dsl is here to stay 1 january, 1999 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

While the computer industry insiders were talking about cable modems, ISDN, and satellite as the next big Internet connection method, a strange thing happened. A whole new technology has brought fast and affordable Internet access to actual users. It is called DSL, and if you do not know about it yet, you soon will. Here is my prediction for the year: By the end of 1999, DSL is going to be second only to analog modems for home Internet access.

DSL or ADSL (asynchronous digital subscriber line) is a fancy name for an Internet connection that “splits” your phone line. What happens is that part of the bandwidth of your phone line is set up permanently for a digital connection to the phone hub. At the phone hub then there is a private ATM network to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) for your Internet access. The remaining portion of the bandwidth on your phone line is kept for your phone calls. So, essentially, on one phone line you can receive and dial phone calls while simultaneously having a digital connection to the Internet.

The exciting part is that because your are connected digitally, the connection speeds are considerably faster than a standard 56K analog modem. While your normal modem connection will probably be in the 36K per second range, a DSL connection will be 256K, 512K or more. So, while getting to talk on the phone and simultaneously browse the web, you also have web pages popping up at 10 times the speed.

Sounds too good to be true, right?

Well, in some ways it is. I started the long road toward getting a DSL account at home nearly two months ago, and have only been enjoying the results for a few days. However, I have used DSL accounts for longer periods of time at other locations, but never have I gone through the “setup” before.

Now, because I was one of the first on the block (or in the country, for that matter) to explore the technology, certainly many of the kinks will be worked out. Still, the first road block is the copper cable running to your house. When you call to inquire about the service, they will run a line test to your home number. This test will check to see whether the cable in between your home and the nearest phone hub are of high enough quality to handle the digital line. They will then check to see how fast it can handle. I live in “technology central” Seattle, so I fully expected my line to be approved for at least a 512K connection. Wrong. I barely made the cut for a 256K connection (as low as it goes). But .. I made the cut, so off to step two.

Step two is determining whether to use your phone company as your internet service provider (ISP), or to pick an ISP. I highly recommend you use a different ISP than your phone company, because I have only heard horror stories about their quality and service. But I even more highly recommend you research which independent ISP you will use before signing up for service. The DSL folks can give you a list (usually available on the web) of which ISP’s in your area support DSL. Call them up and ask lots of questions. Find out whether they are hooked up right now, and how many people are using it. (The answers you want are “yes”, and “quite a few” respectively.) Find out what they have heard from their customers about how they like it. Then compare rates. The rates vary anywhere between $10 a month with no set up fee, to $40 a month with a $50 set up fee. Keep in mind this is just the amount you will be paying for the ISP, and does not include the phone company charges, so SHOP AROUND. I currently am paying approximately $20 per month with no set up charge.

The next step, and probably the worst for me, was the fact that this technology is mainly only run by your phone company. If you live in the land of US West (or US Worst as we call it), this can be a very painful problem. There are independent companies in the Seattle area and elsewhere building their own DSL networks to your home, but they are not only slow in coming, they are also considerably more expensive than the mass market phone company approach. It is a tough pill to swallow, and you can lessen it by using an independent ISP, but when getting a DSL connection to your house you will almost certainly have to use your phone company.

It should be no surprise to those in the Pacific Northwest that the reason it took nearly two months for my home DSL account to get started was because US West first lost my order (that cost a month). Then US West gave my ISP the run around (cost another two weeks), and then continued to change dates and timelines until another week went by. Hardly spectacular customer service. Of course, an “I’m sorry” would have made it a little more tolerable, but I digress.

During this two month span I received in the mail my Cisco ADSL router (much like what you would consider a modem, except for ADSL instead), network card (already had one, so I left it in the box), and even a US West phone. All compliments of signing up for the service. During these introductory DSL periods, many phone companies are giving the router and network card away for free if you sign up for DSL. Because “life is better here” (US West ad campaign), they even throw in a phone. Gee. Thanks. (On a side note, that free phone has the worst sound quality of any phone in the house.)

In the lovely DSL care package you will also get many little phone boxes that you attach to all of your phone devices in the house. It connects between the phone outlet and the phone cord attaching your phone device. Said devices include all of your phones, your answering machines, your fax machines, and even your digital cable box. What these little boxes do is they keep your phone devices from using the bandwidth that is reserved for your DSL service. Although you would expect sharing a single line with a high speed Internet connection would result in dramatically lower sound quality, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Next, you will need to hook up the DSL router, network card and cables. Attaching it to my system was a snap, but would not have been if I did not hook up networks for a living. If you are patient, and can handle reading technical mumbo-jumbo, or have a friend with tech know-how, this will probably not be a problem. If you had difficulty setting up your computer, or get confused when trying to program your VCR, either pay the phone company to install it for you, or get a friend or private consultant. Or stick with your current Internet access.

On a quick aside, I might mention that hooking up this service to a Mac rather than a Windows PC will be moderately easier. So, if you just bought a brand new iMac, and I have scared you away from DSL with all of this fancy techy-talk, you might still want to look into it. But, you will still want to find an experienced Mac friend to help you set it up.

