sslug-teknik team mailing list archive
-
sslug-teknik team
-
Mailing list archive
-
Message #08579
ADSL - mere info
Der findes et ATM NIC kort, der understøttes af ATM Linux
projektet. Det hedder ForeRunner et-eller-andet og koster
knapt 40 dollars. Jeg har også set en pris på 109 dollars.
Se her:
4 May 1999: If you want an alternative to using the Efficient
Speedstream card under Windows, the ForeRunner LE25 25mbit RJ45 ATM
card is priced very attractively at buy.com:
http://www.buy.com/comp/product.asp?SKU=10059190, $109.95. People on
the linux-atm list have the card working under Linux. If you really
want an alternative to using ADSL with Windows, this could be a very
good solution. The Linux-ATM page is at
http://lrcwww.epfl.ch/linux-atm/.
Jeremie's Ameritech ADSL High Speed Internet Service FAQ
This information is provided as an informational tool for current and
prospective users of Ameritech.Net's ADSL service. I've tried to make
it a pretty balanced site, giving pros and cons when applicable.
Neither I nor Ameritech (with whom I have no affiliation) condone doing
anything that messes with, modifies, changes, breaks, fixes, improves,
or alters in any way your service and equipment as installed by
Ameritech. If you do, they won't support you or fix your broken
equipment. Once again, this is for informational exchange purposes
only. Please email me at jeremie@xxxxxxxxx with any corrections.
Last modified: Tuesday, May 4, 1999 5:45:15 PM
If you are an Ameritech.Net subscriber, any time you experience an
outage, please call 1-800-910-4369 and open a trouble ticket and send
email to feedback@xxxxxxxxxxxxx noting your displeasure and details of
your complaint.
4 May 1999: If you want an alternative to using the Efficient
Speedstream card under Windows, the ForeRunner LE25 25mbit RJ45 ATM
card is priced very attractively at buy.com:
http://www.buy.com/comp/product.asp?SKU=10059190, $109.95. People on
the linux-atm list have the card working under Linux. If you really
want an alternative to using ADSL with Windows, this could be a very
good solution. The Linux-ATM page is at
http://lrcwww.epfl.ch/linux-atm/.
23 Feb 1999: It seems as if FlashCom is providing xDSL service in the
Detroit, Michigan area. Has anyone gotten service from them? How does
it work in conjunction with getting the actual wiring from Ameritech?
14 Feb 1999: I hadn't visited Ameritech's ADSL promotional pages in a
while, and there's a bunch of new info. First, the service is now
called Speedpath. They will eventually be releasing a "Power Package"
with 2Mbps downloads and 256 uploads. (This is similar to Univ of
Michigan's forthcoming ADSL Service.) There is now a search engine to
determine if your address will qualify for Speedpath.
12 Feb 1999: I have heard that Ameritech has flown out some techs from
Alcatel to try and figure out what's been plaguing some of the Ann
Arbor customers. Hopefully this will help, they are tweaking all sorts
of line configuration parameters.
10 Feb 1999: Our ADSL service has been performing splendidly. However,
there is sometimes some rather bizare throughput. I can get 140kB/s
from sites on Alter.Net's Detroit router, I can get 100kB/s from the
main servers at umich.edu, however, I can only get 30kB/s from this
machine. If I aggregate two downloads at once, it seems to max out at
around 50 or 60kB/s. Definitely need to investigate this more, as
before the server crash I could get 100kB/s+ from here.
Problems other people are having: Several folks in Ann Arbor are
having or had so many problems with ADSL that they cancelled. Common
patterns include outages from 6pm to midnight. All these people live
in multiple family dwellings (big houses that have been subdivided
into apartments). There seems to be some connection to the wiring
messes in these houses to problems with ADSL. We live in a house
that's not divided, and have never had problems as bad and
long-lasting as these.
new links
* Ian Korman's ADSL Overview -- Ameritech Service in Ann Arbor
Ameritech rolled out ADSL service in Royal Oak, Birmingham, and Troy,
Michigan and Wheaton, Illinois. (in addition to the original Ann Arbor
service). New: I just learned that Ameritech is starting out the Royal
Oak rollout with just letting customers within 7600ft radius of the CO
sign up, instead of the normal spec distance of 15000 ft. I'd hope
that once the initial rollout goes smoothly, they'll extend it to the
normal distance.
