wiredfool

mmmmmm bandwidth…

For one brief shining morning, my laptop was the sole machine on the end of a brand new t1 that needed a little load testing.

That contented sound you hear is the sound of high quality of service bandwidth sucking. I know it’s not capital B broadband, but it’s certainly a change from cable and congested dsl.

Now if they’d just pull 10 or 100 Mbit fiber over here. I don’t ask for much. I just want it all, and I’d like it now please.

***T1s for <strikethru>dummies</strikethru> software people

Vocabulary…

  • Demarc – that little box on the wall that the phone company put in in the wrong room that takes 2 wires and turns them into a rj45/48 connection.
  • Extended Demarc – The bailing wire and punchdown block contraption that you assemble that is essentially a 150 foot straight through cable. (pins 1,2,4,5 go straight through, otherwise known as the the unused pairs from an ethernet cable) This would not have been necessary if the phone company had put things in the right location in the first place.
  • CSU/DSU – What you plug the extended demarc cable into. Looks like an ethernet port, but it’s not. In this case it’s a card in the back of the router.
  • Router – The thing that appears to nearly work, but doesn’t until the guy on the other end flips a switch. Probably a cisco with a 68000 class processor running IOS.

Despite this tale of apparent confusion, it’s actually easier to get one of these installed than to get DSL from Quest. You sign a big contract, confirm for 7 people that you are in fact the contact, deal with phone company confusion after the fact, get badgered by the engineer, deal with your own lack of knowlege, get the engineer on the other end to do his magic, then it works.

Whereas DSL takes many calls, some rescheduling, badgering, and then when it doesn’t work, you have to call a customer (dis)service rep. When you’ve finally returned from the 7th circle of voicemenu hell, you might have a net connection. If you’re lucky. And sacrificed a squash to repent for your sins.

*** Oops.

Gems and static pics were down for a while while apache was listening on the dsl line, but dns was pointing to the t1. Guess that’s why you don’t test on client sites…

No comments

No comments yet. Be the first.

Leave a reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.