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Anyone know anything about ISDN?

Scared0o0Rabbit - Nov 12, 2003

		Scared0o0Rabbit		Nov 12, 2003
			Satellite is out, anyone know anything about setting up a 4 line ISDN setup for a network? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

		Curtis		Nov 12, 2003
			Can you get 4 lines? I thought they only did up to 2. Probably different in your country. Anyway, I only know a little about ISDN. It usually pretty expensive to set up. It can either use some kind of dedicated digital line (ie. optical), or regular telephone lines. Each line is a maximum of 64Kbps (downstream). I think the technology is symmetric, so that makes upstream the same speed. Monthly costs are high. That's about all I know. Probably a fair bit of that doesn't apply to you. Not many people use it these days, due to cable and DSL being so cheap, so companies figure they can charge whatever.

		Alexvrb		Nov 12, 2003
			Step 1: call your phone company and see if they offer ANY sort of ISDN. I've only heard of dual-line ISDN myself, I've not heard of 256k ISDN. Its 64k per line. But I'm only saying I've never heard of it. But you still need to call them.

		Scared0o0Rabbit		Nov 12, 2003
			Well it sounds like we can get 2 dual line isdn connections from them or something. At about $75 per dual line. Alas it's the only high speed internet available up there short of getting the phone company to install a t1 at our house and us becoming an isp or something (cause there is no way we're paying $950 per month for internet lol).

		Curtis		Nov 13, 2003
			Well it's not exactly high-speed. Barely twice as fast as dialup, if you can only get dual line. You might as well get a second phone line and use the XP "bridge two modem connections together" feature which I'm sure I read about somewhere...

		Scared0o0Rabbit		Nov 13, 2003
			by two dual line... I meant for 256K... I don't know much about isdn though.

		Alexvrb		Nov 13, 2003
			I wouldn't get two dual-line, but that's only because of the cost. Anyway, it is still significantly better than ordinary 56k dialup. Especially if your lines aren't so great, and the upload on ISDN is synchronous. 128k would be 128k up as well. Also, for using two 56k modems together, you'd need a phone line for each, and an ISP that lets you use multiple simulataneous logins for this purpose, without tacking on extra. Earthlink a while back told me they charged HOURLY! Yeah, that's gonna happen...

		Scared0o0Rabbit		Nov 13, 2003
			Well right now we're paying triple digits for our dsl (but that's cause we're running business dsl with 5 IP's at 1.5Mbit). This is going to be a huge speed decrease, as well as a jump in price. But where we're going it is the only option that isn't dialup, and dialup speeds aren't an option.

		Tindo@heart		Nov 14, 2003
			What does "Satellite is out" mean? Do you have it and it's covered in snow? Or do you mean that your area is covered in trees? or simply not an option for you? I've had satellite since September and I love the 2mbps downloads. The uploads are slow but faster than dialup, and you do have "FAP" limits. FAP=Fair Access Policy=you have a 169MB bucket that refills at 48kbps and if you empty your bucket you are "FAPed." I have 3 (or more) computers connected to it at all times and we've only hit FAP maybe twice, and both times it's still way faster than 128k and hard to even notice. Are you in the US? There are "FAP-less" options. I would really suggest: http://www.groundcontrol.com/bandwidth_001.htm... Scroll to the bottom and you can read about the FAP-less business accounts. I think it runs about $100/month. Don't trust the reviews you read online about DirecWay. Sure they have tech support in India, and sure they have crappy billing, and sure they don't know their asses from their elbows, but you can avoid all of that with Ground Control. The most important thing is the install. If you get a great installer you'll be up forever. The dish isn't like DirecTV and must be pointed very very precisely, and also grounded well to prevent static build up. I've been down once since my install for about 45 mintues. It was during a tornado at the network operations center in MD and the whole town was without power. However, every ISP has outages.

		Tindo@heart		Nov 14, 2003
			I just did a speed test at http://wdc.speakeasy.net... to give an example of my speed. It's a little slow today. 2003-11-14 02:51:42 EST: 1271 / 83 Your download speed : 1271323 bps, or 1271 kbps. A 155.1 KB/sec transfer rate. Your upload speed : 83194 bps, or 83 kbps. Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier! Speed Results...

		gameboy900		Nov 14, 2003
			Hehe 2003-11-14 13:09:36 EST: 1521 / 252 Your download speed : 1521613 bps, or 1521 kbps. A 185.7 KB/sec transfer rate. Your upload speed : 252972 bps, or 252 kbps. Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier! Go cable go! That's actually kinda slow for me. I can get better download speed if I do aggregate downloads (ie multiple downloads from several sources). Hell I can 2 MEGABYTES per second download from my ISP's newsgroup servers.

		MasterAkumaMatata		Nov 14, 2003
			------------------------------------------------------- 2003-11-14 14:03:05 EST: 2051 / 4995 Your download speed : 2051122 bps, or 2051 kbps. A 250.3 KB/sec transfer rate. Your upload speed : 4995836 bps, or 4995 kbps. Your upload speed is much faster than down.. have you tweaked...? Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier! ------------------------------------------------------- Strange ISP we have at work. :lol:

		Scared0o0Rabbit		Nov 14, 2003
			satellite isn't an option because we're at the bottom of a ravine with a hill to the south, and trees taller than the house on all sides of the house, with trees all over the hill too.

		Scared0o0Rabbit		Nov 14, 2003
			We had someone go out on tuesday and look to see if it would be possible, apparently the guy took one look and said flat out no, no it would never work. The only way I can think of would be having a satellite dish way the hell up in the air on a pole that's just HUGE. And as much fun as it would be having a satellite dish on a giant lightening rod, I think we'd like to avoid that lol.

		Tindo@heart		Nov 14, 2003
			ah well, better luck with other options. Have you checked the area for local WISP? It might be possible to get a great wireless provider there. I'll try to get you some links to check for WISP availablity. Gameboy, the highest I've reached on those test were around 2200kbps. I think they claim accurate test up to 5mpbs. I've actually peaked a few times at 3mbps during FTP, but that was only a few seconds. So far my fastest average download from FTP was a 10MB file at 2.52mbps, I think it finished in 9 or 10 seconds. MasterAkumaMatata! FTP server please! ;-) JK

		Alexvrb		Nov 15, 2003
			My cable is working more or less correctly tonight. Hasn't been cutting out. During the day it will probably suck again. But I used to get even better, except my upload which is freakin capped at 128k. 2003-11-15 01:40:38 EST: 3055 / 115 Your download speed : 3055726 bps, or 3055 kbps. A 373 KB/sec transfer rate. Your upload speed : 115440 bps, or 115 kbps. Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!