When you talk about "fiber" what I believe you're talking about is a digital
loop carrier, which might use fiber or might use copper wire.  

Normally copper is run direct from the central office to your home.  You can
only run that so far before your signal is gone, so about 20 years ago
telephone companies started putting DLC's in between CO's and your home.
They're smaller facilities (think a closet as opposed to a building) and
they extend the reach of a CO.  The copper from your home is run to the DLC,
and then multiplexed into a digital signal, which is carried down a high
capacity (optical or copper) cable.  Great for phone service, and they've
been putting them out in lots of neighborhoods.

Since the DSL signal is outside the normal voice signalling range, the DLCs
that are in the field at this point don't carry them.  ISDN operates in the
normal voice range, so it works.  This sucks, and if there's one thing we
wished, it was that there was an easy solution.  Instead, the solution is to
upgrade these DLC's to versions that support DSL, or get rid of them
entirely.  The upgrade solution is, however, vendor specific and there are
multiple vendors whose efforts are at various stages.  Getting rid of the
DLCs is not a very cost effective option either.  

We've been working on either a universal vendor-neutral solution or another
route since we rolled out DSL.  I'm not sure how it's progressing, though.  

Just to clarify, not to disagree...I wish we can do something about those
things soon, too.

Jer


IDSL is just ISDN, provisioned just like ISDN but it doesn't use the
16kb D channel for signalling, so your throughput rate is increased from
128k to 144k.  That's why the pricing is almost identical to ISDN.  But
yes, it should run over fiber and the 18kft distance limit is
non-existant.  US-West was supposedly working on another solution to
get "real" DSL to fiber-fed homes but I haven't heard any news on that.
To me their roll-out of iDSL is like waving the white flag above their
little foxhole...they give up.  

Adam Maloney
Systems Administrator
Sihope Communications

On Thu, 3 Aug 2000, Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:

> It is called IDSL.
> 
> Tom Veldhouse
> veldy at veldy.net
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Brian <marshmallowmateys at email.com>
> To: <tclug-list at mn-linux.org>
> Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2000 10:30 AM
> Subject: Re: [TCLUG:20045] DSL
> 
> 
> > What's the status on running DSL over fiber?  I heard it was in
> development
> > but I've been out of the loop for so long that I never heard what
happened
> > next.  It ticked me off because in my old place I could SEE the building
> > that the DSLAM was in.  Thanks to ssssssssSeren Innovations my building
> was
> > completely fiber fed because they wanted everyone to use their cable
modem
> > service instead.  I did call and whine a couple times, but I never got
any
> > decent answers.
> >
> > "Oh sir, DSL is not available in your area"
> > "We are currently working on extending the range of DSL"
> > "Would you like to sign up for uswest.net?"
> > ...etc
> >
> >
> > You can call and whine, and if enough people do they may accelerate it.
> > Other than that there's nothing you can really do.  Are you sure the
> > problem is that there's no DSLAM in Fridley?  FAIK there's a lot of
fiber
> > right to the doorsteps out there that's preventing people from getting
> > DSL.
> >
> > Adam Maloney
> > Systems Administrator
> > Sihope Communications
> >
> > On Thu, 3 Aug 2000, Troy A. Johnson wrote:
> >
> > > Can you do or say anything to get USWest to put the proper equipment
for
> > > DSL at your CO (mine is Fridley)?
> > >
> > > Adam Maloney wrote:
> > > >
> > > > In case anyone here was interested in getting DSL but couldn't loop
> qual
> > > > (even if you were within the proper distance) [US|Q]west began
> removing
> > > > load coils from lines in late June.  They expect to be done by Q1
> 2001.
> > > > Unfortunately the site with the list of where they are completed
isn't
> > > > available so i don't have any more information, but you may want to
> try
> > > > another loop qualification in the coming months.
> > > >
> > > > Also here are the latest CO's that now support DSL:
> > > >
> > > > MN:  Duluth Melrose, Richfield, Stillwater
> > > >
> > > > Adam Maloney
> > > > Systems Administrator
> > > > Sihope Communications
> > > >
> > > >
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> > >
> > > --
> > > Troy Johnson   mailto:john1536 at tc.umn.edu   http://umn.edu/~john1536/
> > > ...Virtually never are murderers the ordinary, law-abiding people
> > > against whom gun bans are aimed.  Almost without exception, murderers
> > > are extreme aberrants with lifelong histories of crime, substance
> > > abuse, psychopathology, mental retardation and/or irrational violence
> > > against those around them, as well as other hazardous behavior, e.g.,
> > > automobile and gun accidents."
> > >         -- Don B. Kates, writing on statistical patterns in gun crime
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
> >
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> 
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