Ack! DSL questions

[Monel Funkawitz]

In my relentless search for a relief of dialup woes, I have come across a few questions about DSL.

#1) I am 63,980 feet from my telco. 18,000 is the limit? It says I might be able to get IDSL, WTF is this?

#2) What is a good up/down ratio I want to hit, and what is the average price? I see 640/90 for $49, but it is ADSL.

#3) Is it even possible for me to get DSL, or should I just wait until they "improve" sat?

 

[mackstann]

640/90 for 49 is a ripoff. sorry if youre in a crappy location, but u might have to stay with dial up, or pay out of your @ss for broadband. satellite??? i dont know. i have @home cable, i get at least 3000 down, my up is capped at 128. i can get up to 5000 down, on a good day (night, actually..)

 

[etech]

18K is the limit for DSL. I was at 19,500 and had dropped connections and trouble getting logged in at certain times of the day. When it worked it was great. I went to cable, around the same rated speeds but it seems a little slower.

Note, I think the cable in this area is slower because of the longer route it seem to take, tracerts show many more connections then they did on the DSL I had. I assume this would be different in different areas.

I know some of the baby bells are/were working on sattelite connections that could possibly help. By sattelite I mean they would put a hub in your neighborhood and your DSL would connect to the hub and then be on a fiber link back to the telco office.

Check at dslreports for more accurate info. Notice the link at the top - Welcome ..click here to find high speed options at your location-

 

[HyTekJosh]

I get approximately 5/1.5 mbps on my cable connection! It rocks! I host all of my servers off of it and everything!

 

[goldboyd]

63,980 feet is way out of range for standard DSL. IDSL is dsl over isdn which has a much longer range, not sure exactly what the range is though. I believe that IDSL is 144kb both ways.

 

<< #1) I am 63,980 feet from my telco. >>


Don't expect to get anything faster then ISDN.
Your so far away im surprised your dialup even works.

 

[kami]

640/90 for $50 US is a ripoff...considering I pay $30 Canadian for 960/128...plus $10 for modem rental

 

[amdforlife]

640/90 is crappy crap crap for $50
i get 768/128 for $39, and it came w/ a free modem.

 

[Mrburns2007]

I get 1600K/400K everday, using DSL. I want to try cable but it's still not available. There is SDSL that can reach 24,000 feet and is usually the same speed up as it is down.

 

[optimistic]

How do you find out how far you are from your telco?

 

[Monel Funkawitz]

DSL Reports for distance

 

[vash]

You are a bit too far from the telco to get service (call your local phone people on this, they'll give it to you straight). Your only hope at that distance is IDSL, but the prices are a bit high for that specific service. You should try cable before DSL in your situation.

Satellite 'net access is fast, but the latency is horrible (don't ever count on playing any online game with it). Try calling your local cable provider and see if they can service your area.

vash

 

[Infidelity]

I believe that IDSL is 144kb both ways.
He meant 144kbits up and down. Your DSL connection would have to be 1152mbits up and down to support 144kb download speed.

 

[chainbolt]

all what I know is, that you are a bit too far away

 

[Mungla]

If your telco was really interested in DSL, they would have mini-co stations setup on every major cable binder in your city. In the town that I live in (population: 3000ish), we have about 8 mini-co stations setup. Once setup, these mini-co's minimize the distance that your DSL modem can see. Even though our town is several square miles, anyone within the city limits can get 1540/768kbps.

For those who live outside of the city limits, you can get a xDSL solution called Etherloop. I live just over two miles outside of the city limits, which means that the CO is 3mi away. Unlike DSL, we haven't tried to use mini-co's for Etherloop. We have 18 pair cable running from the cable binder up to our house, then we have CAT6 for it to run on before it hits the Etherloop. We are running the Etherloop wide open, which is 4000/3333kbps. We were told by Elastic Networks that the next version of Etherloop will be able to receive at 6000kbps.

 

[Linflas]

I currently have iDSL from Speakeasy and it is definately better than a dialup connection but has become kind of expensive so cable is a much better alternative if available. iDSL just takes the 2 B channels from ISDN and combines them with the D channel to deliver 144 Kbits (2*64Kbps+16Kbps) DSL in both directions. At your distance it is the only possibility for DSL unless/until your telco changes your infrastructure.

 

[PhaZe]

I have swbell dsl
1.5mbps down and 128kbps up (crappy upload)
i am about 5 blocks from my CO and I hit 1.5mbps most of the time
I have a friend that is almost out of the limit and he maxes out at 40kb/sec
thats a little bit slower than my 155kb/sec mas.....but it sure beats dial up

 

[goldboyd]

No, Infidelity, I did mean 144kb. Had I meant bytes, i would have said KB. b=bits, B=bytes.

 

[Kazi]

i get 1500KBps/down 128KBps/up not bad but i rarely hit 1500. Usually around 1100-1350 but all-in-all its good if you dont need to host for games (UT, Quake, SoF)

EDIT- I only pay $45 a month for unlimited access, no upload/download stops. Cable Road Runner wont let you host, they shut you down.

 

[Mungla]

Kazi, do you mean Kb or KB? Kb = Kilobit, KB = Kilobyte. There are 8 bits in a byte I believe. Service providers use kbps to rate your line speed. When you are downloading a file via IE or FTP, you see your download rated in KB. If you have a 1.54 Megabit connection, your maximum download speed via IE or FTP would be 192.5KB. If you have a 128kbps connection, your max would be 16KB.

As you see, there is a huge difference between the two types. A Kb is basically 1/8 of a KB. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe the integar is 8.

 

[N8Magic]

See my old thread.

Lots of good DSL questions and answers in there.