On Sat, 2011-05-14 at 20:46 -0400, Chad Bailey wrote: > > Not by much, VDSL is like under 5000 feet. But regular DSL degrades > > around 7000 feet. I am between 7k and 11k from the CO based on many > > tests run back in 2003. Best I could get was ~1.1Mbps down, for ADSL or > > SDSL. Even when I had Covad 1.5Mbps SDSL ordered, they could only > > provided 1.1Mbps, and thus dropped me down to that plan. > > > > I'd really have to disagree here.
As would I in return, having had DSL since the technology first rolled out back in 99 in Northern California. The area I lived in is commonly referred to as Telecom Valley or was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecom_Valley For example I used to have 3 DSL lines, 1 ADSL from Sonic.net, still in use to this day at my mothers residence over a decade later. Along with 2 x 1.1Mbps SDSL lines, one from Megapath via Covad for > $300, and the other from ATG (no longer around) for $80. ATG was on a fiber ring with Cisco's R&D facility in Petaluma, thus the super low price and much lower latency than the SDSL line with Megapath. ;) > There is somewhat of a mythical > aspect to this. You can technically receive ADSL just fine as far as > 18,000ft from the DSLAM Can't get a link to just images search on google with a bunch of other garbage. Use this link and click on images. You can see ~5k speeds degrade heavily. Its been a known fact for a quite some time. http://www.google.com/search?q=adsl%20distance Here are a couple of the most common images on ADSL distance http://blog.kidsreturn.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/internode-adsl2-distance.jpg http://www.supernerd.com.au/media/images/broadband/adsl2-speed-graph.png Though in some cases you can use a ADSL loop extender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADSL_loop_extender Here is a chart of distance limits http://www.dslreports.com/distance > (I've had happy customers at this distance, > also keep in mind this is cable distance). They are limited to > 768k/1.5mbit sure, and they may not even get their full speeds all the > time, but it is possible. Yes you can get service, but speeds will suffer greatly as a result. Once again I could not get anything better than 1.1Mbps at my location for SDSL or ADSL, and that was peak 1.1Mbps on ADSL. Most times it was much slower. Pretty sure I still have the emails and trail records from when I attempted to get DSL here in Jax back 2003. > Every parameter of a DSL line is > controllable, except for attenuation (sortof). Attenuation drops off > with distance, the way we measure it is in values from 0-inf, > typically we'll never see above 60. 60 is the highest attenuation you > can have and still be 'qualified' for DSL. You can, however, do stuff > to the line which will add stupid attenuation numbers like add a > filter to the DSL itself, so I say that attenuation can't be > controlled with caution. Back in 2003, we had At&t engineers doing distances checks, and they never came back with any consistent results. I was 7k at best, and at worse 11k. Never any consistency. > I only say this because it's very typical for an uneducated agent [and > tech] to not be able to troubleshoot a line well enough to correct > whatever problem is and blame the problem on distance. That might be the common case, but I assure you I had escalated the matter to At&t Engineers, not any level 1, 2 or 3 techs. It kept getting escalated till it got to the network engineers. I don't mess around with such things, given my past experience. > Even at that, > attenuation is only an indicator. What truly mandates your quality of > service is going to be your sync rate, noise profile, noise > margins/power levels, and when applicable what distance your DSLAM is > from its primary DSLAM if it's qualified by cross connect. Distance still plays a much bigger factor. I am not that far from my CO. I know where it is, I see it all the time on St. Augustine Rd. But I doubt I take a direct path from my location to the CO. I have had many types of connections at my location here in Jacksonville, ADSL, SDSL, T1, Comcast Cable, and now U-Verse. You should see how many pairs I have coming to my location. The U-Verse guys were loving it. I have a green tower in my front yard that was put in when the T1 was ordered. At one point Nuvox switched DSLAMs to Calix DSLAMs and I had 2 T1s. In addition to phone lines, when I still had pots lines. It was quite funny, since I used to live 5 houses down from Calix's VP of sales in Petaluma. Which is where my mother still resides, and the VP of sales is still in the same house as well. Talk about a small word :) Also tried to use Clear Wire way back in the day, when I first met Dave Shields of CyberXpress. He was on my roof hanging off the fireplace trying to get signal. Before they sent out a van with a 90' retractable antenna, and got even less of a signal than Dave did :) > People will > refer to other factors, such as attenuation, "bandwidth", error rates, > etc but they fail to understand all of those things are interrelated. I am not discounting those things, but for me distance was the reason I could not get tolerable speeds, much less acceptable or ideal. More so given the ~20% overhead DSL comes with, that even U-Verse still has. Even on the 18Mbps U-Verse plan, I will never get near that due to DSL overhead. Though on Comcast's 20Mbps/4Mbps plan I routinely get ~30Mbps down, and at times I get a full 3MBps download. Quite common if I suck files down from my servers or else where. Due to the speed boost technology, but it does taper off after the first few hundred megs are transferred. > For instance, if you have an error rate on your line, it means your > noise margins during the time of those errors aren't within normal > parameters. If anyone is interested, you must have at least 6db noise > margin up and down (why these are positive values are beyond me, they > make no effort to explain why which is why so many ISP tech support > agents can't explain things in detail). In order to have reliable > service, you must have at least a 10db noise margin. If it was my own > connection, I'd not really be happy with anything less than a 12db > noise margin. I can't recall what the other specs where of my line at the time back in 2003. I just know that it always came back to distance. Everything else was good, I was just to far to get faster speeds. > > Probably not going anywhere, but at the same time the distances are not > > improving. Thus even DSL is very limited as to who can get it, if your > > to far from a CO, you are SOL. > > DSL is already deployed in many areas which there are no other options > for high speed internet. Very typical in rural areas to be capable of > getting DSL and not cable. Well I know people in distant areas that have Cable service, and could not get DSL. CO is miles away. Though for one, Comcast plopped a node in their front yard. Some what far out in in the country in St Johns county. > While they will maintain