[ale] OT: DSL in older house (no NID)

[James P. Kinney III]

On Fri, 2004-04-16 at 14:34, Robert Story wrote:
> My sister just called me to ask about getting DSL at her place. She lives in an
> older house that has a really thick one-pair wire running from the pole,
> through a hole in the wall, to a screw-down connector in the middle of the
> basement.
> 
> The Bellsouth people are trying to sell her a self-install kit. I'm concerned
> that she'll sign-up, I won't be able to get the self-install kit work, and
> she'll end up having to pay some exorbitant fee to have them come out and
> install a NID or some other inside wiring work.
> 
> Has anyone used DSL with such a setup before? Since Bellsouth is supposed to
> only be responsible to the outside of the house, is there some magic phrase to
> make them install a NID w/out having to pay?
> 
> The only reason I'm thinking of letting her go with Bellsouth is my recent
> fiasco w/my Speakeasy line, with them, Bellsouth and MCI all pointing fingers
> at each other when my DSL went down. I figure still w/Bellsouth the first year,
> and if it seems to be working ok, switch to somewhere cheaper later. But if not
> having a NID doesn't present any special problems, then starting w/Speakeasy
> from the beginning might be the way to go.

All a NID is is a point beyond which BellSouth says "It's your problem".
It a new style of connection that does not require as much training to
connect to.  A self-install kit (in theory) should be be a problem. All
it is is a bunch of DSL filters to take the DSL "hiss" out of the
non-DSL lines. So basically, DSL service will be all over the house on
every phone jack. By adding the filter, it takes out the DSL signal and
keeps things like phones with digital answering machines happy.

My house has a huge 6 pair phone line that terminates in my basement at
a series of screw blocks with fuses. The phone co likes the NID outside
the house so they don't have to schedule a time to get in. I don't like
having access to running up my long distance bill outside my house when
I'm not home. :)
> 
> 
> Any thoughts, suggestions or stories of similar experiences greatly
> appreciated.
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> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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