card (I never own a computer without one, they're just too handy) and set up the TCP/IP settings. It's worked from the first moment I had it set up properly, and aside from one brief service outage I've had no problems with it. I'm nothing but pleased with it, and I am not (as the author implied) the kind of person who orders things and forgets about them. My service was quick.
Our attempts to get DSL installed at work have been completely different. My home service is through PacBell, who is my ISP, DSL provider and Phone provider. They even run a pretty good ISP, I've even made tech support calls into them and been impressed with the responsiveness. My company's office is under GTE's service area. GTE does not provide DSL the way PacBell does. Nor do they supply ISDN like PacBell does, apparently they're convinced that the B channels are supposed to be 56k instead of 64k, I know it's been explained to me why in the past, but I didn't care enough to listen. So far our network admin has had an experience close to the one the author describes. We were sold a product that does not now exist. We've been put onto a wait list and we have no idea when our zone might get lit up. Unlike the author's experience, there is (to the best of my knowledge) only one DSL provider with plans to work into our area, and it's not going anywhere near quickly.
It seems to me that DSL problems all stem from the division between phone company, DSL provider and ISP. The three don't talk to each other unless they happen to be one entity, as in my home experience. Also the quality of service can vary tremendously in short distances.
-Ted
I am ever glad I did not have to go through that horror to get my ADSL line hooked up. I live in Ottawa (and work for Nortel Networks which helps) so my only current choice for high speed access is Sympatico (Bell Canada's ISP). The use Nortel's 1 Meg Modem technology so as an employee all I have to pay is the installation fee and the $40/month for service and I get the modem for free. This service is a littel different in that it doesn't actaully require any changes to the wiring in my home, just a new card at the switch. I think it was about 10 days from the time I signed up to the time everything was set up and working. That is the advantage of having everything bundled in one company I guess. You can check out Nortel's 1 Meg Modem sit here and Sympatico's here .
You still have to be fairly close to the switch to be able to get the service and I don't know of any way to find out other than by phoning sympatico.
Good luck to everyone attempting to get ADSL. The bandwidth is worth it, I promise.
>:]
You seem to be paying way to much. $140/month?! I'm in Quebec and through Bell Canada (Not affiliated with the american Bells) I get 1 megabit ADSL access for $40/month, plus $15 for the modem. The service has been fine, and it uses the system where you put filters on your phones. The only complaint is that they didn't give me enough filters at first, and there were a couple of server outages right at the beginning.
You should live here in SoCal. The ISP I have (a company I once worked for, now work for a parent company) takes care of everything. The network provider is GTE, and they were the only nightmare to deal with. Rebuilt my phone line as a DSL a day early. Didn't come the day they were supposed to. Had to have my line rebuilt as a regular line. But we got on the phone and they came Monday at noon. Haven't had a problem since! And I get away with only paying GTE charges too.
Anyone have experience with PatriotNet and Covad? I ordered from them about two-three weeks ago, and they haven't scheduled an install yet. They said it could take up to 8 weeks, so I'll be patient.
-Chris
Simple solution, get both. You would have a higher bandwidth and better connectiviy.... But that just my take on it.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I know for a fact that South Lake has DSL.. Check out a page hosted on 756k DSL http://www.cybermail.net/
I think Lewisville has DSL and some parts of Denton.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
@Home has that clause. They don't want people to "hog" the band width.. It's kind of funny when you are playing on a 32 person Half life server, and downloading 20 meg files in the back ground is really taking up.
Well on cable you have a 1 meg uplink, I think that maybe the reason why......
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I have seen some products that hook up like a cabel modem, not extra drivers needed.. Just hook it into your 10bT card and wah-lah
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I have read on Alcatel's site that ADSL is being trialled by Telia, but does anyone know where I can find some definite information on availability / locations of service in Sweden - especially the Göteborg area.
Also, are there any pressure groups / user campaigns to try and push telco's for better access in Sweden?
A little planning goes a long way...
Do any other PA natives feel this way?
I live in Cranberry Township, north of Pittsburgh. I can tell you, I'm never getting DSL or cable modems, since I live in an apartment plan with proprietary Cable/Phone taps. Everything seems to go through a massive (but high quality - my modem works fine) pbx system, and there are probably a lot of A/D conversions down the line. I'm pretty sure they'd have a local node to my immediate area, but I cannot tap into it due to the nature of my plan.
I hear BA has connections downtown, but I'll probably never move to Allegheny county or Pittsburgh again until they lower their damned taxes. TCI also runs @home to the local area.
Lowmag.net
I live in downtown Toronto, where infrastructure isn't updated as often as in the 'burbs. (Why?) I can wait for ADSL (Bell Sympatico HSE) or I can wait for cable (Rogers @home) or I can get something called Microwave digital right now ( Look/Internet Direct)
I ask this because the TV signal I get right now is a line-of-sight signal provided by Look, and getting the internet stuff requires very little extra hardware. In fact it sounds like the thing mentioned about the Empire State Building. (My transmitter is on the CN Tower)
My question is -- does anybody have any experience with Linux and this kind of stuff? You need a regular modem for the uplink line. The downlink is supposedly 1.5 Mbs, but there are various things about it that suck, such as time limits on connections.
However, it's cheap (C$30/mo) and available now.
We here in WI have just recently gotten the promise of the vast wonderful Oz like creation of DSL from a company called Dakota.
Up until I moved recently, I had ISDN, it was a solid 128kb, and I could serve some minor stuff off of it. Then I moved into an apartment that already had an ISDN jack and line.. You would think that Ameritech would easily be able to switch it on and keep me flying.. No, it would take 3 weeks and $113 dollars to come out to have him say, "Yep, that's a jack.." and call someone to flip a switch.
At that point our local ISP was offering DSL and I decided to give it a try. I had to sell my ISDN router in order to pay for the install, and I didn't make much back on it, not to mention that the router was only a few months old.
