DSL SPEED DETERMINATIONS

[radio]

At our studios of the radio station, when we bought back in 2004, we got offered DSL. Funny thing was, it didn't work here then. We're outside of town, nowhere near a switching station, which I understand is a consideration for speed capacity. We took Charter cable 'net and have had it for almost 13 years with it's semi-regular speed updates, now to 60 megs down/4 up which is the max they can do on this older system.

A year ago, in order to keep our two lines of copper phone service at a lower "bundled" rate, I was forced to take AT&T's DSL, driven by a third (copper) line to the station at a whopping maximum of 1.5 mb download speed. Pretty useless except when friends brought computers over for service that they thought had viruses....no risk of anything getting on our internal network. Recently, when I renew the contract, the CSR tells me she can "up" us to 6 megs down for no additional charge, which I didn't know could be done at the end of a phone line this far out.

One day after the contract, I tested the modem speed on the DSL, and sure enough, we're at 6meg down, so..I've put a separate router on this 'net supplier and I can run guest devices and at least one streaming device off it with full HD being delivered. It's flawlessly running Roku with Amazon and Netflix in HD.

I'm just curious what's different this year than last in the fact they can push 6mb through standard copper at this distance all of a sudden? Maybe in the future even more? It's nice taking at least ONE Roku off the cable service that the station uses...and nice having a good speed backup for when cable is down! (we're putting the DSL router and modem on UPS so the station's never without some kind of service.)

 

[Claude Greiner]

Why the hell would you get rid of a 60 meg connection with charter for a 1.5 meg with AT&T?

You would be better off getting phone service through charter.

To ansewer your original question at&t no longer offers DSL but instead provides a service called unverse.

Basically instead of your line going back to the central office like traditional dsl, AT&T has installed a fiber node somewhere in the middle of the run from your office to their central office. This cuts the distance required and provides higher speeds

 

[harshness]

While it may not be fiber as Claude suggests, they've likely built out some sort of aggregation box that is a whole lot closer to you (think blocks away). I'm four blocks away and they best they can do for me is 512Kbps; effectively useless in this day and age.

 

[StanDarsh]

AT&T should start rolling out G.Fast DSL this year...they already have the tech and may have it installed in some areas. It's rather cheap to install, and can up DSL speeds like the 6meg as high as 750meg up and 750meg down. So, a tremendous jump in speed, and evening out the upload/download is what it's best for. I hope to see G.Fast in my area, it's mostly designed to deliver extremely high, sub-gigabit speeds to mostly rural areas.

 

[radio]

Claude, I never said I got RID of anything! I said that in order to keep my two copper lines for the radio station at a lower cost I had to accept them installing DSL which was a worthless add-on until this renewal when they gave me enough to run "entertainment" devices separate from the radio station network.

Phone service through charter sucked here. Caller ID was wrong half the time, showing "Meijer, INC" on many callers. (Charter blamed AT&T's database) and we went through 3 modems because we figure they can't handle the RF of a 5kw FM a few hundred feet away. No tech could figure out why we'd lose the Caller ID first, then the service would go flaky. They never even came to get their junk voice modem. Next time we open the closet in back it goes to the recycler. Already too much in there. And, copper lines still outlast cable lines in emergencies once the power runs out. I'll take copper for stability any day where radio is concerned

Yes, they call it Uverse. Big hairy deal. It's on a phone line, not fiber into our building. To me, that's DSL. Same modem, different inputs it appears.
Thanks for reading the thread!

Stan: Maybe with Claude's observation and yours, there's hope for some interesting choices to develop for us eventually. Until now, only cable was an option, and when we bought the station, the top CABLE speed was 4 meg down for us! If AT&T improves rural coverage, we may finally have an alternative.

I appreciate your reading, as well.
Just seemed interesting "all of a sudden" to have a 6x increase in speed over a rural phone line.

 

[StanDarsh]

Uverse is a bit different in it's feed...while it's not FTTH, it is FTTN, or fiber at the CO. The difference is the DSLAM on DSL. AT&T actually uses (in this area) ADSL2+..but Uverse is sort of like a bonded VDSL..much faster speeds can be attained. I wish I could get bonded ADSL...where they take 2 DSL lines and bond them together, then they hit my modem with double the speed...but the DSLAM doesn't support that where I live.

Some Uverse does have FTTH ....but only in metro areas.

For reference: FTTH = Fiber To The Home
FTTN = Fiber.....Node

 

[harshness]

DSL has always been over-sold in terms of what it can do. Early on the telcos claimed that it was effectively a private pipe. Of course the pipe became very public when it reached their frame relay Internet connection. There's a reason that the cable companies typically have so much more Internet bandwidth than the telcos do.

Now DSL is aggregated at the neighborhood POP so the choke point has moved closer to your home.

I wonder if this speed increase comes from using two pair to the home. Most homes have been wired for two lines (or more) since they started using the Network Interface Devices years ago.