Re: [PLUG] DSL and Bell Atlantic

["William H. Magill" <magill@isc.upenn.edu>]

   > > Is there anything specific I should know?  Services that shouls be
   > > run  that are run with ip masq 5 computers on a dial up connection?

Andrew White pretty much covered it...

You'll never know now from the new Verizon marketing information, but 
you CAN get Infospeed DSL from Bell Atlantic -- which is a tariffed sevice,
and use any number of different ISPs.

I've had Infospeed Professional (1.6x90) with DCAnet as my ISP since about
January, and except for the great ATM failure back in January have not had
an outage.

DSL service is anything but "bullet proof."  It's a lot like Linux...
really cool when it works, but not something that you can expect the
average iMac user to comprehend, let alone be able to use. How well DSL
works and the kinds of problems you will experience depends upon your
physical location and what kinds of things are between you and the CO (ie
the last mile). 

Most of the "RBOC" ISPs now are using PPPoE and no longer providing static
IP addresses. This change started last November at Bell Atlantic, the ISP.
(Which is, or should be now, really Northpoint.)

There is another factor to consider in the DSL equation... POTS.

Very few of the non-RBOC xDSL providers (and in very limited areas) offer
POTS.

If you get Infospeed from Bell Atlantic, you can have POTS -- Plain Old
Telephone Service - on the same line. If you get your DSL from Covad,
you don't get POTS, you get a second "phone line" -- actually a dry copper
pair, historically called a "radio loop" -- with no phone service.

There are lots of reasons for this approach, and I expect things to change
over time, but I don't know how quickly. I suspect it will be several years
(if at all) before the non-RBOCs offer POTS with their DSL, even if and
when they offer CLEC service in that CO.

The main reason for this is because the margins are so low on DSL service,
and the maintenance costs are high. This equation will probably change as
the number of DSL subscribers per CO increases, but today the "fill ratio"
is very low, making costs very high. These various providers can capitalize
(ie sell stock) their "installation and startup" costs, but the operating
costs are deadly.... especially since the overhead on the actual account
servicing (dial-a-prayer) is so incrediby labor (and time) intesive. Then
when they have to actually roll-a-truck to do either end user trouble
shooting, or CO equipment trouble-shooting and repair, the costs go
asymptotic almost instantly. 

And none of this is made any easier by the fact that there are always a
minimum of 3 fingers pointing at the problem -- the "last mile" provider,
Bell Atlantic is the ONLY option available in the last mile for the
forseeable future; the aggrigator or xDSL supplier, Covad or RCS or
NorthPoint; and the ISP, DCAnet, NorthPoint, and an incredible cast of
other characters. There are situations where there CAN be even more
companies involved in providing the sevice, each one intent on proving that
their part of the service can never be the problem.  (Getting to and from
the CO to the ISP's POP and to and from the POP to the backbone... etc.)

The only thing less reliable than the DSL setup is the Cable Modem
environment. (another topic.)

-- 
                        www.tru64unix.compaq.com
                              www.tru64.org
                             comp.unix.tru64
                        
T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill                          Senior Systems Administrator
Information Services and Computing (ISC)   University of Pennsylvania
Internet: magill@isc.upenn.edu             magill@acm.org
http://www.isc-net.upenn.edu/~magill/


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