It was expensive, but that was because 99% of the overhead went back to Dakota. I made arrangements and made sure that my address was in their "Local DSL" area.. They confirmed it and I was set to have it installed..
A month goes by with me checking in and the ISP saying Dakota is still sitting on it, and ofcourse I can't talk to Dakota. They tell me that they had to lower the length of their "Local DSL" area down to 1.4 miles, I was originally at their 2 mile mark. So now I'm in "Extended DSL" range which will take longer. I'm starting to think just getting ISDN would be been the solution.
Another month goes by with screaming now and they finally find that the firmware on the bridges crashes the multi-plexors at the switch.. So now there will be NO extended DSL until they fix the firmware bug, which conservatively speaking they said a few months.
If your in the Milwaukee area and thinking about DSL, if your in the "Extended" range forget it. I've had nothing but a nightmare experience with DSL, and now I'm waiting for a refund, and will never ever recommend anyone go with Dakota again.
I don't blame the local ISP's with the problem of DSL, typically it is the provider of the DSL trying to offer a service that hasn't been tested, and overselling before it's even viable. If this is any indication of how highspeed access is going to come into the US, be prepare for a long long haul.
you cambridge ppl with your MediaOne...service varies widely for instance if you live in Boston or Somerville you're out of luck
Two notes:
The service is spec'd to "top out" at the speed you buy. I could order the 7.1mbps service but because of my distance from the CO I would only get 5.5mbps downstream.
The serivce agreement says I can run as many machines as I want on the connection, but I only get one address.
Anyone in the city of Chicago see 21st Century Telecom digging up streets to lay cable? They're outside my house as I type and I'm wondering if they will be any different from TCI or the other big cable providers. Has anyone heard anything about this company?
I'm also looking at Interaccess for DSL. Looks to be pretty fast (1.5Mbps up/down), but the installation is a few hundred plus monthly fees are something like $80 and I can't get service before September '99. Anyone have any comments on Interaccess DSL?
One would assume that '70k' means seventy kilobits per second, which is 8.75 kilobytes per second. I've never seen data rates that high on a 56K modem, myself, but they're more realistic than the seventy kilobytes you're apparently assuming.
MJP
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
I moved from Plano to North Dallas last year; TCI isn't in my area yet, either, so I phoned Southwestern Bell to ask about their Cheetah DSL service. They checked my distance from the local node on the phone, and verified that I was *too far* to get DSL access.
Looks like I'm stuck with my ridiculous 56K connection until I move again.
MJP
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
My experience getting DSL, while not completely smooth, was great. US West was able to confirm that my residence was DSL-capable over the phone, and I placed my order immediately and left my ISP unselected initially. I looked around at the various providers and found one that a good friend of mine had chosen to be the best. They do NOT have a "no servers" policy and their tech support is good (they even are willing to support Linux! Yay!). Also, I got a static IP address (for a few dollars a month more than dynamic IP).
The only real hitch I had was that US West moved my initial installation date (which was about 2 weeks after my order) back another 3 weeks after my local office went "temporarily out of capacity".
About a week before the scheduled "on" date, a nice big box arrived in the mail. Now I know what the setup fee pays for: a nice little Cisco 670 DSL modem and a 3com 3C900B-TP NIC, plus assorted filters, cables and manuals.
Of course the install guide didn't mention anything about Linux configuration, but I had that down on my own. Set up was simple and I was online in about 15 minutes.
For the record, US West offers only SDSL in my area, and I purchased 256K up/down.
Other than the 3-week delay, I am very satisfied and the quality is great to date. I *love* having access to my home box from work and I can serve up stuff to my friends and colleagues as I please.
My ISP is very aggressive about no servers. They don't firewall anything but portscan, packet sniff, and traffic monitor the hell out of you. They read your email, look at where you're surfing, what you're uploading, what ports you use. It's very fast but as far as we're concerned, it's a half duplex, non private connection.
I have some serious issues with anyone using an ISP that does what you say they do! Where are you located? And why the hell would you use such an ISP? I mean Reading your Emails!! I can't believe anyone would be so pathetic as to let themselves be subjected to such nonsense. I'm not sure what your saying is even true.
I'm sorry to hear of your DSL problems. But for others out there, let me tell you, DSL can be Great. I use a Cisco systems DSL modem that is completely configurable via a serial port (router like). I use a connection from USWEST here in Denver, and no, USWEST is not easy to deal with, in fact they are actually quite ignorant (surprise surprise). But all I need from them is the conection from my house to my CO. Once that was up, I chose to use a seperate ISP (most use uswwest.net) who has been very responsive and knowledgeable about DSL connections. I use a static IP, across a 256K connection (although I have seen greater speeds) which has had 99.9% uptime at least, in fact I don't ever seem to have it gone down except when I got it a year ago, and that was a bug in cisco's OS and the ATM network (they promptly sent me a new router).
I do not doubt others troubles though, my phone company has such a strangle hold on our local telephone market, it allows them to get away with alot more then if we had a competetive market place.
I got a DSL line from U.S. West in July of 1998 - so far, I really love it. But there are a few things I learned along the way that other people might find useful (especially if you live in Denver):
1) It really helps to use the same company for your ISP that provides the DSL line. In my case, that means U.S. West is my ISP. The reason this is useful is that if you have any problems, U.S. West has two options when you call - "Is your ISP U.S. West or OTHER (implied terrible)?" You know how far you'll get if it's not U.S. West!
2) For my DSL line, the phone guy went through a pretty herculean effort. Evenutally we ended up using the second pair of wires in my house instead of the primary pair, as the DSL modem could not train using the normal wires. So, I just had to re-wire all the jacks in my house to use the second pair. A small price to pay for low ping times.
3) In Denver, the lowest bandwidth option is 256k, not 765k. But in reality the downlink rate is really more like 650k.
4) If you hang a DSL line filter (you have to have a filter in between the wall and each phone in your house or you will hear noise) out of the wall with no phone attached, the DSL line will not work.
5) If you're at all technically inclined, always answer that you are indeed running Windows95 even if you have something else, then map their requests to run check programs to whatever programs you really need to run.
