From: Ellen K. 

Hmmm.

Definitely food for thought.  I really appreciate your taking the time to
explain all that.

On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 11:29:30 -0600, "Glenn Meadows"
 wrote in message :

>DSL is a high frequency signal that rides on the wires from the CO to your
>home, and is distance dependant.  The farther away you are, the weaker the
>signal is, to the point where if it's too weak, you don't get any service.
>That will also determine the maximum speed you can get on any connection.
>Also the condition of the wiring in your house, on the way to your house,
>etc.
>
>If you have noisy phone lines when it rains, you'll have poor DSL service,
>typically.  Also, you're going to have to install filters on EVERY device
>that connects to your internal phone wires, at the wall jacks.  That
>includes wall mounted phones, fax machines, answering devices, and all
>phones.  Typically you'll get a set of filters as part of the install kit.
>This blocks the DSL signal from entering those devices, which will degrade
>the signal, since those devices all are wired to the same phone line.
>
>In My Opinion, while DSL claims "no shared service", that's
true, as far as
>it goes, which is just back to the central office, where you data needs are
>grouped into all the other subscribers, and are aggregated together.  If the
>provider has bandwidth X from the CO to the internet, and sells 20 times X
>(or higher) in subscribers out of that CO, then if everyone is online, and
>doing downloads, then you're sharing that X bandwidth to the internet among
>all other users that connect thru that CO.
>
>George can talk about "oversold DSL" upstream.  It's a
balancing act.  Same
>as phone service.  There are models as to how many people are typically on
>the phone at any given time, and that's what the system is designed to
>handle.  On holidays, like Mothers Day, you used to get the "I'm sorry, all
>circuits are busy" message, simply because 3 to 5 times (or more) the number
>of people were trying to use the phone at once.
>
>On cable, you are "shared" at a much closer point to you, but
current cable
>system improvements really allow for much higher bandwidth, both at the user
>end, as well as the aggregated local users.  Comcast is now offering normal
>speeds in the 6 mb range, with "premium" services almost
double that.  Those
>are download speeds (headed to you, not upload (sends)).  Typically, sends
>are capped in the 256-384kb range.  Comcast offers a business class service
>that allows higher upload speeds, as well as higher download speeds.
>
>In NYC, one of the cable companies is now offering 10mb/sec both ways to the
>internet, with a fiber cable feed into the building, for $1500/month.  If
>you need the bandwidth, that's a cheap price.
>
>You may find that while you can get DSL from DSLExtreme, the max speeds may
>not be what you might expect, since you could be on the fringe.
>
>And, it's not a 3 mile distance "as the crow flies", it's
"as the wires fly"
>from the CO to your house that matters.
>
>With Cable, the data runs in several of the high cable channel frequencies.
>Recent cable improvements now allow some really high speed data transfers.
>I think for some time, the cable people will be 1 to 2 steps ahead in data
>speeds from DSL.

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