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Subject:RE: System Requirements From:KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Wed, 10 May 2000 14:52:52 -0400
Sandy forgot to mention:
- locate your home or office wisely. ADSL is not available
everywhere.
If you are moving into an area, forget about the location
and quality of malls, schools, bike paths... no, just
verify ahead of time that the phone company provides
DSL where you intend to live.
Lots of companies will bombard you with advertising for
their cheap, fast, better'n'the-other-guy DSL service,
but they all use the copper and the stations provided by
your local phone company. If you live/work outside the
functional distance from the central office or the DSL-
capable substation that serves your phone line, then
you are SOL. (You can have perfectly adequate voice
service for miles and miles past the point where DSL
fizzles.)
Your friend across the street or in the next block might
have it, but you'll be waiting until Bell (or whoever it
is in your area) gets darn good and ready to install major
new equipment on your segment. The business case needs to
be fairly persuasive before they'll do it.
Cable modem might be an option for many, but it can have
its own headaches. In some cases, the headaches have to
do more with obscure cable-company policies than with
technical issues. Usually, you can expect a lack of setup
support (ranging from ignorance and suspicion up to outright
hostility) if you use Linux or some other non-Win OS.
On the other hand, most local phone companies have
ancestry in the former PHONE COMPANY monopolies that
enjoyed/suffered decades of regulatory compulsion to
develop engineering and technical service. You have a
problem, they can find and fix it. (Usually.)
Cable companies still operate their service
and maintenance on the pins-in-a-map model. You call
with a complaint, they give you bland assurances and
then push a pin in the map. Eventually a cluster of such
pins suggests an area where they might drive the truck
and peer at overhead wires to see if there's some
obvious problem that would explain all those pesky calls
they've been getting... maintenance by statistical
approximation... :-)
/kevin (who would LIKE to have DSL...)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sandy Harris [mailto:sharris -at- dkl -dot- com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 10:52 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re: System Requirements
[snip]
> > If you are connecting to the NET via a modem,
>
> Consider alternatives! For my use, the biggest difference
> between the machine
> I had 5 years ago and what's on my desk today is the upgrade
> from modem to ADSL.
> Second is the monitor. Faster CPU, more RAM and bigger drives
> are less noticable.
[snip]
