How Far for DSL?

[Chris Freeland]

I currently live 4 miles from my local phone companys sub-station, is this too far for DSL? If not what kind of speeds could I expect and would it be worth it at this distance?

[Neil Derryberry]

That's nearly 21,000 feet... most likely too far, and even so, I bet there are a ton of load coils between you and your CO. I'd look at alternatives... maybe cable modem, if it is available.

[RichW]

Yep, it is unlikely that you could get a working DSL connection under those circumstances. However, teh best source of information is your local phone company. And even if you cannot do it today, by letting them know you are interested may motivate them to install alternatives if there are other simialr requests from your neighborhood.

ADSL can deliver speeds of up to 768 Kbps, but service is typically sold as 512 K download and 256K upload. Again, your local telco will be able to give you the best answer.

[Mark Lamutt]

21000 feet is almost definitely too far. I was 14,410 feet from my CO, and was out of range by almost 2000 feet. They offered by IDSL for $150 a month...I went with the cable modem.

[Scott Greczkowski]

Here in Connecticut they have been putting up "Pronto" boxes which extends the DSL service, you might want to check into if you can get DSL, you might be suprised to find out that your area also uses these signal booster boxes.

When DSL was intoduced only 35% of the people could get DSL, now with these new boxes 95% of the state can get DSL no problem.

[gcutler]

In many Metro and suburban areas they are going like crazy to build up the infrastructure. 1 year ago I was too far away. 6 months ago I was able to get 256K download speed if I was lucky. Now (after 1 full day of outage) I can get anywhere from 1024k-1256k download speed.

I've read that the phone companies are not so pleased with the subscription rate as many people do not want to spend $50/month or do not understand the speed difference. So depending on where you live, your neighbor's lack of interest may negatively affect you?

[Chris Freeland]

I kind of thought I was too far, it is mostly rural here until you get within one mile of the sub-station in question. My house sets on 1.25 acres and I have one of the small lots in my neighborhood, most homes here set on 5 or more acres, so as you can see homes are far apart here. Comcast serves my neighborhood with cable TV and I think they now offer their broadband service here too but I am not shore, however I would prefure not to deal with them. Century Telephone is my local telephone company and they have sent flyers in the mail stating they now offer DSL, however I do not know if it is truly available at my home. Anytime I check my zipcode for other DSL services the answer has always bean no. I do not know if they use the "Pronto" boxes or not.

[gcutler]

I would check my zipcode monthly, you may be pleasantly surprised. I also checked out some zipcodes of neighboring areas as you may see the spread of the DSL and you might have an idea of when it may be coming.

I'd assume that if you get a cable modem you will have to pay for some level of basic service. Like ifyou have basic service ($20) you get Cable Modem for $30, but if you don't have basic service you have to pay $20 for basic that you don't use and $30 for the service. It seems that $50/month is the standard for DSL so paying that for Cable isn't sooo bad (if you think about it the right way)

[Chris Freeland]

Actually Comcast here does not require cable tv for their broadband service, however they do give you a $5 discount if you take cable tv. Limited basic here is $8.35, so I guess if I combined this with broadband it would only be around $53, which is not a bad deal, I just don’t like Comcast. At this time I get my dial-up service for free through my wife’s work and I am not quite in the position to make the leap yet, however I probably will sometime in the future.

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Chris Freeland
I just don’t like Comcast.

Kind of reminds me of the Storyline from Babylon 5, where the Shadows were afraid of anything Vorlon touching the Shadow Homeworld as the believe if so it would destroy them. Are you under the influence of the Shadows? Or maybe Comcast is under their influence

TNGTony can probably expand on the reference if needed

[Neil Derryberry]

Here's a good website to check availability and telco-reported footage to the nearest CO...

www.dslreports.com

Enjoy!

[Chris Freeland]

Thanks for the link, it is like I suspected dsl is not available at my address, the site could not tell me how far away either. I have book marked it and will check back from time to time.

[Lightnin1]

Theres a rare chance that they have SDSL, but it will reach to 21,000. Thats a big IF though. We have ADSL working at 22,500, but it will only train at 500 KB/sec. We are doing it as a beta test. You probably wouldn't have much luck getting them to go over that 18,000 foot mark, if it's ADSL there providing.

[Kevin]

I live in a populated suburban community and neither DSL or Cable broadband are available for my address!

The cable internet access is Cablevision's fault, they're just so lazy and unreliable that they think they can do whatever they want (which they can, because they're a monopoly in my area). I guess digital cable, high-speed internet access, YES, or their customers aren't on the top of their list.

DSL service is spotty in my town. Someone a half a mile down the road gets it but my street doesn't. I don't really understand it and I probably never will.

[Neil Derryberry]

A lot of the problem with DSL (or any high-speed digital line, for that matter) is the amount of load coils present between the demarc at your street and the co. A loal coil was originally intended to boost the gain on your telephone signal so that the telco could run longer distances, and these are too noisy for dsl.

[Lightnin1]

One small clarification Neil. A load coil is simply a voice amplifier, your right about that. Implimented a while ago to boost the voice signal over the pairs. Now with the new EWSD switches, the coils are not needed. It's not that the load coils are noisy, it's a matter of the DSL not being able to pass through them at all. DSL ISP's have the line qualified first to see if loads are present. If they are, they must be removed before anything else happens. One clear way of explaining this is the z-blocker phone filters that ISP's give out that go on your telephony devices(i.e. phones, satellite receivers, etc.) are basically little load coils so the DSL can't pass through and flow through the phones and other devices. This is what keeps the DSL signal at a high dB noise margin.

Another correction is that ADSL, if your copper pairs are good enough, will provide up to 8000 KB/sec download and 1000 KB/sec upload.