Rural Telephone and DSL

Ozarker · Jul 12, 2002

I got the same deal. Fiber Cable run from Jefferson City to Ft Leonard Wood right past my house. They even messed up the best fishing hole in the Gasgonade River when they run the cable under the river about a mile from me.

But no fiber service for us. I get about 24k on the modem on a good day.

manganos · Jul 12, 2002

Hello Terry,

We (techs) run into that problem often and without actually working on your lines I can only guess at what the problem is. Even though you are close to your old residence you still may be on a totally different cable feed from the Central Office. Bell Atlantic used to only guarantee a data connection of 19.2 on a POTS line. In order to get a faster connection you would have to order a dedicated 56k, ISDN, or other HICAP line such as a DS1, DS3 etc... Anyways back to your problem. Many things can cause loss of speed. Copper cable faults are often the cause. A slight ground that you can't detect by ear on the line could do it. My best guess would be that the tech first cut off all bridge taps. That would eliminate all the excess footage of copper on the line assuming your the last house on your road. An unbalanced pair, when the pair of wires gets to you together but when they pass your house one of them goes open, will cause a dramatic loss of speed and puts high stress (noise) on your line. Do you have a maintence plan? If so you can call in a trouble and not worried about being billed. If you don't have a maintence plan first open up your Network Interface Device and hook up a long telephone cord into one of the modular jackson the customer side of the NID. If your speed improves it may be an inside problem. You could have non-standard telephone wire or another problem in the house. I'd check your connection speed with the line running directly to your NID first then see what happens.

TerryinMD · Jul 14, 2002

Manganos,

Thank you for the tip. /w3tcompact/icons/king.gif/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

We've had the Verizon guys here quite a few times in the past year or so. The neighbors have also. /w3tcompact/icons/eyes.gif Not a reflection on the tech's, just our phone lines. They've been cobbled, patched, shoe-stringed, and probably had some 200mph tape applied to correct the situation. /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

Two weeks ago we couldn't get anything more than 19.2kbs. Called the repair service and a tech came out. He said that our line was spliced in and it continued down the line. So, he cut off those pairs. We got back up to 28.8 for about a week. Then we had a rain storm. Guess what?? The line speed is back down to 21.6 or 26.4kbs. Aiyeeeeeeee!!!! /w3tcompact/icons/mad.gif (Do I appear to be frustrated!!!) Called Verizon again. Two techs came out this time!! They futzed around and really could not find anything. However, they did mention the fact that our neighborhood is out of pairs now. No new lines and no maintenance pairs. Hmmmm.... now what!! /w3tcompact/icons/eyes.gif/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

Time to get on Verizons case. We have seven new homes going up in the neighborhood (within two miles) I hope that they bring in some new cable. We sorely need it.

We'll enough complaining for now.

Terry

cmsedore · Jul 14, 2002

Just FYI, I've been satellite connected (Starband) for about 1.5 years now. I do experience high latency (.5-.75 second generally), but with the various proxy/acceleration technologies, it is fine for web browsing. VPN is slow, but when I need it, it works. SSH (telnet) lags a bit, but is usable when needed.

I do experience rain (storm) fade, and snow on the dish will interrupt service. I'd estimate that it's up 99% of the time when I want/need to use it, so I'm generally happy with what I get. Downloading 50-100kbytes per second is really handy for the work I do at home.

Uploading is slow (<10kbytes/sec), but I usually carry anything big into work on my laptop (OC3 there

. Otherwise, it just runs until finished.

Cost is about $70 per month.

-Chris

Gary_in_Indiana · Jul 14, 2002

<font color=blue>"No new lines and no maintenance pairs. Hmmmm.... now what!!"</font color=blue>

Now you order a couple new phone lines to force Verizon to put in some new service lines. The day before you're to get service, cancel the order. No cost to you and now the area has more line pairs for new service and for maintenance.

I hate having to play these games with people but sometimes it's the only way. Good luck with them.