How well will this work out?

[hefley]

I found out today I live 500 feet too far out to get DSL. I was pretty pissed and all then I thought of an idea. I called my uncle who works for the phone company and I may be able to try DSL even though I live a little too far out.

He said, sometimes it might work great, other times the connection may drop down to not so great. I figured what the heck, it should still kick the hell out of my dial up right?

Anyone have any thought on this?

[fazzman]

I dunno about where you live but here in cali they tie in the services to Fiber networks to extend the distance they can provide you with. you really got nothing to lose 500 feet is nothing, I wouldnt worry too much, if you have decent quality phone lines in your area you should be fine.

[hefley]

I dunno about where you live but here in cali they tie in the services to Fiber networks to extend the distance they can provide you with. you really got nothing to lose 500 feet is nothing, I wouldnt worry too much, if you have decent quality phone lines in your area you should be fine.


Most lines out here have been re-done. My uncle said they also installed a new DSL switch and lots of equipment around here. My 56k is about as fast as it can get, and very stable.

[hefley]

They told me the cut off was 17,000 feet from the CO, sometimes 17,500. I am right at 18,000 feet. Do you think I will be okay?

[BollWeevil]

DSL throughput rates significantly drop off after around 17 kilofeet. (yes kilofeet is a term in the DSL world, although it's quite odd to describe english units with metric prefixes).

Within the first 10 kft or so, negotiation rates of 8 Mbps are very acheivable (although your DSL provider is most likely to cap this much much lower). Beyond 10 kft, the max throughput starts to degrade somewhat linearly, but by 16 kft, this is an exponential decrease. Depending on the equipment, the quality of your phone lines, and how well your modem interoperates with the line cards on the DSLAM, 18 kft is possible, but will probably sync up at less that 1.5 Mbps. By 20 kft, hardly any communication is possible at all.

DSL is a hack that sends frequencies down the phone line much higher than were ever intended. In the copper wires, these frequencies attenuate over long distances, making some frequencies unusable. DSL divides the spectrum into several hundred single frequency channels, which each can have separate bit rates depending on the amount of noise on the channel. At long distances, the higher frequencies can't be used due to attenuation and noise, so that reduces the number of usable channels thereby reducing the total bandwidth of the DSL connection.

So there's not an exact formula to figure out how usuable your connection will be at 18 kft, due to all the different factors. From experience, my guess is it would be slower than 1.5 Mbps down. But whether better than dialup, I can't say. Something you'll just have to try.

[hefley]

The dsl I was going to get was only 384 down anyway. I could get 768, but they want quite a bit more for it.

[millhouse]

DSL throughput rates significantly drop off after around 17 kilofeet. (yes kilofeet is a term in the DSL world, although it's quite odd to describe english units with metric prefixes).

Within the first 10 kft or so, negotiation rates of 8 Mbps are very acheivable (although your DSL provider is most likely to cap this much much lower). Beyond 10 kft, the max throughput starts to degrade somewhat linearly, but by 16 kft, this is an exponential decrease. Depending on the equipment, the quality of your phone lines, and how well your modem interoperates with the line cards on the DSLAM, 18 kft is possible, but will probably sync up at less that 1.5 Mbps. By 20 kft, hardly any communication is possible at all.

DSL is a hack that sends frequencies down the phone line much higher than were ever intended. In the copper wires, these frequencies attenuate over long distances, making some frequencies unusable. DSL divides the spectrum into several hundred single frequency channels, which each can have separate bit rates depending on the amount of noise on the channel. At long distances, the higher frequencies can't be used due to attenuation and noise, so that reduces the number of usable channels thereby reducing the total bandwidth of the DSL connection.

So there's not an exact formula to figure out how usuable your connection will be at 18 kft, due to all the different factors. From experience, my guess is it would be slower than 1.5 Mbps down. But whether better than dialup, I can't say. Something you'll just have to try.


Well said sir.

[hefley]

Thanks guys. The way I see it, is it can't hurt to try it out.