DSL?

What?

You sure you aren't confusing bits with bytes? The service providers typically offer their maximum throughput in kilobits (or megabits), while most programs report download throughput in Kilobytes. File sizes are usually in kilobytes as well. (The capitalization matters when it's abbreviated -- kb is kiloBIT, KB is kiloBYTE.)

My 3-megabit-max cable connection, divided by the 8 bits in a byte, would equal 384 Kilobytes per second maximum. I just started a large download from my web server a few minutes ago, and it stabilized around

285KB/sec, or about 75% of the advertised maximum.

Less that 1/10th of my advertised connection would only be about

37KB/sec, which is only about 6 or 7 times faster than a telephone modem. If that's all I could get, I'd be calling my cable company to report a problem.

I think there's were you're mistaken -- a 1500 kiloBIT connection maxes out at 1500kbps. That's the same thing. Dividing by 8, 1500kb =

187KB. 150KB is a lot more than 1/10th of that.

Nonsense. The download speed in bits/second IS the connection speed with a bit of loss to overhead. When I am getting 3mbps, I download about 373kB/sec. Do the math.

When I phoned 911 (about what sounded like gun shots) on Friday night, the first thing they asked, was if I wanted fire dept, police or ambulance.

????

How do you figure that?

Upload speed is usually a fraction of download.

All that site does, is convert bit per second to bytes per second. Given the overheads involved, there is no direct relationship between bit or byte rate of the channel and the received data. For example, with telnet, you send a complete TCP packet for each character you type. Since the minimum packet size is 64 bytes, your usable bandwith is less than 1/64 of channel bandwidth. On the other hand, if you send a full 1500 byte UDP packet, only a small fraction of what you send is overhead, so you'll be a lot closer to the channel bandwidth.

That 1/10 relationship you're claiming, is pure B.S. You're trying to compare bit/s with bytes/s, which is always a ratio of 8:1. Even that site you provided shows a ratio of 8:1. Now when you talk about data over a network, you have to look at how many bits are used for overhead, for the various headers, (ethernet, IP, TCP or UDP etc) and how much of the time available on the channel is available for your use. Those numbers are variable, depending on type and quanitity of data and transmission media (ethernet, PPP ADSL etc).

Quite so, but you can buy "Lite" packages on both cable and DSL. DOCSIS modems can be throttled to whatever speed avialable. I imagine something similar is available in the DSL world. Your line & modem may be capable of greater bandwidth, but if you don't pay for it, you don't get it.

I'd be very surprised if it was the *first* thing they asked for, but I'm not surprised that they ask where someone is. Not only could there be more information than the address gives ("I'm in the shed in the backyard"), asking a question like that does a couple more things: First, it helps keep a panicked caller focused, and second, it gives the dispatcher a better look into the state of mind of the caller.

However there are many situations in which the dispatcher isn't going to be able to get a verbal response from the caller, and must depend solely on what's on the display: 1. A seriously injured caller who has become non-responsive, 2. A child who doesn't know their address, 3. A person so panicked that they can't think straight enough, 4. A caller who has dropped the phone because they're being assaulted, 5. A caller hiding from an assailant who doesn't want to talk.

That's just a very, very small list, and none of them are very far fetched.

Now if you don't want the kind of protection that enhanced 911 brings, that's fine. It's just Darwin at work. The problem is that it's not just your safety involved. Your neighbor's or your guest's safety may be involved. And if someone using your phone doesn't realize that the 911 dispatcher has no idea where they're calling from, they could hang-up before the dispatcher can even ask. Or they could drop the phone to deal with other issues, expecting that the dispatcher knows where the call is coming from.

There are lots of good reasons why some people worked so hard to make enhanced 911 a standard. A flippant dismissal of all of that is nothing more than an indication of someone who's an idiot.

Aside from the 911 issue, there is another big issue. I don't want to carry my cell phone around the house. I often don't have anything to clip it to (although there is one fold of fat that's almost big enough.)

When I'm home, I keep my cell phone at almost dead center of the house, but still the only way I can get most calls is to drop everything, and run through the house. I usually end up missing those calls.