6) In my modem (NetSpeed, I forget the maker) I had a problem once where the lights indicated all was well, but nothing worked - it was a bad power supply. Once swapped, everything was fine.
Good luck everyone!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was actually the one who did the original ADSL web pages for Bell in Canada when they were first trying it out. That was about 3 years ago now. My father, a former bell employee, managed to get on the list of people doing the "telework" trial. And when the trial was over there was no way that connection would be given up. I have few complaints about Bell's service. It's cheap and very fast.
Their support leaves a little to be desired though -- the other day the transformer for the ADSL modem died and it took them a week to even get back to say when they'd fix it.
Here Bell is also competing with the local cable companies and their cable modems. They effectively have a price war going on now -- both are offering connections for $40 a month.
Unfortunately the reduced price ADSL connections are half the speed of the original trial connections (1Mb/s instead of 2Mb/s) and use a dynamic IP system instead of a fixed one. Because of this I'm keeping the original version (and paying more) to keep the speed and static IP.
One other interesting bit of trivia is that nowhere on the ADSL pages for Sympatico's site do they mention that it's DSL. They've branded it "the 1 Meg Modem" so dumb consumers aren't confused and feel comfortable because "it's just a modem, right"? But this strategy is somewhat backfiring. Their TV ads want to say that you can get fast access from home -- but they can't say "faster than a modem" because they've tried to lose the distinction between ADSL and a modem. They've sort-of painted themselves into a corner and now can just say "it's fast!".
My house has had 416k/sec DSL for a year now through Concentric/Northpoint and we've been very satisfied with it. I telnet home from work for hours every day and rarely run into latency problems. I'm also certain that I'm getting the speed I signed up for.
:)
Setup was cake. A guy came by from the phone company and ran a line to our wall. Another guy came buy and dropped off the modem/router. You either plug that into a hub or a computer and you're done. This all happened within two weeks or so of ordering. We got 8 IPs with it, but we immediately setup a FreeBSD/nat server and now we've got 16 computers running behind it.
I really only have two problems with this service. First, as has been pointed out in another post, the communication between Concentric and Northpoint is horrible. If Concentric can't solve your problem, you've got a long wait ahead of you before anything will be done. Concentric will just keep saying, "We left a message with so and so at Northpoint, you should hear from him," and nothing will happen. Luckily, I haven't had any major problems since the first month I had the service.
Second, the whole issue of your distance to the CO is a pain. When you ask, "What's the fastest line I can get from you in my area?" you get a different answer from each sales person you talk to. Also, prices vary wildly. I'm paying way more than I should for my line, because Pacific Bell doesn't offer the same high speed service in my area and Concentric/Northpoint pricing isn't that competitive.
I am also a subscriber to Sympaticos HSE service.
I researched both camps (DSL and Cable), and abandoned cable. I'm practically in the only neighbourhood in Toronto without it. Sheesh. Besides that, the majority of my friends with cable have had horrible times with crappy cabling issues, busted modems and downtime.
The package they shipped me came with a bad DSL modem first time around (typical). The bell tech that came out just stood there slack jawed when i tried to tell him about Linux and IP masq'ing.
ps Coconut Monkey: What's the deal with Gravy Trader, man?
I'd recommend against using US West as your ISP. Although you would like to think that having a single point of contact would minimize the amount of finger-pointing, my experience shows that this is not the case. There are ISP people, and phone people, and none of them seem to know which end is up. After 3 months, I *finally* got my ISP switched, and now everything seems to work. As always, whenever you talk to someone at US West, log the date, time, the person's name, and ask them for a direct number where you can call them back. If you find a "customer service" rep that is actually helpful, hold on to the number. Beware of the "Certainly, we'll get to that as soon as possible. We're sorry for the delay. Click. Silence." syndrome.
They have a 'self install' option which is _free_ if you don't need an ethernet card. The techinician came, dropped off the cable modem and tested the line, and didn't come within 10 feet of my computer - just how I like it. I plugged my machine in, and presto. I have been quite impressed with transfer rates. I don't run web service/ftp service from my machine except to share specific files to friends, and most of them are on modems so we can't really test upload bandwidth. Downloads are normally in the range of 50KBytes/s, sometimes as high as 80, sometimes as low as 20.
I have only one or two beefs about this service. 1) You need to have the hostname of your computer set to some ridiculous code they give you otherwise the service won't function. Bleah. But not a big deal to me.
2) Due to certain users being too stupid to figure out how to use windows sharing properly, they felt it necessary to 'protect' their customers by blocking ports 137 and 139, so windows networking is quite impossible. I never even noticed this however until a fellow employee with the service asked if I could help her map drives. When I went over and checked out her Rogers connection and couldn't figure out what was wrong I called them and they confirmed they were filtering those ports.
They use DHCP, and like most cable companies probably most people you talk to on the tech support side won't have a fargin' clue what your talking about if you ask about static IP's. :P Don't expect 'clueful' support. These are big bureaucracies breaking into a (for them) new market. Trouble is to be expected... Still, compared to the nightmare I had dealing with Cogeco in Kingston... I'm quite happy with the service.
Obasan
They don't firewall anything but portscan, packet sniff, and traffic monitor the hell out of you. They read your email, look at where you're surfing, what you're uploading, what ports you use. I am having a hard time that believing this. Unless you live somewhere in BFE Montana where there is just no other ISP's... or and some psycho IS manager (which is quiet common actually).. ..who has a MAJOR ego problem AND has nothing else better to do than snif the packets of its WEB SURFERS! ... lord.. either your full of crap or you live in hickland...
They don't firewall anything but portscan, packet sniff, and traffic monitor the hell out of you. They read your email, look at where you're surfing, what you're uploading, what ports you use.
..who has a MAJOR ego problem AND has nothing else better to do than snif the packets of its WEB SURFERS! ...
I am having a hard time that believing this.
