Re: anybody have/use ADSL?
I've been using PacBell service in Silicon Valley, CA (USA) since
February, and I have to say that I have had a generally good experience.
The prices during the trial period have been high
$80/month for service from PacBell
$75/month for PacBell Internet ISP
$125 for wiring install at PacBell (not In House)
Several hundred for the Alcatel modem.
I have a roommate and we live in a house, so wiring was easy and the
cost is split between us, making it fairly attractive. For these rates,
we get 384Kbps/384Kbps (download/upload) speeds, continuous connection,
flat rate, one IP address.
The Alcatel has a 10BaseT connector and an ATMF-25 connector. I had an
extra powermac around, so I installed LinuxPPC and a second ethernet
card (in addition to the internal ethernet on the motherboard), and with
a little tinkering, managed to get an ipmasq machine up an running.
So, our ADSL connection serves three machines at the moment, with no
problems. We get the advertised bandwidth consistently, which is pretty
cool. For a small increase in monthly cost, and something like $20 in
"fees," we can upgrade to 1.5Mbps/384Kbps (down/up), but for such a
small load, the extra cost didn't seem worth it.
Now, however, PacBell is officially introducing the service (we were one
of 165 installations in the Bay Area that they serve), the prices are
set to drop substantially, though they will still be slightly high.
Hopefully, some faster-speed options will come along as well, to
compliment the lower prices.
One Drawback: This has been a trial period, but one we paid big bucks
for, so I am trying to decide how to handle this. I have been logging
line-error times for about two months now to show that the connection
actually goes down for at least a minute at a time sometimes. Very
sporadic. I think the bottom line was hardware (a rev is coming in
June) and too much high-speed traffic on the local wiring (we are in
Silicon Valley, afterall...). The line drops are typically short and
only slightly annoying. The hardware and signalling passed tests, and
the drops occur quite sporadically, which leaves out any system
problems. Aside from this, the service has been great.
Again, this was with Alcatel hardware on the resident side, not sure
about the switch side. Oh, installed my own splitter, which was
trivial.
Your mileage may vary... if there are no cable modems in your area, this
is a nice, albeit expensive, alternative.
-dh
Ian Keith Setford wrote:
>
> Yo-
>
> Service come online here in 3 days and I was just wondering if anyone has
> experience with it yet. I believe the head-end units will be Fujitsu
> multiplexors and the client side will have Orckit modems? Anybody have
> any info?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Ian
> _____________________________________________________________________
> Ian K. Setford ians@jove.acs.unt.edu
> H: 940.566.0461
> Pgr: 817.901.0255
>
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