ADSL - advice welcome :)

[Rocky]

You know I don't know a lot about these things, so as per usual, I hope the intelligent peeps within this fine community can shed some light on this for me. :)

My Home Highway one year contract expired last month so I can now upgrade to ADSL if I wish to and having checked, it is available in my area.

The guy on the phone from BT said that it would cost me £150 for installation, and then £40pm for a permanent connection which meant I could stay online forever, have fax and phone calls all at the samer time and the internet ISP costs were "all in" with this 40 quid offer. So, if he's right....

1. HH is £40pm and BTI Anytime costs me £10pm (£15pm from April). If ADSL is £40pm all inclusive, that makes it cheaper than HH. Eh? This right? I find it hard to believe my ISP costs aren't additional!

2. He said my HH would have to be converted to an analogue line before ADSL could be installed and said there was a small charge for this. Anyone know how much and why is it an analogie line?

3. With HH I have three numbers, two of which can be used at anytime. The guy said ADSL was one number only. At present, if I'm on the phone to a mate, the missus can still call on the other number. This advantage (or nightmare sometimes ;)) presumably is lost with ADSL?

4. The guy said there are over 50 service providers, including BT and I have to choose one. I'm with BT now, so is BT Openworld ok? I presume my email addresses remain the same if I stay with BT?

5. Are there any drawbacks with ADSL, for instance gaming - is it better or are some services not accessible?

6. Any general advice welcome!

Thanks in advance and forgive my total ignorance, as whilst if I trawled the net I could find the answers, I do value personal views and advice a lot more.

:)

[Pol]

1. er.....dunno!
2. Nope, can't help with that one either.
3. Actually,......I don't know!
4. Not a clue.
5. erm..............sorry.
6. Never eat cheese just before you go to bed!

Seriously, I don't know much about it, but I seem to remember a friend saying that its good for downloads(ie high speeds) but isn't necessarily so good for data going the other way so it isn't always brilliant for gaming. I don't think that bothers him too much as he seems to spend most of his time downloading massive quantities of porn in double quick time.
Hopefully someone else can shed more light on it.

[Edited by Pol on 27-01-2001 at 03:24 PM]

[AeroBob]

Oh, ADSL? I have a question...

*Ahem*.

WHEN THE fluffING HELL IS IT GETTING TO CORNWALL? :angry:

I get the distinct impression it's going to be a good few years at least. It's... kinda irritating.

It'll be 'As soon as we can figure out how to make an ADSL line out of turnips', isn't it? :farmer:

[Pol]

Cornwall! Try living in the Scottish highlands. We still don't have Channel 5! Although some say that's no bad thing.

[[TSQN] Budgie]

dont know about ADSL but Cable modems are available in your area m8 that give the same performance and cost less - £50 install £33 per month all in.

[Richmond]

Yeah i'm the same as budgie. I have a telewest cable modem in brum for 33 quid a month. Blumming roxors:)

Only downside is the 128k up load instaed of 256k on adsl.

That only effects me a lot cause i'm always on shoutcast:)

I would definitly recommend Telewests Blueyonder service.

http://www.blueyonder.co.uk ironicly:)

[Macwedd]

ask muf rocky, she's had adsl for months now...hey you never know with a REALLY low ping you might even get a kill in CS

[Mut]

If you want fast downloads (60kish a sec) and 30-40ping then adsl is what you want.

Data and voice comms are sent over the phone line at a certain frequency. The frequency that standard modems communicate on is the same that your voice is sent on while in a phone conversation. This is because they aren't capable of handling a higher frequency. With ADSL the data is sent at a much higher frequency than the voices are. When the high frequency (data) reaches the ADSL modem it filters it out and sends it to your computer, passing the lower frequencies (voices) to the telephone. This enables you to talk and use the internet or send a fax simultaneously, and thus no second phoneline.

The only stipulations that affect an ADSL install are that you have to be within 3miles of the exchange and that you phoneline doesnt have "noise" ( something incidentally i failed on my adsl install ) but this can be altered by a BT engineer.

For £40 a month you cant really go wrong, the only other choice is a Blueyonder cable modem which operates in Brum.

But however, Im having a fair few problems with this atm ( read http://forums.gameplay.com/showthread.php?threadid=218444 - BUDGIEEEE I blame you, fix it! :) )

As for email addy I believe you can keep your @btinternet.com, but dont quote me. You'd definately be able to access it thugh as you'd be on a BT point of presence.

Mutterz

[Rocky]

Thanks ladz.....gonna make a decision early next week. Will probably opt for ASDL with BT Openworld, as Mebe brainwashed me on the phone earlier. Unless you can tell me he's wrong and there's a better option. ;)

[Blade]

Don't you just hate peeps who can get ADSL and Cable :( , not fair i tell ya!!!!!