Unless you live somewhere in BFE Montana where there is just no other ISP's... or and some psycho IS manager (which is quiet common actually)..
lord.. either your full of crap or you live in hickland...
I'm not proposing that casual users subsidize heavy bandwidth users. I'm quite willing to pay for the bandwidth I use. But why should I be forced pay a lot for the use of some off-site machine when I have perfectly good ADSL connection to my home? (Personally, my own upstream usage would still be less than my downstream. I just want to check my mail on my home box from work.)
And why is my local telephone and cable monopoly, who's positions are selected as much by law as market behavior, setting policy that is contrary to the design and purpose of the technology they're selling, and in a fundamentally freedom restricting manner?
Besides, bandwidth isn't really that relevant. Eventually, it will not be an issue for most people. Consider the bandwidth required for downloading DVD-quality movies, which is the holy grail that all these companies are searching for. Compare that to the requirements of serving a small website. The cost becomes neglible.
But what if these companies will not change policies? Why should they, when they can make more money by restricting alternatives than by selling to the market that wants to produce them.
This is what I am concerned with.
I looked into getting ADSL through Flashcomm but decided against it because of the "no servers" clause in the service agreement. How common is this among high speed provders?
Currently MediaOne and Bellsouth (the major cable modem and ADSL providers in my area) aren't quite so restrictive, but their agreements are worded in such a way that they can weasel out and block your servers if they want to. I'm very afraid that this might become the norm for the residential Internet provider market.
Consider why:
Denying you the use of a mailserver "encourages" you to sign up for the provider's mail services, which may cost extra. The same applies to Web and ftp space. It is also a convient way to keep the bandwidth allocation low and still pretend to offer "unlimited" access.
But the more nefarious reason is that that helps maintain the status quo. Cable companies want to restrict "pull"-type distribution methods because they keep you from watching TV, and phone companies want to limit your bandwidth and methods of communication to protect their local phone monopolies and long distance services.
The most important feature of the Internet, that it allows one to publish to the world at large with almost neglible cost, is being squashed with these "no servers" clauses. Everything we hate about the media congolmerates and their "popular culture" cash cow is being perpetuated.
So what I want to know is, are the any consumer groups that address this issue? And does anyone know of any providers that specifically allow all types of servers?
Had their DSL service for 6 mos., loved it, no probs, great pings, great streams, had to move, now I'm sad.
+&x
I live in Plano, TX where TCI Cable has been promising cable modem access for ages, and keeps bumping up the availability date. So I more or less decided to go for ADSL which is supposed to be available in my neighborhood. I am wondering if others here in DFW area have DSL and what did you have to go through to get it. It looks like Southwestern Bell is the default ISP, but what other options are there? I'd like to be able to get a static IP address if possible (though DHCP is acceptable), I want to be able to run a personal low bandwidth servers (sendmail, ftpd, etc), and the ISP should at least be aware of what Linux is, because that's my primary operating system.
Outside of Pittsburgh and Philly, broadband access in PA seems nonexistant. Here in Harrisburg it seems like Bell-Atlantic is too scared to roll out ADSL because of local cable-modem rollouts, which are slowly starting to occur. Of course, Bell and my cable provider continue to assure me that I'll have options "real soon now".
I'd like to see an adventurous startup move into to town and offer some sort of two-way wireless broadband access, scooping up all the business that neither the phone nor cable companies wants right now. I'm consciously avoiding any one-way satellite solution.
Do any other PA natives feel this way?
---- Politics: Kissing ass and pointing blames.
I live in Victoria BC Canada and here the telco provides you with every aspect of the service except you can choose to go with an independant isp for your web services (mail, news, dns, customer support etc). I had my installation done about 2 years ago now. It's Canadian$65 (about US$45) a month for 256kbit up and 2.2Mbits down, I actually get 2.2Mbits at any time of the day. That includes rental of an Amati overture 810 ADSL modem (Amati is now owned by TI). When the service first became available they had a limited ammount of lines they were going to connect and knowing the first ones were going to go to people who either worked for the telco or knew someone who did I phoned them at least twice a week trying to find different numbers and people to bother until they finally hooked me up. Amazingly this worked quite well as I was one of the first people in my area to get DSL. I decided to go with an independant isp for my web services since I had experienced problems with the telco's isp before, this ended up being a bad choice since I was their first DSL customer they didn't know what the hell they were doing and definitely didn't have anything set up properly. They screwed up just about everything they could but after about 3 phone calls or emails per problem eventually everything was working fine. The reliability of my DSL is fairly decent, I have downtime less then once a month which is pretty good for cheap consumer high speed net access.
;) If you have any questions email me since I'll probably never bother to come looking for any responses here.
My DSL line only adds 19ms latency to my connections, back when I had ISDN it was anywhere from 24ms to 35ms+ depending on the ISDN TA and the ISP's equipment and with my old USR 33.6 modem it was about 170ms. If you do your pings with 200 byte packets which are common for an online game like quake when there is a fair bit of action going on these numbers are more like DSL(256kbit) 27.4ms, ISDN(128kbit) 38ms, Modem(33.6kbit) 236ms so this explains why DSL is usually great for someone wanting a low latency connection. These latency times are my actual recorded numbers when pinging my ISP which were done under fairly optimal conditions.
I'll mention a few things I've learned from it all:
If you ever find a phone number which will actually get you talking to someone who can tell you why there is downtime and tell you when it will be corrected - Don't lose it!
Some DSL modems are rate addaptive and some aren't. RA means that they will jump to a lower or higher speed depending on line conditions while others only negotiate line speeds at connection and they do not change, this can cause packet loss or for your connection to drop and have to reconnect. I found with mine when I first plugged it in (when it was cold) it would always connect at 2.2Mbits and after a while I would start to get a little bit of packet loss, if I unplugged it and plugged it back in (when it was hot) it would often reconnect at 1.4 which would fix the packet loss but then I was running at a slower speed. I ended up finding that placing a fan inside the DSL modem kept the connection at 2.2 without any packet loss. I'm sure someone's shuddering at the thought of opening theirs up and I'm not recommending it but that was my experience.