The software side of this tech experience includes installing the device drivers for your network card and router, and then bridging the router to your computer. After you have everything running, have the router hooked up to the phone line, and after your phone company has turned on DSL to your house, you will have to test the line quality. This is extremely important since the phone company test you do when calling for the service does not accurately determine whether DSL will work at your house flawlessly. Only when you test the quality with your router will you know for certain.

If you do not pass (there will be a certain noise ratio the software will be comparing against), you will have to unhook everything and send it all back and forget you ever heard of DSL. If you pass, then off you go to the next step. My connection passed, and from what I have heard it has been very rare when someone does not.

Now, if you have everything hooked up and running, if the phone company got DSL running at your home, and your ISP said they have received notice of your connection and given you a login and password - then fun time has begun. With both Windows and Macs the connection from this point is already set to go. Just enter the login name and password that your ISP gave you, and the OS should do the rest of the work. From then on, you are connected.

I have finished telling you the horror story. Now let me tell you, even after hearing all of these scary experiences you will have to endure, why you will want this service. It is fast. No. I mean really fast. For those of you that have used the Internet via a T1 connection, or frame relay, or via high speed at work or school, you will know what I am talking about. Although it is not a T1 connection, because most places with high speed ports have to share it with many users (work, school), in many ways this connection is faster because you are the only one using it.

Web pages pop up instantly. Live video and audio is not only tolerable, it is enjoyable at these speeds. I have yet to run into a web page that takes more than a second or two to load. Twenty megabyte files download in minutes rather than hours. Bottom line: If you spend more than an hour or two a day on the Internet at home, you are going to want DSL.

So, what’s the catch?

Funny you should mention it. There are a couple catches, actually.

The first, and perhaps foremost right now, is the cost. The service in my neck-of-the-woods is $40 per month, plus whatever you pay to your ISP for the Internet connection (probably $20 a month). For a DSL connection in Seattle completely US West free, you are looking at $80 to $100 a month. That means, if you choose the US West approach, you will pay $60 every month just for Internet browsing, and considerably more with a different DSL provider. However, let me put the cost in this perspective. If you already have a second phone line for modem use, you are already spending $40 a month ($20 for the phone, plus $20 for the ISP). If you were considering adding a second line because you are missing important calls due to Internet use, then not only can you expect $40 a month, you will also have to pay installation charges ($50 to $250). So, with DSL you can pay $60 a month, never have to worry about your Internet use clogging your phone, and you get to surf the web at ten times the speed of an analog modem. Trust me, once you try the web on a 256K digital line, it is tough to go back.

The next catch is the issue of over selling. The connection you make to the phone hub, and then the connection the phone hub has on the ATM network to your ISP, is not yours. You have to share it with anyone else using DSL. That means as more people on your block sign up, the less bandwidth room there is for you. Most phone companies do not have any limits on how many people they will sign up for DSL on a single line. As a result, it is conceivable that if enough people sign up for DSL that your connection to the Internet could be slower than on a modem. Worse, there are three points at which DSL can be oversold: the connection between you and the phone hub, the connection between the phone hub and the ISP, and the connection between the ISP and the Internet. If one or more of them is slowing down your connection, it could be difficult to determine the source, let alone fix the problem.

Right now few people know about DSL, so if you sign up soon you can count on having a clean connection for a while. After more and more people engage the web at warp speed, the virtues of DSL might diminish somewhat. Of course by then the phone company might have cleaned up some lines, and improved service so we would never see a loss in performance. … Yeah, and maybe later monkeys might fly out my … oh, sorry.

In any case, here is my quick guide to determining whether you should explore the possibly of getting DSL at your home.

Look into DSL if:
1. You currently have a second phone line strictly for Internet use, and wish you had a faster Internet connection.
2. Have been considering adding a second phone line for Internet use.
3. Use the Internet for more than an hour a day at home, and could give up your weekly latte’s in favor of a faster web speed.
4. You like to have the coolest toys on the block, and can afford $60 a month to show off your fast Internet connection to friends and family.

Do not bother with DSL if:
1. You use the Internet for less than an hour a day at home.
2. Have difficulty programming your VCR or changing the background picture on your computer, and are not interested in paying someone or finding a tech friend to help you out with DSL.
3. Accidentally ran into this article while browsing www.lustytoys.com and have no idea what I am talking about.
4. You find that waiting for web pages to load gives you time to work on your needlepoint.

Anyway, I hope I have given you more information on DSL than you ever wanted. If you give DSL a try, please let me know how it goes. If you live in the Pacific Northwest and want to look into DSL in your area call US West at 1-888-634-2599.

Despite all of the problems I list, I am very happy I moved to DSL, and I suspect that you would be happy with it as well. Who knows how many hours of my life I will save by not waiting for slow web pages to pop up. I expect that as more and more people hear about how well this service can work, DSL will quickly move into the number two method for Internet access right behind the trusty old modem. And, cable modems, ISDN, and satellite? Who needs ‘em?

By the way, you can still use your old analog modem on a line with DSL on it. I have noticed that the speed on a 56K modem connects at a somewhat lower speed due to the sharing of bandwidth with the DSL line. But, in case you ever want to see how Internet browsing used to be, you can always go back to browsing the old fashion way. Although, I do not recommend it.