[moxy]

Ive had adsl(Openworld) for 2 days now m8 and without exageration it is quite simply fantastic! :) I was with btinternet surftime and have kept my moxy@btinternet.com addy, ping on CS like mut says is between 30 and 40 on average, mp3 downloads are........well if I continue like I am EMI will be suing ME and not napster ;) I start the download then hit play song and 9 times from 10 It finishes the d/load b4 I've got to the end of the song :E

When I downloaded CS(80meg?) after a reformat it took all night and quite a few reconnections, between 6 and 8 hrs in total. Yesterday I downloaded "Day of defeat" (73meg?) and it took 15 mins :P

I cant say that browsing has improved quite to the same degree, especially gameplay.com lol but it IS much better, I'm already forgeting what that "Connection timed out" page looks like and flash animations, news reports, music videos, radio is much more fluid than ever before. I've even been trawling through discovery.com and historychannel.com just trying out the videos I gave up on ages back lol (While still downloading from napster/refreshing gamespy etc with very little performance damage)

Asmo (he has cable modem) told me I would never go back to modem after broadband. Lol well now I'm "On the other side" If I couldn't have broadband I think I might ditch the net entirely. It's made the net enjoyable and new to me again after so long getting p1ssed off with hitting refresh or back and forward.

btw I'm an LPB now but it's kind of re-assuring to know I'm still as crap at CS as I was before lol so don't believe everything mac tells ya ;)

[msilkstone]

I have ADSL, i used a comnpany called Tele 2, it cost me 160 quid for the year and 60 quid was the installation cost out of the above figure, after your one year is up it costs 10 quid a month, thats it ! and it runs30 times faster than my old 56 k modem, http://www.tele2.co.uk and enter your postcode, then they will tell you if you can have it in your area. The installation is a little square box on the side of your house exactly 1 foot by 1 foot square and it points in the direction of a master transmitter, its v v v good. I can play on wireplay 3 but cannot play on wp 2.3 until they put private arenas on wp3. Its the cheapes adsl service going and they dont need to do anything to your phone lines at all, they dont even look at them, because they dont need to as everythings done through the little transmitter box on your house. Hope i can be of help.

[Fallout]

I looked at that Tele2 website, sounds great - though the wireless DSL is £34.99 a month. Here's the catch, that is £34.99 for 500MB maximum data allowance per month. Now if that means you can only transfer 500mb of data to your machine before the next tariff (£65.00 p/m) then surely a gamesplayer/regular surfer will hit that maximum within a couple of weeks. I've been on a hour with my 33.6k modem and just been reading through a few messages and stuff and already had 3MB pass through the modem. Imagine viewing and downloading lots of videos and stuff - that 500MB is nothing. I have a website that gets about 150-200 people a day and it has 500mb of bandwidth used a month also - and that's without many graphics (though lots of bad code no doubt). Can't see 500MB being enough. Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick. Do other ADSL have similar restrictions?

[[TSQN] Budgie]

But however, Im having a fair few problems with this atm ( read http://forums.gameplay.com/showthread.php?threadid=218444 - BUDGIEEEE I blame you, fix it! :) )


/me runs ;)

dont wory m8 when its starts to work its great :E

[Hazlo]

ADSL

BT Openworld

Standard Admin issue for 2001

Get it


we know where you live.

:doom:


Sorted.

Seriously, its the DB's.

[Rocky]

Ok Ok....I give in, I'll order it monday, but ffs, don't tell the wife where £150 went!

:E

[The Thread Terrorist]

2 eggs, sunny side up, 2 pieces of bacon, sausage, chips, black pudding, beans, mushrooms, and toast and a lavverly cuppa tea

fanks tweacle

sorted

:doom:


TTT

[Hizlo]

Ahha! You mentioned bacon and my friends cousin who played AA once in 1998 is Jewish! You have offended him and having checked the CoC, you have breached subsection 3 under the charter for no offence. Your ass is banned baby!

I win. You lose. Ha!

['Bat*21']

ROFLOL, that was quite funny.

[Hizlo]

No laughing at admins! :mad:

['Bat*21']

(in the style of austin powers)
BWUAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAA!!
MWAHAHAHHAAAAAAA!!
HEHEHEHHEHE
HOHOHOHOHHOHO
GAGAAHAHHAAHhh
:angry: :angry: :angry:

[Hizlo]

You have denegrated our mighty Club Captains thread you lameboy haxor! That is a breach of the CoC subsection somethingorother!

I have you now!! I win. You lose. Ha! Ha! Ha!

