[svlug] Pac Bell DSL and PPPoE

[Tin Le]

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I must have been lucky like the other guy.  I got mine 2 1/2 year ago
and get static IP for 49/month, plus 786 down/ 128 up.  And that with
me being about 15000 ft from the CO, which is near the DSL limit.  I did
tried getting them to give me the "enhanced" connection which is 6M
down and 1.54M up, but the line stopped working :-(

It's not that I have not run into problems with PBI, but when the line
work, it work very well and lately I have not had as much problem as I
did in the beginning.  The problem with PBI is that they did not _plan_
ahead when they started offering these services.  They were completely
overwhelmed by the demands, in both installation requests and the usage
patterns.

Note: the cable guys (@Home) run into same problem and tried to keep
their users from running servers on their connection.

My line was installed by contractors, non-Pac Bell employee.  The guy
tells me that most of PBI DSL installers are contractors, and they don't
have enough, so that is why it take so long.

The other problem is usage patterns.  They were used to dialup users,
but with DSL, people are leaving their system up all the time and started
offering Internet services.  I know that as recent as the beginning of
this year, their network was very badly congested.  Their network peer,
PRSERV (AT&T), did not have enough bandwidth.  I talked with a tech at PBI
NOC who told me that they were installing several DS3 in the south bay to
relieve the problem (this was around April time frame).  Evidently the
lines were installed as I am seeing much better throughput now.

> PacBell now only gives out static IP addresses if you pay them
> extra $$. They are real jerks about it. They told me that
> you could only buy static IP addresses in blocks of 3.
> Perhaps they fear running out of static IPs or something,
> it seems rather stupid to have to use PPPoe to just connect
> to the network. No to mention the extra 10$ per month for
> "internet service". Nobody at Pac Bell was able to explain
> exactly what the extra 10$ "internet service" charge is for.
> Me thinks it is just easier to sell the service as
> "40 dollars a month" and then put extra changes in the fine
> print.

Well, yeah, routable IP are supposedly getting scarce although I'd like
to see some hard numbers to back that.  IPV6 is supposed to help relieve
that problem.  Then everything, including your toaster oven can have an
IP ;-)  which is not too far off.  If you can finagle a visit to the
iHome demo site that Cisco setup in San Jose, go!  It's pretty neat.
Smart fridge with builtin network connection, everything in the house
is wired or not (wireless network)... I'd love to get the setup they
have in the garage :-)

Anyway, this is the way it was explained to me by someone who worked
for Pac Bell.

The charges are broken down as follow, the first part $39 is for line
charge, similar to your monthly phone line charge from PacBell.  The
other part, $10, is the ISP charge, which gives you the IP and network
connection.

The reasons that other DSL providers in the area cost more is because
they _have_ to pay PacBell for the line charge just like you.  They may
be getting a volume break, but still, to make a living they have to
charge enough to cover cost.  Almost all of them has to rent CO space
and copper from PacBell.  Very few want to go to the trouble of pulling
their own copper and creating their own CO.

Tin Le
- ----
http://tin.le.org
Tin Le - tin at le.org
Firewall and Security Consulting

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