Investigating BB options......little help?

seamus

(Didn't think this was overly appropriate for IOFFL. Send it on back to me if you think otherwise )

Right folks, NTL have refused me broadband. We're the only group of estates in Lucan that seem to be bypassed by the current upgrade. The NTL monkey told us it was because some estates in our area were still under construction, so it'd be at least 2 years

So, a little background.....there was an ISDN line into the house, which we disposed of. So, I'll have to go get eircom to reactivate as a PSTN line. €127. Not pleasant. But I'd like to be sure that of a few things first.....

If there was dual channel ISDN running on it, does this mean that there are no splitters on it, ie can ISDN run with splitters on the line?
Also the line is at most 3 years old, was there any date after which splitters could not be installed, or is that just wishful thinking?

I know Esat has it's own equipment in some exchanges, and resells eircom's stuff from others. Is UTV's clicksilver just a resell product too?

Is there any way to find out what exchange I'm on, without arguing with an eircom monkey as to what is privileged info? I'm looking at you Muck - the previous number in the house was 621 6469.

Thanks all.

Frank Grimes

I'd say your on either the Lucan or Palmerstown exchange, and both are "upgraded" for DSL afaik.
UTV's product is a resell.
wrt to the time splitters could be installed. Muck should be able to fill you in but I'm almost sure it's less that 3 years since they were stopped from installing splitters on the lines.
Do a search for DACS or pair gain on IOFFL, should throw up the info.

spongebob

shouldn't have a splitter unless they nicked the pair used for the ISDN for one of the neighbours.

The €127 install does not sound right. You know the previous number (thereby locating the D-Side (Customer) Pair on Biddys computer) . I assume you were an Eircom customer before. I also assume that you told Biddy you were the home owner even if you are not.

then I would

1. Edit the number out of the post above
2. Ring up Biddy, give name and address where your last account was.
3. Give her old number, don't mention ISDN, tell Biddy there is no ISDN box in da house , only a standard socket, deny absolutely everything as Biddy would herself.
4. Assure her u own the gaff.

Biddy should reconnect the line as analogue and issue u a number for it for either €0 or €25. If it will not work after u put a socket on at your end then call in a fault later and let them fix it for free.

You will have to wait 3-4 weeks before it shows on the DSL test database ISTR.

M

seamus

OMG Muck you star.

I thought reconnection cost just as much as connection. I hadn't actually talked to anyone in eircom.

My brother is the homeowner, so blagging my way through that shouldn't be an issue.

I assume it'd be a good idea to remove the ISDN box from the wall, and stick in my own socket?

Cheers Frank_Grimes for that other info. Searches yielded hits first time today, I must have been doing something wrong yesterday

My exchange is Lucan/Ballydowd and is 1-1.5km as the crow flies, 2-2.5km via the road, from my house. So fingers crossed.

sceptre

After sorting out getting the line (re)connected, the fastest way to get in the DSL database is probably to phone up and ask if the line passes. I phoned about two weeks ago after waking up one morning and deciding that Eircom would have to drop DSL charges fairly quickly after announcing that they were aiming for 100,000 connections by the end of next year (and judging by the rumours going around in the past day or so I may have been correct in my dreamy state). A nice polite lady named Annette rang me this morning to tell me that the line passed - two weeks to the day after the DSL biddy said she'd get a test done.

Obviously I laughed when she asked me if I wanted to arrange an install date and told her to ring back when the price headed for 40 euros or less.

seamus

I go to order the reconnection online today (€25. Quite reasonable tbh). Everywhere it's plastered "We will do our best to connect you in 1 working day" around this order form. I select the 23rd as a connection date, which seems reasonable to me. On clicking submit I get a popup which informs me "We cannot connect any phone line until 29th September 2003".

ROFL. Typical.

Anyway, gives me more time to see if I really want to do this, and to remove the ISDN box from the wall.

seamus

Back to annoy yis.

Got the line in. Connection speed is 40kbps every time. The phone cable is 50m long, so that may be slowing me down somewhat. Funny thing is, my brother used to always say he heard a bad crackling on the line whenever he used to use that cable to connect the phone. However, Windows XP tells me that in around 10 hours total connection time since Wednesday, there have been zero transmission errors. And throughput does seem very good, Comparable to 128K ISDN at times, in my experience.

Good sign? Bad sign?

I'm gonna get a lend of a phone and have a check of the line quality soon, to see if it was just the cable causing the crackling (if not, I have grounds to have the line checked and fixed, which would be nice), and maybe get a shorter (15m) phone cable to use.

Is there a rough guide as to the minimum speed a line should be connecting at to be eligible for DSL?

Frank Grimes

Yeah, try the shortest cable you can use. I've seen it once or twice where huge cables screw up connections/connection speed on DSL. (could have been a dodgy cable too I guess, but I'd say the length was more the problem.)

seamus

Just for my own sanity.....If a line isn't in the database yet, it'll just come up on the site as a fail yeah? That is, the DB is just a list of lines that passed, not a list of all lines, and whether they're eligible?

Winters

Originally posted by seamus
Just for my own sanity.....If a line isn't in the database yet, it'll just come up on the site as a fail yeah? That is, the DB is just a list of lines that passed, not a list of all lines, and whether they're eligible?

Ignore that line test o nthe eircom site. Said that BOTH my lines failed and also my mates [Who has BB] also apparently "failed". I find that amazing that a line test for someone that has broadband fails.

Anywhy, both my lines should work. Neither one is split [to my knowledge] and im only about 1.5k from the exchange