On the other hand, I have a land line phone: At my desk Next to my TV watching chair in the family room In the living room In the kitchen In my bed room In the bathroom In the garage

Without having to carry my phone with me, I'm never more than 10 steps away from a phone while at home. I only need to carry a phone when I leave the house, and then I have pockets, and things to clip my phone to.

Good point Warren. I like to be ready for sex at all times and would have the same problem finding a fold to hang a phone off of. ;)

Maybe a rope chain around your neck to hang the phone from ?

It's 10 to 1 if you have start/stop bits (old teletype protocols, etc).

But we are all talking broadband cable here aren't we ?

I have no idea what kind of extra protocol DSL may have per character.

It wouldn't have any per character protocol, but it does have an extra network layer (PPPoE), so you'd have more header data to worry about.

Trying to steal the thunder from Arnold, "Warren" on Mon,

18 Oct 2004 17:40:54 GMT spoke:

Here in San Diego, all they say when answering 911 calls is "911 emergency", and wait for you to say something.

I always says "Police", or "Fire", as necessary, and they respond with "hold", or something to indicate they'll handle the call. San Diego Fire Dept. also handles all medical calls. Sometimes you get a PD 'call-taker', mostly you get a Fire call-taker.

Perhaps an implant. I know that would be the ideal thing for my wife!

Should be "sometimes" for SDSL, too. Depends on distance from the equipment.

The determining factor for me is not speed, but service. With the various DSL providers I've picked at various places I've lived, I've had connections with static IP addresses and *no* port filtering in either direction.

Here's what would be my ideal internet service:

I get one (or more, if I want to buy them) static IP addresses, use of an outgoing mail server, a POP mailbox, a news server, and two name servers. Beyond that, I want them to just sit in the background providing packet transport.

I think cable in my area is currectly 3 mbps down, 256k up, compared to my

1.5 mbps down, 256k up DSL, but I'm not even remotely tempted to switch, as DSL comes closer to my ideal.

Do you really want your wife following you around the house so you can talk into her implants? ;)

Ah it sounded like a general blanket statement (which would have been highly biased and untrue).

Why do you believe that ADSL is better if both the ADSL line and the cable line is in perfect condition and both the ADSL and the cable provider aren't sloppy ?

I know people that have unmotivated ADSL disconnects (sync lost) and I know people who never had those. The same for cable users. Some have problems, some never had. If the line's bad, then the line's bad and should be fixed.

Then there's the way the operator manages his network. If he doesn't care, you're out of luck, same way for ADSL or cable.

And lastly, where I live there are cable ISPs that give you a 10mbps downstream (with a monthly transfer limit). There are other cable ISPs that sell you a garanteed x mbps downstream bandwith plan which guarantees that rate but they give you more on a best effort basis.

Your experience really depends on many factors, primary factors are: line quality, then operator quality. And that's that. There's good examples for both technologies and there's bad examples for both just as well.

That is true. You however sound to me like you never had a good cable connection and are now just telling the opposite. At least that was my impression from your postings.

As I wrote above, I know one cable ISP that gives you a guaranteed minimum downstream speed but has not set a limit to it so that you frequently get a higher downstream speed (though that is then no longer guaranteed nor constant).

What your DSL is able to run depends on the sync rate your operator puts on your connection and (if he does it) on a traffic shaper that governs your line afterwards (there are some that do that, too, setting a higher sync rate but limiting speed by use of traffic shaping)

CU

René

There's about a 10 to 20% overhead, depending on what type of system the provider exactly has running.

You'll often have PPP, PPPoE (that's not the same, one takes 2 bytes, the other 6 bytes overhead per Ethernet frame) and then the whole Ethernet frame is often transported using AAL5 (ATM adaptation layer 5) which causes the majority of the overhead.

What remains is the "connection speed" you can measure which differs by those 10 to 20% from the sync rate, which is the speed handled out between your ADSL device and the DSLAM (but often set to a specific maximum rate of your subscription plan and not to the maximum possible for the distance/noise of the line)

If you have a Zyxel ADSL device, I can give you some commands to execute in the CLI mode to display those variables. For other devices I don't know them, but they should exist just as well (maybe they are even displayed in a web-interface)

CU

René

I know we don't know one another, and perhaps even find some of what we each post here "difficult", but your recent coments on this thread, I found to be refreshingly thoughtful, to the point of near endearment. Rock on!

8*)

dj