these areas and > keep the DSL working, I doubt that U-Verse would ever become available > there. These are the same areas that they couldn't justify putting in > expensive cell towers that would only cover a handful of people > throughout the year. A *part* of the reason for this was related to > some government mandates for equal opportunity for bandwidth. I'm > unsure if it still exists, but phone companies used to be required by > the government to be able to offer at a minimum ISDN connections for > rural educational institutes. Thats just bonded 56K basically, two pots phone lines. First started with ISDN with clients in California that could not get DSL. They never got DSL, distance issues, they ended up going wireless. With a company providing wireless to police, fire, and other government entities. Really good speeds, and was repeater based. If A can't reach C, but can reach B, then C can relay through B to get to A, and vice versa. Every time they serviced someone far away, they could reach others father away. It was really cool, but forgot the name of the provider long ago :( > These regulations and others related to > regulated services (landlines) are a part of the reason for the push > to U-Verse, as it's unregulated. This explains a lot of the things > AT&T does with regards to DSL that 'doesn't make sense'. DSL is not regulated any more than any other form of Internet service. Internet is not considered a utility for some reason. Though it very much is these days, along with power. Many don't even have pots phone lines anymore, even though the old POTS phone system is still regulated.... > > Wasn't aware of that merger, wasn't paying attention. I really hope they > > don't merge. Competition is a good thing! > > Too late for hoping, the money has been spent. It will take roughly a > year from the announcement to get everything ironed out and working as > a single entity because the government is being careful not to allow > it to become a monopoly, so there will be stipulations to the merge. It seems per reading current day news article the merger is still under congressional/senate review, and has not been approved as of this time. Thus it may or may not happen. Hopefully it won't but I have no influence there, short of writing my congress person or senator. > If anyone here are law makers or interested in that sort of thing, a > mandate to force AT&T to keep a certain percentage of jobs on american > soil would be a great thing. The last deal for AT&T to purchase > bellsouth had this requirement, but unfortunately that agreement > expired june of last year. I honestly think all corporations over a > certain income bracket should be required to have a percentage of jobs > on american soil if they are headquartered in america. Whats to say they keep their HQ here in the US? I always wondered that about like MS, if the government really went after MS or any company. They could just relocate to another country :) > > At&ts own cellular wireless speeds are likely faster right now than most > > DSL connections. Short of the 3Mbps and 6Mbps ones. But I think cellular > > speeds will catch up sooner than later and overtake DSL all around. With > > no distance issues :) > > I disagree, there are distance issues with cell phone towers, > especially when said cell phone tower doesn't exist. Yes but when you cable fiber to a cell tower, you can serve many more customers over a greater area with less cost. Then even putting in a U-Verse node, that has much lower limit as to how many it can serve. Plus they can sell tower space to other carriers who do not have a tower in that location :) > Having said that, > it wouldn't be too far fetched to say that the phone company could in > the future utilize high gain antennas installed and positioned > professionally to establish very long length connections, then use > something like the microcell to service their home with their cell > service. Thats already happened. Cisco R&D in Petaluma used to use really high power short wave wireless to connect to their HQ in San Jose. Was something like a 200Mbps trunk or faster. It served as a backup in case there was any physical interruption. Also a test bed for emerging wireless technology. Also At&t uses that if you look at the central switch for Jacksonville. Cement building downtown with no windows and massive antenna array on top. Located off West Church St, but I think its address is on the other street its on the corner of. > > Very well could end up like Verizon, where they cease after some point. > > Though Comcast back in the day would provide you with costs to get cable > > in areas that did not have it. It was considerable amounts, but it was > > at least an option. But not an option all the time, cable had to be some > > what near by. > > I don't expect this out of AT&T because they are in the investment > stage of U-Verse deployment. The difference between U-Verse and FIOS > is U-Verse is considerably cheaper to deploy. Only because they are not doing fiber to the premises. But it most certainly has a cost, since they are running fiber from the CO to the U-Verse nodes. Very much like Comcasts network, but Comcast is years ahead. Verizon just took it once step further, running fiber into neighborhoods terminated at customer premises. Not surprising they ceased that and never even started in cities the size of Jacksonville :) > Once they've finished > their deployment push, they will give it a rest (like with DSL) and > let the revenue come in as they sustain their customer base. Again thats not entirely what the U-Verse techs informed me of, its just a transitional phase. Before wireless speeds are on par and then it will be a switch to At&t. One regular At&t tech was telling me how they were not treated as good as U-Verse techs. How At&t didnt' even care much for the old BellSouth/SBC. Given that it wants to be more of a wireless company than wired. Again this is not my opinion, its what more than one At&t and U-Verse tech said during preparation, and install. > That's > how I see it from an internal prespective anyway, I will say that AT&T > does an exceptional job at keeping the wool over the eyes of its > employees though, Depends on where you are within At&t :) > so as much internal/private information as I've > collected (some I shouldn't even know), I'm sure there's a lot more > plans than I'm aware of. I still think there's some value to being on > the inside though, dealing with a company every day and seeing how it > works helps you to be able to predict what that company might decide > to do. Yes and know, unless your privy to whats coming down the pipeline. It seems At&t is keeping things pretty separate and isolated. The on At&t tech was complaining about how much better the U-Verse techs are treated compared to others.... It was pretty funny :) -- William L. Thomson Jr. Obsidian-Studios, Inc. http://www.obsidian-studios.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml Unsubscribe [email protected]