With my DSL modem came a crossover cable so it would hook directly up to my pc's nic. If you want to hook your DSL modem up to a hub assuming your DSL modem is similar to mine then you will either need a regular cable or a hub that will accept the crossover cable which I believe many(most?) do.
Some DSL contracts will allow you more then one IP, mine doesn't but I've had 3 computers hooked up to it for about 2 years now and their DHCP server happily gives them all ip's so I guess you can't be sure until you either get the service or talk to someone with it who knows what they're talking about. If you can only get one IP and you want to hook up more then one computer to your DSL service you can always look at NAT (network address translation) which is also called IP Masquerading.
The DSL system I'm on uses dynamic ip's. They only change about once every couple months at most but they do change. Since my DSL connection goes through my telco and everyone on DSL gets IP's fairly randomly from the same IP block but can be using different ISP's for their web services many ISP's are a little lazy and just allow full access to anyone falling within this IP block. This allows me to have access to news servers from almost any of the ISP's that support DSL here and probably to other services. Most people on DSL will not find themselves in a situation like this but there are enough who will to make it worth mentioning. I'm sure some people out there will call this theft since you're using someones services without paying for them but if they leave them wide open to you then... well you can decide.
That was a lot more then I intended on writing
idealego@canada.com
Other than the delay in setting up the DSL service (I signed up and the service didn't work for about 4 weeks because they didn't have the capacity after all -- I didn't have to pay for that month), everything works well.
I've never had downtime that wasn't my fault (if you unplug the modem, it doesn't work. Go figure.) and my connection speeds are always very speedy.
Their tech support is dismal, but fortunately I don't need them very often.
I even got a price reduction the other day.
I live in Manassas VA - a suburb of Washington D.C.
I'm saddled with GTE as my phone company and a company named Jones Communications for my cable. GTE has actually signed me up for ADSL 4 times now only to come back later - sometimes days later - and tell me that it's not yet available! One GTE rep actually told me that not only wasn't it available but they had no plans, this despite the fact that the WEB page had sme as being in an area that received it and despite the fact that the local phone store was handing out brochures for it! When I asked about ADSL at the phone store they told me they had thrown away the brochures because they couldn't get a clear answer from their HQ about availability and were sick of being stuck in the middle - yikes! These people are boobs!
Meanwhile Jones, who sold one-way cable for a couple of months and then stopped, has been telling me for nearly two years that it was just "six months away"! Now I'm being told July August for Jones and since I've gotten this twice in the last few months I might believe it. Seems they've been "redoing their cable plant" - tell the guy to stop taking coffee breaks please! Now the holdup is "we're waiting for modems". I was so pissed at all of this I dumped cable and went with DISH but I know latency would kill any sort of on-line game so even if they offered it I'd decline (sigh)At least they claim to be building a 2way system, I'll believe it when the fairy godmother puts a box on my desk.
I checked into ISDN in my area too. Would you believe GTE charges DOUBLE what Bell charges? They want per minute plus mileage and it's time zoned cost wise! BA territory is just up the road - I actually checked into having a line pulled in but the tariffs would kill me according to the BA rep - at least the BA guys sounded intelligent. I'm so close to BA territory that I get their marketing papers sent to my home - pure torture!
Now I've discovered COVAD. What started out as costing me $49 w/GTE ISP (my first call to GTE - found out later they have no ISP offering in this area!) and which later escalated to $80 a month with GTE (partnered with a single ISP who is out to rape everyone) is now up to $90 a month with COVAD. Add to this nearly $500 in install and modem costs - ouch!
Even then I have to wait a couple of weeks while they get their equipment up, so I'm still stuck at 56K (cough42K). At least COVAD will let me have a static IP for an extra $6 a month and didn't choke when I told them I had 5+ computers - sheesh! Oh, did I mention this is for SDSL 144K? Seems I'm 3.1 miles from their equipment and that's as fast as I can go, ADSL if it were available would cost me on the order of $49 a month - I just can't win!
At least calling COVAD wasn't like calling GTE. With GTE getting a rep that could SPELL ADSL was difficult enough, finding one that wouldn't bounce me between business and residential in an endless loop was impossible. TIP: tell the business guy you want to buy the service, THEN tell them it's for home - ignore them when they ask you what business it's for! How stupid are these people?
I finally told them all - "this is a race, whoever offers me service first wins" - looks like COVAD gets to take my money, Jones and GTE are pathetic! Jones even told me they weren't worried about GTE and owuld be offering dialtone too - that's a truly frightning thought with those morons! I told them I'd been waiting for over a year and that promises didn't connect me any quicker..
So, who else besides COVAD and Flashcom offer ADSL? I heard something about a company named USConnect or net - ring any bells? Flashcom is 404 in my area - surprise!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
A shame you couldn't tell us who you were - some of us in VA would kill to find someone capable of handling a DSL order. Oh well!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
The proper link is actually:
http://www.sympatico.ca
Coconut Monkey
I had a slightly better experience in Canada with DSL through Sympatico (Bell Canada subsiduary). They have an installation package (discounted until last week) for $49.95(Can$ of course) self-install, $99.95 with a technician. The installation package includes an ethernet card in either PCI or ISA (or laptop equivalent), a Nortel 1Meg modem (960 kb/s downstream, 120 kb/s upstream) and several phone filters etc. :) ). As a bonus, my line (although not email account) was already active the next day (3 days before the specified date). ./ though... so he can probably reply when he hits this message. All in all... a very pleasant experience so far... much better than the horror stories I have been hearing about cable modems and their down times / lousy transfer rates.
The package was couriered to me at work four days before my specified connection date.
Installing and configuring the card under Win98 (I know, I know...