[Hellsangel]

heheh

/,me lives 1km from exchange

bt dude says im the closest isdn,ner to the exchange muwhahah

no1 here has ADSL he said though
tight whores lol

we is gettin it installed soon
our isdn is crappo

[Muf]

Well don't bother asking me..hmmph ! I could have answered ALL those questions..thats never happened to me before..lol

Before u order phone BT and ask what the "small charge" is..I know they were charging £250.00 on top of the £150.00 installation charge for downgrading the line for isdn users. Better to be safe than hand your head on a plate to Lisa :)

[Macwedd]

oh and rocky has isdn.....hehehe

[LAH]

Phone them up to order ADSL, don't do it online.

I been waiting ages and got fed up and phoned them, the guy said it used to be first come first served from e-mails. But lots of people wern't responding to their e-mails so they just scrapped it and will deal with whoever phones now, I got a definate order for 3 weeks.

The phone details takes ages so don't do it at peak rate :)

[zhardoum]

answers to your questions rocky..

A normal home line is analogue, when you have isdn installed they convert it at the exchange to a digital ISDN service.

ADSL is also digital, but they cant convert direct from digital to digital as its different teams, so 1 team arrive convert back from digital to Analogue, then the other team arrive and convert you back again onto the adsl signal..

ISDN is infact 2 isdn channels, and 1 voice channel, ADSL is 1 channel where the ADSL signal is carried at the same time as the voice signal, and when it reaches your house, an adsl filter is installed, that allows your router modem (adsl) to access the filtered adsl signal.

Once adsl is installed, your line is Digital, so you cant use an analogue modem on an adsl line, so if your adsl packs up, you wont be able to use your modem on the voice bit..

ADSL works in a strange way, your router modem or whatever device is in your house, tunes into the signal provided by the exchange, this signal is always on, so as such they cant charge you per minute, or per hour as its always on.

ISDN is a ripoff price and speed and performance wise, yet, the telephone companies spent a fortune converting exchanges over to isdn capable, only to have to make them adsl capable as well, this is why ISDN is still advertised, far more than adsl as the telephone companies stand to make a massive loss, and are trying to recoup as much as possible before everyone finds out that adsl is available and better.

hope that cleared it up a bit.

ADSL is far quicker than isdn, a 256kb connx on adsl is capable of a 30KBPS download, 512Kb line equals 60KBPS, a 2Mb pipe could give you a download rate of 250KBPS, if you are on a good day, with a local fast server and noone else is online anywhere, more likely you will get a download rate of around 212 - 220 kbps, not bad when you consider a modem has a maximum theoretical of 7

1 last thing, how do you work out download rates, and if you are getting a good rate.?

There are 8 bits per byte,

So a 56k bps is infact a 56, 000 bits per second, and you download at a possible 1 eight of that, ie 7 Kbps, or 7 000 bytes per second. 7k ps * 8(bits to bytes) = 56K

so, if you have a 50k connection at home, the maximum possible download you can get is one eigth, or 6.2kbps.

take away signal noise etc and this is why you get a 4k download usually on a 56k modem, as you never ever manage to get a true 56k connection, ususally 48 or 52k connection.

Lastly all adsl upload at 128K, (15kbps) no matter what download connection you have.

Hope that helped m8..

[Rocky]

Thankyou. :)

[Richtofen]

I can tell you you wont regret it, I've taken to getting home from work, logging on and leaving it. Days off? get up log on and leave it :)
And you wont even baulk at 100meg downloads heheh.
Dont know about the rest, but lately I'm getting about 62k per sec d/load speeds, tho I fell off me chair last night when a file came down at 90k per. Sheesh, wire was melting.

[Coog]

Rockyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Get Cable

Forget this ASDL crap etc :P

btw i didnt read anything bar the title so if u come out with i cant get cable becuase its not in my area etc, read above :E

[Rocky]

Talk about ant-feckin-climax. I phoned up Openworld to order my ADSL today, quite excited I was, although with Muf's comments in mind, I was just hoping that removing ISDN was gonna be a small cost.

Anyhow, I can't have ADSL because Openworld are only providing it to simple analogue lines for now. As I have ISDN, I have to wait until March. Gits.

Thanks for all the advice though!

[zhardoum]

you could always shortcut, call bt and get the line converted to analogue, then call em up again and order adsl..

ask about pricing first though...

(ps this is what they will do anyway)

[Coog]

Cable i tell you!

Dont make me persuade u Rocky :naughty:

[thomascope]

IM GETTING ADSL :)

15th march our exchange being updated on pain of death.

the best thing is....








THE NHS IS PAYING. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. :D