An interesting article about why the ADSL line might appear to drop
the connetion if you have heavy upstream traffic, and further
justification for Ameritech's decision to use ATM instead of Ethernet
to the desktop.
We participated in a focus group/interview in February 98.
We tried to use the ethernet port on the Alcatel ADSL modem. It didn't
work, and the new ADSL modems Ameritech shipped out in November had
the ethernet port plugged.
I looked into getting the Virata VL2010 card to work under Linux.
Alas, no good news there. I received e-mail from the people at
escalate.net (June 15 98) that I could be placed on the beta list for
the linux drivers for the VL2010 card. No idea when they'll be
available, but at least they're thinking about it. I have heard it
will run under Windows NT 4.0 with the drivers on the standard install
disk, even though Ameritech requires Windows 95 to be running at the
time of installation.
Other ADSL resources:
* Ameritech's ADSL Geek FAQ.Here's Ameritech baring all about ADSL:
"We know that a lot of you who are interested in Ameritech.net's
High Speed Internet Service are already knowledgeable about ADSL
and what it has to offer. So we'd like to be as open as possible
about the technology we use and why we use it. Whether you're just
curious or a seasoned power user, here's the nitty gritty on what
makes our High Speed Internet Service work." In this FAQ, they
provide official answers to all the issues I've addressed here,
including using routers, speed throttling, and the ATMF vs.
Ethernet issue.
* Ameritech's ADSL home page
* The Comp.DCom.XDSL FAQ
* E-mail discussion list: adsl-users@xxxxxxxxx - e-mail me at
jeremie@xxxxxxxxx to subscribe. This is a forum for discussion,
problem solving, troubleshooting, regarding Internet access via
ADSL, somewhat focused on customers and potential customers of
Ameritech's High Speed Internet Access Service.
* The ameritech.adsl Usenet group, however it seems to be only
accessible from Ameritech's news server.
* Comp.Dcom.XDSL via DejaNews
* Efficient Newtworks Inc. Speedstream 3010 is the ATM card
currently being installed by Ameritech.
* The Virata VL2010 card (ATML is now called Virata, but they don't
have much on their new site yet). Their master reseller, Escalate
Networks is starting to.
* New: The Terms& Conditions of the Ameritech High Speed Internet
Access Servce
* ADSL information from Alctel, with much information about how to
use their hardware.
* Press Release:Ameritech and Compaq partner to make computers ready
for High-Speed Internet Access
* Press Release:Ameritech launches High-Speed Internet Service
* Press Release:Alcatel Begins Volume Deliveries Of Adsl Units To
U.S. Telephone Compan>
Running the DSL Numbers, an article talking about profitability of
ADSL for the telcos.
* "The price must be right - DSL model shows telcos one route to
profitability", another article showing how good DSL is for the
telcos.
* USWest Megabit DSL Fast Facts
This is a message I sent in response to a friend's query about my ADSL
experiences. This is serving as the base of a real FAQ that may or may
not ever get written, but it should answer most people's questions.
Any more, e-mail me, and I'll update this document.
From: Jeremie Kass <jeremie@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: adsl capabilities
> I'm told you're playing with ADSL ... I've got a few
> questions:
>
> 1. Once Ameritech has wired the house, is connecting your computer just
a
> matter of plugging in an rj-45 cable to your standard ethernet card?
Ameritech does everything. They run the wire to your house, and from your
outside network termination box into the house, and put the 1 jack
whereever your 1 computer is. Then, they install 2 pieces of hardware
(currently, this could change in the next 6 months). First, the ADSL
modem. This is an external box, made by Alcatel, that has 3 jacks. Line,
ATMF-25, and Ethernet. Unfortunately, they seemed to have disabled the
ethernet (i think) so the config gets complicated. The 2nd piece of
hardware they install is an ATM
card. Yes, ATM ... not ethernet. It's a
card capable of doing 25mbit/sec over regular Cat-5 twisted pair cabling.
So, they install all the hardware. Then they install the drivers for the
card as well as the drivers for the ATMsock, which basically encapsulates
the TCP/IP traffic so that it will go over ATM.
Their entire network is ATM, which makes for very good speeds and such.
They also install Netscape, IE, etc.
>
> 2. Probably not :) So what kind of hardware does one buy for his computer
> to support the new line?
You don't buy anything. For 1998, it's included in the install fee (of
$150 or so) but it will eventually be $199 additionally for the equipment.
You need to have a Win95 machine with a free PCI card.
