Failing i-stream pre-qual - other options?

jkeogh

Hi - I live in Lucan in Dublin, and for some unknown reason, my phone line fails the pre-qual for i-stream DSL.
The exchange is fine, my neighbour can get i-stream, but not me.

I have a number of extensions in my house, adding perhaps 80ft to the length of the cable, 3 phones in total. Does anyone know if this affects the pre-qual test?

What about other options? Here is a summary of what I have found by grepping the web:

http://www.unison.ie/cablenet/price.php
Wonderful - 512k for €50 per month with only €75 setup - but only in Thurles
and Clonmel.

http://www.ntl.com/locales/ie/en/athome/internet_cable.html
NTL cable modems - 512k for €35 per month - but only in Tallaght, Templeogue
and Dublin 6.

http://www.esatbt.com/esatcom/homepage/products_solutions/access/dsl/dsl-listofexchanges.htm
DSL from ESATBT - but not in Lucan

I am seriously thinking of putting in another line (no guarantee that it will work though), or going with the expensive, but available (my house can see the sky) satelitte service from Digiweb.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can improve the chances of passing the pre-qual?
Any comments on the digiweb service?

Cheers,

JK

iwb

I would get your neighbour to install it and share it with him. Otherwise, try to get the line tested for faults and then do it again and again. If you really want it, you will probably get it but only after much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
There are other threads here that talk about it in depth if you search back.
I was in a similar postion to you and did the sharing. It worked out fine for me.

jkeogh

I don't think that the neighbour sharing thing would work - he doesn't have a PC for a start

I am not sure that either wife would be delighted at the wires through the attic approach - although I could put in a wireless transmitter and act as a mini-ISP for the nearest 10 houses or so

The saga of this line has been going on and off for a year or so now. The gnashing of the teeth has been done - I have had them out to the line 3 times already. "We do not guarantee quality of line for DSL purposes"..... grrr...

Anyway - thanks for the reply - I am grepping back through previous threads - seeking inspiration.

the Guru

I have a number of extensions in my house, adding perhaps 80ft to the length of the cable, 3 phones in total. Does anyone know if this affects the pre-qual test?

Yes it can some times as there is lots of equipment on the Lines
try unplugging the equipment and having the lines retested.

But i wouldnt get another line to be tested as its a waste of money as most of the time this will not work But If your neighbour has tested sucessful there is a chance it might test for you.

Where in lucan do you live as my lines have also failed

jkeogh

I live in Foxborough -

I was wondering if just unplugging the equipment would be enough, or should I take a wire snips to the cables

I will disconnect the other phones and see what happens....

the Guru

Jesus dont Snip the lines what good is that going to do you

Disconx the Lines from the jacks and redone the test and see if that works

It seems to be difficult to get dsl in lucan as I and about 10 of my mates have tried to get and one of them lives beside the exchange in ballydowd 50 mtrs away :-(

zynaps

Satellite apparently has high latency (no idea what's meant by high, it's all relative ey?), and high contention apart from the fact that it's really expensive...

I wouldn't go for it, although I do have a predilection for mudding

The sharing out a fast network connection over wireless is a nice idea, it'd be great to have a public, community wan (like in err.. whatever country it was, brazil?), but wireless equipment would probably set you back 800 euro or so, and there's still the question of getting a proper backbone connection to distribute it from...

arrr!

zynaps

iwb

A wireless AP is as little as 100 Euro. That includes nat translation etc. Each client card is around the same, so to set it up, all you would need to spend is a few hundred. You may also need an antenna if you want to shoot the signal a longer distance.
Zynaps, do you have a link to the community network country? Can you remember any more about it?
Satellite has a built in latency due to distance of about 400 milliseconds minimum. They sit at around 40, 000 miles from us, so the signal has to travel 80,000 miles to get back to the internet. The signal would travel 186,000 miles in one second, so it is almost half a second.

zynaps

Nah iwb, I wish I did, since I just realised I'd left eircom "free" on for 25 minutes accidentally... yuk :P

I think if the satellite is in a geostationary orbit it's closer to 36000km, so... 22500 miles.

Which theoretically works out (as far as I can see anyway) at 241 ms, but that's just the satellite link overhead... then there's what happens at the provider end, their routing and connection to the internet...

A quarter of a second is quite a lot of overhead though, aye

My estimate on prices came from what I remembered from reading the dublinwan equipment guide, which on closer inspection gives a rough guess of €524.03 for working equipment.

That's probably not the cheapest set though, I guess

zynaps

lynchie

Replied to your cross post in MMDS

cherrio

If you have or recently had ISDN installed, this could be th reason why your line is failing, do you have ISDN? This is whathappened to me, had to get the ISDN removed, its a Very long story, but eventually managed to get it, now downloading at 106K/sec

Sharing it wirelesssly would be a good idea, all you have to do is get one access point ~ €120, 2 PCI cards ~ €80(each) and 2 flat panel antennas ~ €40(each)

IWB is correct, the latency is due to the distance traveled, the Eurobird (Gilat) satellite. Which is approx 44,000Km above the equator. So you are talking about a round trip of ~170,000 miles (your house -> Sat -> NOC center - then to the 'net' and return - NOC -> Sat -> Your house), half a second ain't bad.

Yes, extension cords do affect the signal (they use a lower quality cable that connects your house to the exchange). Try putting a phone connected to the very first outlet (the point where the line comes into the house).

jkeogh

Hi Cherrio,

Yup - I have ISDN - not recent though, had it about 2 years.

I guess they may have split the line to my house to provide ISDN, which would explain why having it removed would be a good thing....

The extensions I have were put in professionally by an electrician, and I would be willing to bet are of better quality cable than our friends eircon, however, the additional kit and line distance are most likely factors.

That, along with ISDN make for bad news.

One eircom birdie once told me that they would be providing ADSL over ISDN in the new year - sounds dubious to me, as I was under the impression that ADSL required analogue lines to run over (and our friendly ISDN is digital.....).

Anyone know the truth/otherwise of this?

highlight

Absolutely no technical reason why you can't do DSL over ISDN - but you need a special splitter at the customer's premises

SkepticOne

Originally posted by jkeogh
One eircom birdie once told me that they would be providing ADSL over ISDN in the new year - sounds dubious to me, as I was under the impression that ADSL required analogue lines to run over (and our friendly ISDN is digital.....).

It is possible to run ADSL over ISDN lines provided it is configured to do so. They do this in Germany where, like Ireland, ISDN has been sold extensively. I'm not sure what the situation is with Eircom, whether they will use this form in the future. Eircom may choose to hang on to the fee to downgrade to analogue.

There is also IDSL which uses ISDN modulation and extends anywhere where you can run ISDN with similar speeds.

cherrio

From what I gather during my saga of ISDN to ADSL, is that they can (provisionally) test your line for ADSL. It would be worth asking to talk to a technical supervisor, perhaps they know whats going on.

If it passed the test, you would have to downgrade your line and then have ADSL, ADSL uses an analog signal apposed to a digital which ISDN uses.

There are other forms of DSL, but eircon shows no signs in any interest of deploying these.

For me, it was a long wait. I downgraded my line back in mid November, then took a full week to get the results of the test (the days previously I was told flat out I had failed, but the person did not even bother to see if the test had been completed). Then after passing, it took another 3 weeks before I could an available 'appointment' to get ADSL installed.

It was only installed on Thuesday!