Cost per month is 39.95, modem rental is 14.95 (although rental is waived temporarily at least for sales promotion). The software installation of the required ISP programs installed fine from the CD. Entire time from opening the package to getting online, less than 30 minutes. As a side note, I learned not to run a normal phone cable through my surge protector before the modem, as it affects the speed significantly... slower by a factor of 10 or so. With that resolved however, I downloaded a few game demos (easiest large files to find) and got 100 Kilobytes/sec down load during peak hours.
Quake II ping times dropped from around 200 ms with a 28.8 modem to 40-50 ms. All in all... an easy experience up here. That may be however because DSL is a latecomer to the battle with cable up here, so they are pulling out all the stops to get customers - even if it means customer service. (Yikes!) Of the two other people I know up here trying to get service, one had no problem (and talked me into it more or less) the other has had some problems with getting the service hooked up. He's on
For interests sake their web site is:
http://www.hse.sympatico.ca/adsl.html
Coconut Monkey in Toronto
I have had a cable modem from Intermedia/@home for 4 months and am generally satisfied.
They do DHCP, but they confirmed that it is really static and one doesn't have to use it. It is bound to a username( dhcp -h) and not a MAC so I have used many NICs without a problem. The service has gotten better over time( I was a beta customer, got a free install) and I have only had one extended outage this Monday morning.
The problems with cablemodems in my are is latency. The slowdown occurs someplace in the extended @home network and not locally. Sites on the net are usually about 200ms away. The pipe is wide(usually 1mb) but it has latency problems.
The problem with DSL in my area is that you have to deal with Bellsouth. I have worked with them when I was involved with an Inetrnet Cafe and that is a huge drawback, They regularly reset our line and performed maintenence wihtout teling us.
The prices of the two services are also different. Cablemodems cost $50 to install and $40 a month. DSL is $400 to install and $60 a month.
In my area at least DSL is not an option.
Piotr
It's not the size of your stack that matters, it's how you push and pop
I have had both. Cable modem blows. Cable modem packet loss was way too high, and general uptime was quite crappy.
Both of these problems I found were solved with DSL.
I'm moving to Raleigh, NC in three weeks, and want to know what HS options are available. After days of searching, Flashcom is the only option I've found, and they claim that because the new address is 11000 feet from the CO, they can only offer SDSL (I'd prefer ADSL). Time Warner Cable seems to be incredibly backward. GTE offers DSL in Charlotte, but not Raleigh. Am I the only one who thinks that given the concentration of technology in the Triangle, it's a bit absurd that there are so few options for access?
Hi, maybe somebody in slashdot could answer me this. I've suscribed recently to Bell Atlantic DSL service, and as part of that, they gave me a static IP address. Now, I would like to register my own domain ( lets say hugui.org ) and I don't know exactly what are the steps. I know that I have to check I think in that place called NSI, pay like 70+ u$s for 2 years, etc, but then they ask me which DNS is going to resolve my name, etc, and I have no idea how to deal with this.
Anybody knows what is required ?
Just got ADSL last Friday (from Southwestern Bell) and absolutely love it (and my friends hate me)! The only annoying thing about it was not being given a specific time during the day that they'd show up. They did take my pager number and paged me when they were on their way though.
;)
Installation was relatively straightforward, helped largely by the fact that I already had a Category 3 line to my computer room. I understand installation can take a lot longer if you don't have the right wiring since they have to re-wire everything.
As far as numbers go, I've downloaded a 24 M file in about 4 mins and a 1.7M file in about 19 seconds. I'm getting ping times on Quake3 Test between 35-50.
My "Basic" package is max 1.5 down and 128 up, which I appear to be getting (the bottlenecks now seem to be on the other end).
All told, I'm paying $50 for the ADSL and internet service and getting everything advertised (so far). Not bad.
BellSouth says they can't get me ADSL (though three blocks away I've a friend with it). Flashcom said they would--but I played phone tag with them for 3 weeks then lost their number; guess I was lucky.
Anybody know more than me about service in this area?
"I am ocntent(sp) with my 56k access. I have had transfers from 300 to 70k with my 56k modem." :)
Wow, that's pretty amazing, considering that with my 56k modem, which generally connects at 49.6kbps, I can't download any faster than 6.5k/sec peak. What brand of modem do you own?
You can almost smell the sarcasm, can't you?
Tongue-in-cheek my friend, tongue in cheek.
None of the residential broadband services (at least here in Boston) have promised any sort of latency targets. But that shouldn't stop people from figuring out typical latencies, and using that in their decision.
In his tech column in the Boston Globe, Simson Garfinkel reported that pings to well-known local sites were 70 for Bell Atlantic Infospeed DSL! I would assume that this reflects the relative quality of the networks. I passed this bit of information onto BA sales reps, and then to Flashcom.
I didn't figure the sales reps to get an answer right away (or know what latency was, for that matter), but I figured they'd at least read the local press about the product they were selling. Regardless, I told them it was important, and I figured they would do one of two things:
Bell Atlantic has taken four weeks to still not come up with an answer; their sales reps were unfazed when I said I was going over to Flashcom.
Flashcom sales rep was a used method #2, trying to convince me it was better than BA because "you have a dedicated line-- all the way to the Internet!" What a riot.
If anybody has latency numbers, great. Obviously, with any broadband choice I will get better latencies than with dial modems. But I feel that it's my duty as a well-informed customer to press the DSL-ISP's on these issues.
It seems that Southwestern Bell will be covering all of the ADSL 'fields' in my area, however, since I have not ordered it yet (although I'm still optimistic) I can't make sure about that. Their rates seem pretty good for the lower speed ADSL -- roughly $50/month with a single account with a dynamic IP address and roughly $80/month for 5 static IP addresses with a dedicated connection. However, for the second one, they claim they do not provide the router, etc. They do provide the ADSL splitter and an Ethernet card (Kingston 10baseT, IIRC).
The restrictions you mention are no different than those of a "personal" dialup account. ISPs around here charge about the same for DSL and "unlimited dialup accounts" (now there's a lie to complain about), around $20-30/month. If you want an IP and DNS to run your own servers, web or otherwise, just about all the ISPs allow you to upgrade to a business grade connection, at somewhere around $150-275/month here.
