The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group A Tale of ADSL In a Rural Area Ross Alcock |
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Ross Alcock tells a story that could hardly be more topical |
From the very beginning I was attracted to the idea of ADSL because of its speed
and the way it enabled the use of one phone line to handle simultaneous
communications - even though it seemed a bit expensive.
I live in Indented Head, a rural bayside town, 35 km east of Geelong. The local
exchange is 4 km away in St Leonards. I approached Telstra to see if ADSL was
available on my exchange and was told, "Not at this stage but keep asking".
In time, that exchange became ADSL ready, so I broached the subject again.
"No sir, your line is not good enough."
I was sad, but accepted fate.
Two doors away is the General Store. They installed a snazzy wireless network
with three PCs and were using the Internet for ordering their goods. Idly one
day I asked about their experiences with using dial up for this purpose and was
told the ADSL was great.
What?
Then someone down the road, further away from the exchange, told me about his
ADSL connection.
I talked to Telstra again, and after a week was informed the line was not good
enough. I spoke to a human at Telstra who ducked and dived and repeated the
formal answer yet again. When pressed he said, "You are just unlucky."
Unlucky didn't cut it for me - luck is not in my lexicon. I asked if a second
line would fix the problem and was assured it would.
How much? $200 - Ouch, but let's do it!
The Telstra technician arrived and I was impressed; This man knew his onions. He
enquired what the second line was for.
"I want ADSL."
"This won't do it for you."
"But what about the ADSL installations either side of me?"
"Give me a few minutes and I'll see what can be done."
He went out to his truck and was on the mobile to someone back at base. After 5
minutes I looked out the window and he had a gizmo up to his eye. This was just
too much so I went out and asked, "What's that gizmo?"
"It's a microfiche viewer - I'm looking at the circuit diagram for this area.
Hmmmm. You're on a multiple."
Of course, everybody knows what a multiple is, don't they!
"What's a multiple?" I enquired cautiously.
"It's when a main line is put in and no decision exists about where all the
pairs will be used. When it gets to a T junction all the pairs go to both sides
of the T. If you are one side of the T and connected to a pair, the
corresponding pair on the other side is left open, and ADSL connections won't
work with dangling open pairs."
So after much consultation on his mobile he said he could fix this by re-routing
our line. Off he went and came back 20 minutes later saying, "Go through the
'Application for ADSL' process again, and you should be OK".
And we were.
So the moral of the story is in four parts...
Reprinted from the April 2005 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
