Networking

LegacyUser

I note there are a great many 'technical' and 'clued up' people on our forum, so being a novice I would ask the technical members a question. I have an office in Dundalk and another in Dublin. I want to connect at least 2 of my PC's (one in Dundalk and one in Dublin) to a network, so that each PC can access the other. Is this possible ? If it is how is it done ? I asked Eircom, and they said they do not handle such things and that I should contact an IT company !! I felt this quite a strange answer, as they own every inch of the line from the PC in Dundalk right to the PC in Dublin.. ??
Any comments and help and advice would be much appreciated. No technical jargon please. !! :-))

dahamsta

[Note: IANATE (I Am Not A Telecommunications Engineer), I'm just stating what I've learned. Some of it may be completely and utterly untrue. The management accepts no responsibility for damage caused by the following. Your mileage may vary. Running in, please pass.]

If they need to be connected all the time, you would need a leased line, which of course would be hugely expensive, even for a small bandwidth allocation. An alternative is something that's been discussed here recently, a "dry line" or "dry pair"[1] (or "dry loop", or plenty more), which basically means a line (copper pair or loop) between one location and the other, which doesn't pass through the equipment (switch) in the exchange. An example of dry pair usage is taxi companies that have phones in hotel lobbies and shopping centres, that connect directly to the base station. (Although whether they still work that way or go through the switch is something I don't know (and would like to know).)

The beauty of this is that you can pretty much attach what you want to either end of the line, with no interference in the exchange, which means that you could set up a private, always-on network between the two locations, and theoretically set up a private DSL network. Of course, peering with an Internet POP (Point of Presence) is another matter, but for a private network it would be ideal. It's been suggested here that Eircom no longer supply dry lines, but I don't think anyone has stated it as fact, and personally I'm not inclined to believe it. I think it's more likely they pick and choose who they supply them to.

If they don't need to be connected all the time, you can of course set up private networks using ISDN and/or analog connections using direct dial over the regular network, i.e. you just dial into the other computer and Robert's your fathers brother. Or of course you can set up a private network over the Internet, but you would need a good security person to set it up and/or look it over to make sure everything is hunky-dory and Johnny HaX0r can't peep in on you.

Ultimately, that's about as much as you're going to get out of us, because there's none of us experts (although there's a couple who really know their doodoo). If you want facts, you need to talk to a telecommunications engineer, preferably in person because ironically enough they tend to be pretty uncommunicative on the phone. I would recommend talking to several, and trying to sort the facts from the fiction - there's a hell of a lot of fiction and non-factual bluster out there. And put your patience hat on, becuase a lot of them won't even want to talk to you.

I've tried to be as non-technical as possible, I hope this has been of help. Needless to say though, all of these options are expensive. There's no alternative. That's why we're here.

HTH,
adam

[1] I finally found an excellent description of dry lines here.

LegacyUser

yes, really at this time, there is only the leased line, or the tie line option of connecting the two (always on), other than connecting the two via 2 routers, with dial on demand.

With the tie line option, that would be ideal, the enormas speeds would be great, but I would not have an idea on how to ask eircom for a tie line, i mean what can you say.... 'Can I order a leased line without any MTU's on either side of the line?, oh and BTW, I'll only be paying you 60quid a month instead of the 2000quid you want'
Eircom want to sell you the leased line, thats why they will probably deny the exsistance of tie lines, or say that they are not available.

With the 'not always on' connection, you can use dial on demand routers and install them into the 2 offices. They act like RAS would(Remote Access Server). Whenever a client computer on the network wants a resource from the other offices IP scope, then the router will dial up to the other router, and hence then be connected to the other network. Of course, you can use ISDN for this dial-on-demand for a 'Hi-Speed' connection .

But to be honest, I would wait till adsl comes in. You could make a VPN (Virtual Private Network) over the internet and have an always on ADSL connection to the other office. But the problem is that the 2 offices need an adsl connection to the internet.

ando

LegacyUser

IANAE yet My understanding of this "dry line" stuff is that you had to be on the same exchange for it to work. Someone brought this up at the seminar and gave the example of security companies using dry lines to monitor shops etc. The taxi example is the same. They are all local. Even if they are available, I doubt you could get one from Dublin to Dundalk.

As always, it really depends on your needs. If you just want to be able to transfer files, video-conference, update a server etc. use ISDN. It connects almost instantly, you only pay for what you use and you have a 128k connection. But if you need to access the other PC all the time, a leased line is the most likely bet until ADSL comes along.

LegacyUser

Security/Alarm companies do make use of dry copper pairs for wiring up alarm systems, you might get more joy out of approaching them than our unfriendly monster telco

found a few links in relation to this:

http://www.odessaoffice.com/sdsl.htm

http://www.lariat.org/

this guy started his own isp

LegacyUser

I think the cheapest solution right now would be, When your in your office in dublin, Put whatever you want to have in dundalk, onto a server (the net) and download it then in dundalk

unless u want about 50 miles of kat5 wire goin across the liffey

LegacyUser

Well, my €0.02..

I think as NielF mentioned, the tie-line is prolly not an option. A copper pair will only get you to your local exchange, and maybe back out to another pair. Big distances would have to mean going through eircom's truck circuits.. so into leased line territory there. And big money no doubt.

As was mentioned, with no permanent connections at either end, you can do a demand-dialing setup with ISDN or whatever. If you want to connect the LAN in Dundalk to the LAN in Dublin, you're going to need the connected machine on either side to act as a router. You can buy dedicated kit or knock something up with linux etc.

If you want the whole thing really seamless, for example Windows machines on either end, but both sides appear in the one "network neighborhood", you may need software to do 'spoofing'. This makes the machines/resources at the other office always appear to be present even when the link is down.. when you actally go to communicate with them, it comes back up.

With some messing about with a linux setup, you can even combine brief direct-dial stuff to indicate link required, and then set up the link via local internet connections at either end and then tunnel across the internet to set up a VPN linking the two LANs. The idea here would be to cut costs by using local internet calls instead of 'long-distance' (excuse me while I recover from a fit of ROFL) Dublin-Dundalk calls. Though you would have to be dialling at both ends so maybe not.

oops. Sorry about the jargon. Well, to summarise.. you need to define what sort of a connection you want.. what you want to do over it: just email? share files? just one machine at each end or all of them? share devices/printers? how often? There are a range of ways of doing it from fairly inexpensive to thundering rip-off (leased lines).