Pair gain question for techies

zugvogel

Is there any way to check if you’re on a pair gain line? Eircom say that my local (rural) exchange is to be broadband enabled sometime this century – well actually before x-mass if you can believe them, and I’d just like to suss out what the chances are of being able to get DSL if/when Eircom do the decent thing.

By road I’m 2900 meters from the exchange and on dial up I consistently get 40-45 kbits/sec connection speeds. Also as far as I can tell the copper serving my house is underground all the way from the exchange.

I think I saw somewhere before that if you were on a pair gain line that you’d probably be seeing maximum dialup speeds of 28.8 kbits/sec or less depending on how many households were being multiplexed on the copper pair. Is this true?

Thks,
Zug

kaizersoze

zugvogel wrote:

Is there any way to check if you’re on a pair gain line? Eircom say that my local (rural) exchange is to be broadband enabled sometime this century – well actually before x-mass if you can believe them, and I’d just like to suss out what the chances are of being able to get DSL if/when Eircom do the decent thing.

By road I’m 2900 meters from the exchange and on dial up I consistently get 40-45 kbits/sec connection speeds. Also as far as I can tell the copper serving my house is underground all the way from the exchange.

I think I saw somewhere before that if you were on a pair gain line that you’d probably be seeing maximum dialup speeds of 28.8 kbits/sec or less depending on how many households were being multiplexed on the copper pair. Is this true?

Thks,
Zug

With speeds like that there's no way your line is on a pairgain. As you say 28.8 is as much as you'd get if you were.

Sponge Bob

Pairgains give everyone in a given area 12k or 16.8k or 28.8k depending on the versions used.

a stable 45k line at 3km could take 2mbit adsl (crudely) maybe even 3mbit on a sunny day .

zugvogel

Thanks Lads.
Assuming the exchange gets done which would be the best to go for excluding cost but taking account of the current technical capabilities of adsl as sold by Eircom.

I mainly want broadband for tele-working and stability/reliability is as important as all out bandwidth to me. I wouldn’t be using it to download movies or play online games – but maybe the odd linux iso or updating rpms.

As adsl is rate adaptive am I right in presuming that if I ordered a 3Mbit service that it would operate as close as it could to 3Mbits when line conditions are good (ignoring contention etc) but would fall back at times two 2 Mbits or whatever, but not stop working altogether.

Basically would it be better to order a more reliable 2Mbit service over a faster 3Mbit service that could prove unreliable.

Zug

Sponge Bob

Its not as adaptive as it should be

Quite a lot of evidence supports this assertion of mine , I am sure that kaizer or dub45 will hammer me on the head if they think I am wrong on the following.

1. You should be on a package within c . 500k + or - of a sustainable speed or it will disconnect

2. someone on a 3mbit who really should be on 2mbit may be OK , it will adapt. ( or a 2mbit adapts to 1mbit in the wild )

3. someone on a 3mbit who really should be on 1mbit may get lots of disconnects as it seems to fail to adapt properly in that case.

I would start with 2mbits in your case as you said because an upgrade to 3 is free and see what your stats tell you when you have it .

Anyway its all academic. The 100 exchanges announced in 2006 will not all or 20be done until early next year. The 330 exchanges announced this year will not be done before 2008 and some may not be done until 2010 or possibly 2011 at current rates of progress.

Get some class of wireless for a year to tide you over if you can .

zugvogel

Sponge Bob, Kaizersoze, thanks very much for the replies.
I rang Eircom broadband and they say the exchange will be done by September 07 so I’m hoping it will happen before the end of the year.
Have looked into wireless and have no service available due to LOS problems although the situation is improving with existing and new wireless companies expanding coverage all the time in Kildare.

I think I’ll do a bit of reading up on ADSL.

Sponge Bob my kids are fans. Don’t know how you get the time to answer so many questions here and keep up with life in Bikini Bottom as well.

Cheers.