ISDN: Anyone use it? Experiences? Relation to DSL?

[PingSpike]

I can't get DSL or cable where I love (cable stops about 1.5 miles down the road). There's sat, maybe that cell network internet service. Both seem like they'll have latency issues. I wouldn't mind the paltry 128kb of ISDN so long as it had decent latency for online games. I could get by with the slower downloads.

What are the costs involved? Are there distance limitations? Anyone currently have an ISDN connection?

 

[p0lar]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
I can't get DSL or cable where I love (cable stops about 1.5 miles down the road). There's sat, maybe that cell network internet service. Both seem like they'll have latency issues. I wouldn't mind the paltry 128kb of ISDN so long as it had decent latency for online games. I could get by with the slower downloads.

What are the costs involved? Are there distance limitations? Anyone currently have an ISDN connection?

ISDN costs can vary wildly, but the primary advantages are difficult to assess now-a-days. It will be fine for latency as long as the CO inet router is well-peered.

Are you sure your telco can even supply an ISDN circuit? Many have stopped offering this service. Depending on distance, you might try to see if you can get what is known as an 'alarm circuit' or 'dry pair' or 'unconditioned pair' or 'paging circuit' or 'off premise extension' or... I forget the others that it is commonly called, between your house and some other location where you can bridge the circuit into a high-speed connection (local/small-town ISPs are friendly toward this). These usually run on the order of $25 -> $40/month and require only a pair of specialized SDSL modems. I've done this dozens of times and it works like a champion as long as you've got clean lines and the distance is low. It sounds like you've got decent connectivity within 2 miles, so it very well may be an option.

I've used PairGain, Patton, and Cisco LRE devices to do this in the past.

 

[cmetz]

PingSpike, talk with Covad et al. about "IDSL" also sometimes referred to as "144k SDSL" or "128k SDSL".

ISDN was neat, but the telcos wanted to charge by the minute. Wanted to charge a lot, too. So in most areas, ISDN was just insanely expensive if you wanted a DSL-like "always-on" Internet circuit. It is true that many telcos have stopped offering ISDN BRIs, but many of them still have the technical capability to deliver them, or can deliver a semi-dry loop that ISDN BRI signalling can pass through even though ADSL/SDSL can't. So it's worth investigating your options.

Occasionally, a telco will have a flat-rate ISDN BRI service with rational pricing. Usually it's pretty much at if-you-need-it-you're-gonna-pay pricing.

Remember also that you need to find an ISP who can offer ISDN dual-channel service and pay them for that. I'm not sure most ISPs offer such a service plan anymore.

BTW, if you do go with real ISDN, the old wisdom was that you bought Ascend, because they were the vendor who everyone really tested against. You can probably pick up an old Pipeline off eBay for cheap. You want a P75 if you can find it. You don't want the P25.

 

[p0lar]

Originally posted by: cmetz
BTW, if you do go with real ISDN, the old wisdom was that you bought Ascend, because they were the vendor who everyone really tested against. You can probably pick up an old Pipeline off eBay for cheap. You want a P75 if you can find it. You don't want the P25.

Ah, the memories!!! I had a P75 on my first true broadband connection! I wonder what happened to that bad boy??

 

[cmetz]

Still got mine around here somewhere. Forgot the password. If memory serves, that's not a simple thing to fix on those

 

[skyking]

I've got a netopia ISDN router here with uname/pw taped to the bottom.....
Long story, I came in after a hostile sysadmin left ( took all the documentation with him, I had to repeat this all through the place ) and had to download all the manuals, call netopia support, and take the system down and back up because of the "missing password" thing.
OP, if you find ISDN service at a reasonable rate it is yours for shipping.

Depending on distance, you might try to see if you can get what is known as an 'alarm circuit' or 'dry pair' or 'unconditioned pair' or 'paging circuit' or 'off premise extension' or... I forget the others that it is commonly called, between your house and some other location where you can bridge the circuit into a high-speed connection (local/small-town ISPs are friendly toward this).

I struck out the last two times I tried this, with supposedly small friendly telcos. ARGH!

 

[p0lar]

Originally posted by: skyking
I struck out the last two times I tried this, with supposedly small friendly telcos. ARGH!

What was your approach? It takes varying strategies to get these kinds of things -- some telcos will try to make you sign your life away saying you won't run data services over it (for fear of it consuming too many resources on their network, but that's nonsense).

I do quite a few PtP SCPC setups where I put a Cisco on both ends of the link for high-capacity voice trunks (with cRTP) and am always crafting new & inventive reasons as to why I need to co-locate (always willing to pay what's fair, no argument here) a router at the teleport side of the link.