As far as one machine goes, that is bull and they know it. Proxy and masquerade at the gateway and it simply isn't a factor. Again, a business grade account will give you a subnet with real IPs if you need them.
So please don't complain about getting the same account features at the same price. All you pay for is the speed, yes, and you are a fool if you expect anything more. If you don't need the speed, don't buy the pipe.
In general, USW is a pain, but they actually seem to be doing DSL right. I don't use them as my ISP, and that normally isn't a problem. It only went down badly once in the three months or so that I've had it, and it did take USW a day to figure out that it really was their problem and not the ISPs. My ISP includes dialup access as part of the plan, so I survived quite painlessly.
As far as telling them you have Windows, I recommend *against* it. Saying such a thing tends to turn on the "moron" switch with phone support. When I had the above mentioned outage, I told the USW tech that, while I did have a PC, I was running Linux, we actually got into a nice conversation about it since he was planning on installing RedHat on his home PC that weekend! In general, large corporations need to be reminded that a significant market segment is interested in something other than Windows. If you hush up your involvement, it will only take that much longer for them to get a clue.
Ive had Mpowered installed both in my previous apartment and now my house, both times was pretty easy. First time there was some problems with the wiring in the building but once the crew fixed that (and they were out the NEXT DAY) it went great. Install at this house was less than 30mins and just required a quick call to give them my new adapter address.. once that was done, once again it was working fine.
Ive heard all sorts of horror stories from other people in other areas relating to DSL installation, but everyone I know using Mpowered has been nothing but happy. Mtt (local phone co) really did a good thing this time.
Gotta mention PacBell here, which is ramping up a rather large deployment in California. More folk in Silicon Valley have access to this than to the @Home service, by far ...
Costs: PacBell is the ILEC and their telco arm changes your regular $11/month phone line to a ADSL-enabled one, then adds $39/month to enable the ADSL service. Most folk also take a $10/month contract with Pacific Bell Internet ("PBI") for their ISP. In short, $50 on top of your existing phone service, and you're up! For a one year contract they waived installation fees and gave both the Alcatel 1000 modem and a PCI Ethernet card.
Data rate: 384 kbps downstream guaranteed, up to 1.5 Mbps (which is typical for me). Upstream is 128 Kbps; fine for what I do.
Servers: No problem. One fixed IP address. If you want PBI to do DNS for you, you need a slightly more expensive service than I described above; or, do it yourself. 128 Kbps upstream can be improved upon, also.
Operating System: Their staff is trained for Windoze and Mac; but installing it on my Linux box was not an issue for them. Yes, I use IP Masq.
Experience: I've had it four months now. When it works, it's great ... and that's almost all the time. But I do have problems with the Alcatel 1000 ADSL modem, for which the official remedy is "power cycle the modem". No, this clearly faulty hardware hasn't yet been replaced. There are rumors of FLASH upgrades that will be done through the net; no evidence yet. Also, with this large a high speed deployment, and PBI's lack of experience with one, there are problems with routing snafus (Redback). PBI does not appear to have adequate network operations in place; it seems like they can't do basic SNMP monitoring of their routers or DSLAMs, so they don't see the problems customers have. (All of those problems are confirmed not to be unique to me.)
Overall, I give the speed an A, and the network operations a B- ... I would not run a 24x7 business on one of these ADSL links, but it's a darn sight better than a 56K modem of any kind.
- Jojo
I'm using PacBell's ADSL service in the Bay Area, and it's working perfectly. I'll outline the few snags I had below.
If you want objective speed testing, try out speedtest.mybc.com. I just wish there was something analogous to this for upload speeds. Anyway, I'm getting 1.1 to 1.2 Mbps there. Practical download speeds of 100 K/s + from well-connected sites, double-digit K/s from pretty much anything.
First, the network: Linux box and Win95 box on a private ethernet. Win95 used SOCKS for connectivity to Linux, which had a 56k dialup almost full-time.
The install went beautifully... the first snag was setting it up to work with the Linux box. While I was playing with routing tables, the tech was becoming noticably fidgety, so we went over to the Win95 box and set it up, so the tech could try everything out and go home. This went smoothly after a couple of reboots.
After a few routing table rearrangements, the Linux box was working with it instead, but it could no longer talk to the Win95 box. Sparing you the details, I wound up needing to set up two seperate ethernet segments, with two different NICs in the Linux box. One was plugged straight into the ADSL modem (which is why they give you that handy MDI-X cable) and configured for the single static IP address I got, while the other card ran to the hub and talked to the Win98 box using the private IP subnet. SOCKS is still used to give the Win98 box connectivity.
ADSL rocks... in my case, the only problems were network-related. I never tried to contact PacBell, but I wouldn't have been surprised if they couldn't offer any help at all.
$ more ~/.sig
********
Those of us trapped in the land of Bellsouth aren't having much luck with *DSL service of any kind. While the telco brags about their infrastructure and nearly every ISP down here claims to offer *DSL its essentially only available in 2 counties. Calls to the telco are nearly a waste of time. Their reps have told us #1 you live to far away from the CO #2 you live to close to the CO #3 your lines wont handle it (the irony in all of this is that I have copper pairs that support ISDN just fine, and as for the distance, actually had a T1 here for a year). Cable modems aren't an option in my county, because the county commision sold out to Mediaone, who has no plans to send us broadband. (Commision gives mediaone renewed franchise agreement, then goes shopping for another high speed provider for the county offices) So for the time being, those of us in Fayette County are stuck with ISDN, or if you live close enough to the border with Coweta, can sometimes talk a Coweta provider into running cable into your house. But, thats our area, glad to hear that some of you are winning the war with the telcos.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Well, unlike most of the above comments, I have had some pretty good luck getting ADSL hooked up.
I use "MpoweredPC" from MTT (Phone supplier for the Maritime Canadian provinces), which is mainly geared towards the residential customer. However, their system is quite good - RADSL setup with up to 7Mbps downstream and around 1.5Mbps upstream. This translates into about 550 kilobytes download max (700bkps off the internal network) and about 125 max upload.
