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RE: [LUG] ADSL again & thankyous



On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Ray Smith wrote:

Now I've been following the thread on adsl with some interest especially as
I work for the unholy BT in the fault dept. on 154

Oh dear! :)

It's incredible how many calls we get every day from people with problems
with isdn & adsl.
The general stance with adsl is if your line tests fine for voice calls but
you have a problem with adsl itself; contact your service provider ! Of
course that's not the whole story especially where dacs is concerned.
Dacs simply enables 1 existing line to carry 2 numbers & is used (usually)
at remote locations where it would be hard to provide a new line, telegraph
pole etc.

It has no noticable effect on voice quality but it you want to use adsl you
might as well forget it.

One other thing a DACS box does (Well it did for me 2-3 years ago) is
bugger up 56k modems.  I moved into a house in Plymouth that had one line
in it, and one of the housemates had an extra line put in.  A mystery box
appeared, and our pretty dam good 56k connection went to a lucky to get
even a 28.8k connection for more than 2 minutes connection.

Also the distance from the exchange isn't the whole picture.
You also need the quality of your line tested, 3.5 km for full speed adsl
but up to 5.5km for 512kps products.
A line loss test to find out how much information might be lost.
Capacitance (which is what is measured when we do a line test in nanofarods)
presumably the higher the better for adsl, seperate teams involved in all of
that to 154 and a WHOOSH test which looks at the quality of the line across
the whole range and how much signal reaches your house.

The check you can do yourself for how far your are from the exchange isn't
all that accurate,as 1 or 2 of you have noticed and is no use for isdn or
home highway.

I've done the distance test on my line, and it varies from 5.3km to 5.6km.  
Interesting BT site says no you can't have broadband, but Pipex's dail who 
claim to have a more accurate database says, come and order now.

Interestingly I only today had some more training on isdn & all I would say
to anyone considering it is there is no way I would ever use it myself.
Too expensive, too unreliable & too damn hard to figure out what's gone
wrong when it does although I might be persuaded to do a short faq on common
isdn problems and self tests for home highway boxes if someones interested.

How does this relate to linux anyway ? Is anyone using adsl or isdn with
linux in the group ?
What's the general setup procedure ?

One good little site that covers ADSL in the UK is  
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/ - Always worth a look if you got are are 
thinking of getting broadband.

Pete Hatton
---------------------------------
E-mail:  pete@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Webpage: http://www.monolight.org
---------------------------------
I don't understand the HUMOUR of the THREE STOOGES!!


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