[BC] DSL

[Mark Croom]

This is an interesting discussion that definitely has a "ymmv" component to it.

My local telco at our headquarters location just changed out our DSL line to a nearby outdoor interface box, after previously running about two and a half miles into town. We could never get more than about 550-600 kbps either way on that rig even though we were paying for 768k symmetrical. The telco just gave up and said that was as good as it gets. We lived with that for about six years.

We had a fair number of unexplained outages on the older system; no good reason really, it would just stop working once in a while. Oh and then there's the problem with things getting really wet in the Spring and slowing down the DSL (no kidding).

Now, with the new nearby SLIC, we're running a 5MB/2MB asymmetrical, and it's way more reliable than before, not to mention just plain faster. I'm having virtually no downtime with the new setup.

So maybe that's part of the disparity between the experiences we're seeing between various DSL users. There's more than one technology in use and some of these lines work better than others.

One of my sites has a wireless ISP because the telco doesn't provide DSL and there's no cable, either. Talk about a weak option...good grief. The slightest bit of icing on the antennas and the speed goes down to nichts. When everything is clear and good I get about a meg down and almost half a meg up. Today, I'm getting 22K down and 6K up. I wondered why my VNC wasn't working worth beans on Friday and now I know. There's ice on all the antennas (including my broadcast antenna) thanks to this hilltop being susceptible to low clouds/fog sooner than some of the nearby lower elevations.

The distance to the access point is three miles, perfect line of site, flat land etc etc.

I wish the WISP guys used higher-power radios; maybe it would help. Or maybe we just need better antennas. I have a Tranzeo link between a couple of my sites using 3' parabolic antennas with radomes. That thing seems to work through about anything. 17.4 miles at what, 600mW TPO? Amazing.

I have the wireless ISP because I have an automation computer out here, and use VNC to get into it (it's 80 miles from the office). Not too useful for remote access when I can only get 6 kbps upload speed.

Mark
MN

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Edwin Bukont <ebukont at msn.com> wrote:
>DSL w/ 3MB download at site for last project and it seems to work just fine so far.

>Edwin Bukont CSRE, DRB, CBNT
>V- 240.417.2475; F- 240.368.1265