Re: ISDN vs ADSL

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Chris,

A lot of questions! and the answers are not nearly as clear-cut as you
might
imagine (when are they ever when BT is involved?)

I currently have HH, and recently declined an "upgrade" to ADSL
(from BT
Openworld). There were several reasons for this, some of which were:

HH gives me 3 seperate phone numbers, which I find useful as I can keep one
for voice, and one for incoming data/fax calls.

ADSL absolutely does NOT allow a webserver to be hosted at your house (the
consumer version anyway, it might be different with the £100/month business
version?, but who's going to pay that!) - This means that you cannot put
your HA system on the web to monitor or control your house from the
internet.

AFAIK, ALL current ISP's that offer an ADSL service get their service from
BT - I believe that NO ISP's yet have their own DSL hardware in any BT
Exchanges. In fact BT has only allowed other carriers kit in about 40
out-of-the-way exchanges if various newsgroups are to be believed. Local
loop unbundling is supposed to be completed by Jan 2001, but BT are (as
ever) dragging their feet, making excuses, and generally (again, as ever)
crippling the development of ANY competition in the telecoms market as best
and for as long as they can. This means the situation is unlikely to change
for some considerable time regarding technical limitations, contention
ratios, pricing structures and so on. Which is why if you do a comparative
analysis of ADSL offerings, they are all remarkably similar! BT does not
offer those ISP's much scope for value-add.

BT will NOT guarantee bandwidth on ADSL, and with a 50:1 contention ratio
on
the consumer version, is it "theoretically" possible for the
available
bandwidth per user to drop to MUCH lower than HH's 64 or 128K. Of course,
BT
say this is unlikely to ever happen in practice, and that gives me a really
warm cosy feeling.... NOT!

Although the headline prices are almost the same, at around £40-£45/month,
ADSL did not include any free calls, - currently my HH is £40/month with
£15/month free calls, so providing I use those calls, the true price is
nearer £25/month. Switching to ADSL (from Openworld) would have lost me
this, so the price immediately went up in real terms by £15/month. (Note
this was with BT Openworld about a month ago - there are no doubt a
bewildering array of new "schemes" available from BT designed to
confuse
you, and make you think you're getting a good ^H^H^H^H better deal. (can't
justifiably use the term "good deal" in the same sentence as
"BT", the two
JUST don't go together!). However, take my word for it, if you work it out
over time, I BET you end up paying almost exactly the same whatever
"scheme"
you opt for!!

ADSL is still very new - the roll-out has hardly begun, VERY few people
have
it yet, and so what will happen when it's more widespread is hard to say. -
Obviously as more people get it, contention will increase, and per-user
speeds will go down. There is also a great deal of debate at the mo about
ADSL interfering with FM radio and vide-versa. This problem probably hasn't
even hit its full potential yet...

And with all that, BT STILL expect you to sign up to a 12-month contract!

For my money, I've decided to stick with HH until Oftel manages to grow
some
balls (not holding my breath!), and shit on BT from a great height and
force
some "true" cometition into the market. (whatever anyone says,
currently
there is no competition to BT and they still have their juicy monopoly).
I'm
hoping that when this happens, there will be some real choice and variation
in the ADSL offerings, and hopefully I'll be able to get it for less money,
and with the ability to host a webserver at the end of it. (Hopeless
optimist that I am!!)

BTW I have my HH box in the cellar (node 0). I can get to it quite easily,
but iv'e never had to "reboot" it....

Next, you only need an ISDN TA _OR_ and ISDN router - you don't need both.
A
TA will either be an internal card or an external box. Most TA's that I
know
of act as serial port devices and will be set up as a COM port device and
used just like any other modem. External ones will connect via ONE exiting
COM port on the PC, and thus will be limited to 115K max. An ISDN router
will typically (but not always) present an ethernet interface, so you'd
need
a network card in the PC to use it, but I imagine there are USB versions
available as well?... Many IDSN routers also have a mini-hub built in, and
will give 4 or more RJ45 ethernet ports, Many also provide DHCP and NAT
straight out of the box.
TA's are much cheaper, - some PCI card versions are going for as little as
£15, external ones can be picked up from about £40. ISDN routers typically
start at about £70-£80 right up to £200-£300 depending on features.

Sharing the connection between many PC's is easy (but is against BT's
T&C's
with the consumer ADSL service!) With ADSL they will supply the hardware
required, (pretty much always USB based AFAIK) so you don't have any choice
really about what you get (sound familiar?), so you'll probably have to
share the connection from the PC connected to it, be that a Linux router,
or
any of the flavours of Windows that have Internet Connection Sharing
services. With HH, they just supply the connection, you add your own TA or
ISDN router, which gives you more flexibility, you can do just the same as
above, or use the router option, which, if it provides NAT will do it all
for you.

I'll make it clear that these are purely _my_ opinions, and are based on my
requirements, which meant that ADSL wasn't right for me (yet). Your
requirements might be different, and so the limitations I mentioned might
not matter to you. (especially if you have no desire to host your own
webserver at home).

As ever it's horses for courses.

HTH.

Paul G.


>Hi folks,
>
>I have a question:
>We are getting a PC for Christmas and I would like to use the
>internet etc...
>Should I get BT HomeHighway or wait for ADSL?
>Ideally I would like to be able to use the phone at the same time as
>the PC.
>If I go HH should I get a TA or an ISDN router (do I need both?).
>Eventually I would like to connect several Computers to a house LAN
>and have internet access from any.
>I also intend to get Comfort, whill this work OK with either HH or
>ADSL?
>I am hoping to keep the cost down so I thought I would go for BT's
>Talk'n'Surf Together with HH, £44.99 pm including free voice and data
>calls evenings and weekends and some? free calls, apparently not £13
>worth as it was with just HH.
>
>We don't have access to ADSL yet.
>
>Also is there any problem with installing HH in the loft (node zero
>to be) and running CAT5 to the study?
>
>I have an old 486/66 with dual serial ports, could I use this as a
>router/firewall (linux?) with a TA??
>
>Thanks alot,
>
>sorry for the barrage of questions.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Chris Williams
>

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