 

[skyking]

Originally posted by: p0lar

Originally posted by: skyking
I struck out the last two times I tried this, with supposedly small friendly telcos. ARGH!

What was your approach? It takes varying strategies to get these kinds of things -- some telcos will try to make you sign your life away saying you won't run data services over it (for fear of it consuming too many resources on their network, but that's nonsense).

I do quite a few PtP SCPC setups where I put a Cisco on both ends of the link for high-capacity voice trunks (with cRTP) and am always crafting new & inventive reasons as to why I need to co-locate (always willing to pay what's fair, no argument here) a router at the teleport side of the link.

Both times I was met with a blank stare of sorts and did not get much farther.
No imagination!
I use cisco LRE gear at one business, so naturally I though of that.

 

[p0lar]

Originally posted by: skyking
Both times I was met with a blank stare of sorts and did not get much farther.
No imagination!
I use cisco LRE gear at one business, so naturally I though of that.

Yeah, I see the problem now -- you didn't do enough social engineering. (i.e. buy lunch for the lead engineer/tech....ermn... did I just say that?! Oh what they don't teach you in school....)

 

[PingSpike]

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions guys!

My phone company...at least the one that owns all the lines, is verizon. Comcast is the cable company. I just bought the house, and because of listings I know at least one house 1.6 miles down the road has comcast internet. There may be some further up, so the line could end a little closer then that. The comcast tech didn't tell me exactly. He did say if enough people wanted the service and it was between a mile or mile and a half they might lay the line. I'm not holding my breath on that one.

The verizon CO from dslreports is about 3.5 miles, by road, from me. Which probably leaves me shit out of luck there. I'd be happy if they could get 128k full duplex out to me...but thats a good deal over the 18k limit so I doubt it.

When you get ISDN/ISDL, do you usually pay a line fee to the phone company and then a seperate ISP fee? What did some of you guys pay when you had it?

I didn't realize you could do a point to point lease of phone line. I had thought about approaching some one down in that area, but I'd dismissed it because 1.5 miles is a long way for a wireless signal in hilly heavily treed mountain areas! How much bandwidth can you push over that kind of link? Its an interesting idea, since comcast has a 256k/128k package for like $25, ~4mb/384k for like $45. Rented line + that is probably still cheaper upkeep then say ISDN/ISDL right?

My down just got the ball rolling to start laying fiber with an agreement with two neighboring towns. It looks like it will happen, but thats at least one whole year away...realistically I bet the fastest that would happen would be two years.

 

[p0lar]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
I didn't realize you could do a point to point lease of phone line. I had thought about approaching some one down in that area, but I'd dismissed it because 1.5 miles is a long way for a wireless signal in hilly heavily treed mountain areas! How much bandwidth can you push over that kind of link? Its an interesting idea, since comcast has a 256k/128k package for like $25, ~4mb/384k for like $45. Rented line + that is probably still cheaper upkeep then say ISDN/ISDL right?

Quite likely, yes.

It's really not a phone line though. A phone line generally is a provisioned circuit between your point of demarcation and the CO, whereby the CO provides FXS analog signaling. What I mentioned is literally a dry pair of wires with no electrical signal or conditioning on it whatsoever.

I think your best bet is to get some quotes to see what the ISDN is -- the bonus is that you won't need an analog line at home thereafter as with the right modem you can just pick-up one line and dial-out.. it will multiplex both lines to 128k while not in use, and demux down to 64k while you're on the circuit talking.

As well, if you can get a hold of a tech-savvy engineer on the other side, you can get him to enable some kind of compression between your router and his which will somewhat-artificially inflate certain protocol performances based on the type and encoding of data being transferred.

 

[PingSpike]

Yes, not really a phone line...just a line of copper. Will verizon have to do anything special to the line? You mentioned specialized SDSL modems...where would I get these, prices, recommendations? If I wanted to say split the bandwidth with the other guy in exchange for them allowing me to setup my equipment there...what would the scheme look like.

I was thinking cable modem => router doing some kind of QoS => 1 ethernet line to guy at site => second ethernet to SDSL modem at site => dry pair => modem at my site.

I was going to call verizon today, and see what the price is on ISDN. I have a feeling its going to be to high to sell the wife. She already balked at the $100/mo IDSL would likely run. I think IDSL is a nonstarter though, verizon doesn't likely offer it from what I've read...don't want it competing with the higher cost ISDN service? Speakeasy said they have no equipment at my CO (no big surprise there).