The best part about it is that we have a competing cable modem service "Andara" which means the cost goes WAY down. I paid $25 installation, and only $45 bucks a month... Quite good considering the speed.
Even though they only officially support Windows 95 and 98 (no NT either), hooking it up with Linux is too easy...
And the quality of service is absolutely fantastic. The problems people describe above simply do not happen to me. (Not in the last 6 months anyhow). Pure speed, even at peak hours.
The only problems are that the system was designed mainly for "software on demand" (which nobody uses) so they built it around an internal network with a Cisco PIX router which does NAT translation of internal to external IP's. This can cause some problems, but lately hasn't given me any grief. As well the external addresses change every so often, so one must use a dynamic IP service like dynip.com or justlinux.com to be externally accessable.
The help desk people can be extreme fsckheads as well, but I try to fix my own problems versus relying on them.
So, just thought I'd throw out a good ADSL experience. I think the technology is sound, just that alot of the quality depends on the ISP...
My experience with DSL has been terrific due to having a really good ISP. My ISP is a small local shop that handles small businesses. They know how to talk to the telco (GTE) and this was *very* important when I had a high packet loss problem about a month after I got the service.
It turned out GTE had a fiber problem that effected the frame relay that interconnected my CO to my ISP. I had the experience of being in a conference call with GTE and my ISP as my ISP led the GTE guy through the diagnosis and got them to see it was their problem.
Besides that, the service is terrific. I've a symetric 384 kbs link and my ISP has no "server" restrictions or other nonesense.
Another thing to watch for is what the CIR or Certified Information Rate for your DSL line is. GTE gives me a CIR of only 32 Kbs(!) for my link. As I understand it, that's the minimum data rate. I usually get the full 384 Kbs to local sites, so this has not been a problem so far, but I wonder how things will go when my CO gets more fully subscribed.
--ddm
I live in Houston where, in April, Southwestern Bell began offering ADSL service.
I called at the first of May to order the service and was told that my line qualified, but that there was such demand that it could not be installed for about a month.
A month later (last Saturday to be exact) the Bell guy shows up (after making an appointment two weeks before) and in the course of about an hour, installs the DSL connection, hands me an Ethernet card to install into my FreeBSD machine. I do, we plug it in, it works.
Actually when placing the order over the phone the operator asked me which OS was on the maching the ADSL would be installed for. I said FreeBSD. She was not familiar with it. I told her it was a free Unix, real similar to Linux. She said ok, that she'd mark it down as a Linux installation.
So SW Bell charged $200 for the line install (covering modem and ethernet card) and $40 a month for the 128Kbps upstream and 384Kbps-1.5Mbps downstream ADSL connection (since my apartment complex is literally next door to Bell, I max out at the full 1.5Mbps downstream - pretty cool eh?).
There were two or three ISP I could have chosen to do that end of the service, and I selected SWBell Internet services which offers two service options:
$10 per month for one Dynamic IP (uses DHCP).
$40 per month for 5 static IP's with a $100 setup charge, which is the cheapest I've seen this sort of service.
Well anyway, to summarize, I placed one phone call and a month later two guys came to my apartment for an hour and now I have 1.5Mbps of downstream bandwith.
-Scott
I have to say .. surprisingly .. that USwest was actually fairly painless to deal with for my DSL connection. Now i have gone round and round
with them about my POTs in the past but for some odd reason (maybe the right phase of the moon) the dsl hookup went with out a hitch. This
could all be because USwest is pushing DSL like mad men to quickly recoup there investment so service right now is fairly extraordnary. When
i signed up about a month a go i got the DSL install (to the outside jack) and ISP turnon (Uswest.net) for $100 and the modem for $90 (which is
a CISCO 675 aka NetSpeed that connects to a 10baseT LAN). They also tossed in a free NIC card (3com PCI) and a packet of phone filters
with the deal as well. They just drooped there rate for 256k up and down to 29.95 and the ISP fee is $20. So over all its a pretty good deal. No
Limits on hosting or multiple computers. Only took two weeks from my phone call to service activation. The Cisco runs in routing/ppp mode
with NAT and just plugs into your hub. Enable the DCHP server on the modem and the whole thing is plug and play. USwest is really targeting
there offering to families with multiple computers and is pushing the "whole package" concept of POTs and Internet in one. Granted the big
down side to this setup is if you want to serve anything your IP is dynamic (but mine hasnt changed since i turned it on) and you have to bore
some holes in NAT to map the port numbers to LAN addresses.
I arranged for three people (including myself) to get 384/384 service from Concentric/Covad in the Bay Area about eighteen months ago, and we've been pretty happy the result. My install was relatively smooth - PacBell (the ILEC) came out and provisioned the line, shorting just two of the six voice lines running into my apartment building which took only two extra hours to straighten out. Concentric emailed me IP adresses, DNS info, etc. Covad arrived with a preconfigured modem. We hooked it all up and it didn't work, but after only two modem reconfigs it came up and has been ticking ever since.
Most of the time I get close to the advertised bandwidth, but it's clear that they have to work on congestion. Packet loss to local, well connected Bay Area hosts regularly show 10% packet loss, and traceroute points the finger squarely into Concentric's IP network. Every few days the network freezes for a few minutes and all connections drop, but I've no idea where to point the finger.
Not everything has been smooth. My customer rep left witgh no notice and I haven't been assigned a new one. I couldn't find a 24 hour trouble line in the phone book or by calling Concentric HQ. Their accounting department is so screwed up that at one point I found they hadn't sent a bill out for five months. But the biggest problem is that they haven't kept their rates competitive - we're keeping the three Concentric lines, but the next dozen from work are going to PacBell which offers simlar service for 1/3 the price.
We currently have several dozen people with ISDN at home. The plan is to evaluate the next batch of DSL users and decide if we want to go further down that path.
ellbee
You can't fight in here - this is the war room!