>
> 3. Do you know if more than one person can share a single ADSL line
> mini-hub style?
That's the part that I'm working very hard on getting to work. The tech
specs (and the manufacturer) say that the ethernet jack should work fine
.... then you could plug it into a minihub or into just 1 machine
(different cables -- crossover & notcrossed over) and then have 1 machine
be the proxy (running something like WinGate). Also, the manufacturer of
the ATM card say that it supports WindowsNT & Linux as well.
The best thing would be if I could get the ADSL modem to serve as an
ethernet device.
Still would need to run the proxy ... I'd do that on my machine on NT.
Another thing that I know will work will be for me to have both the ATM
card in my machine & an ethernet card, and route between them. I'm also
going to try & get it running with a linux box serving as the router.
[new.gif] I've learned that the Virata
ATM card works fine under NT 4.0. So, you
should be able to run a program like Nat1000, Sygate, Wingate, or Winproxy.
In short, I sure as hell hope I can get it working :) It costs
$49.95/month for us, but the web page (http://www.ameritech.com/products/data/a
dsl/)
says it's $59.95 now.
In terms of speed, the stuff really works. I've gotten up to 800kbytes/sec
transferring from Sonic.Net (who has a t3 to uunet/alternet).
Ameritech.Net uses UUNet/Alternet as their backbone provider. They're
usually great, had some problems this week with a certain bundle of fiber
getting cut in California which messed up everything. I've had much luck
with technical support issues ... initially we had many problems with them
firewalling out everything .... got that taken care of so we can now do
X-Windows, IRC, FTP, SSH, Telnet, etc. Serving is explicitly prohibited in
the contract, which poses a problem for some things like X-windows, since
you're technically serving (if you look at where packets at going, etc.).
The official (official being as was tested by Ameritech at install time)
bandwidth is 5mbit/sec downstream & 1.5mbit/sec upstream ...
they only advertise it as 1.5mbit/sec downstream & 728k/sec upstream since
it depends on how close to the Central Office you are ... but anywhere in
the just-off-campus area should be great.
[new.gif] They are now throttling the
bandwidth to the 1.5mbit downstream and
something between 128 - 728 k/sec upstream. However, this doesn't seem to
impede our previously noted high speeds to sonic.net, so maybe they were
throttling it all along & we just couldn't tell. Dunno.
[new.gif]
> I read your posting which corrected my assumption that ADSL from ameritech
> used standard 10-base-T ethernet to connect to your computer. I also read
> your faq. Thanks for putting it together, it really clears things up, as
> ameritech dosn't seem to want to disclose the details on how their setup
> works. (or at least they didn't when i talked to them). My second
> question is, if i could obtain a PCI ATM card for my mac (which are
> availible) could i then use their ADSL setup? Given OpenTransport (the TCP
> stack on macs) works with ATM, is there any other software proprietary to
> their ADSL setup?
Ameritech will only install the service into a Win95 box. That's it ...
not even a question of doing it on your Mac. It's really a question of
support ... they can barely support Win95 as it stands, having to train
people on Macs & Mac networking, etc. would never work out. Another issue
is that we are running ATMsock, which allows winsock tcp/ip over atm.
We are also running an ATM protocol layer called LANE -- something
about LAN emulation.
So, there are several issues that would need to be resolved. Your best bet
is to wait until they come out with support for ethernet to the desktop.
Or, get an intel box, get it running Win95, ATM, and Ethernet, and then
run a proxy server to your mac on an inhouse ethernet.
You know, that once we connect multiple computers you're pretty much on
your own as far as tech support. If you need to call them, you'll have to
revert back to the 1 Win95 pc for troubleshooting purposes. However, I've
never seen a problem that was because of the PC, but they won't talk to
you otherwise.
>
> Any other advice or suggestioking of getting some sort of
> high-speed connection next year (cable modem, MVL, ISDN; just something
> better than 28.8)
I wouble. It's even more of a pain to share here than ADSL ...
it's a special card that uses cable for downstream & needs a modem for
upstream. ISDN is good ... we've had it at home for 2 or 3 years now.
However, it gets expensive for dialup if you're going to be on for a long
time (from the ISperspective, from the perspective of the phone line I
think you get x number of free local calls/month). [New: I just
found out that Ameritech.Net offers an unlimited 128k dialup package
for ISDN for $49.95 month]. And, it's pretty slow compared to this.
Back home
