DSL Speeds?

Road Runner · Post by **Road Runner** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 5:42 am

I just ordered AOL HIgh Speed Broadband DSL for my PC and I wanted to know what is the average BPS speed that I may connect at? I also wanted to know how is that DSL speeds are affected by the weather through phone lines, but regular dial-up is not? I also wanted to know does it matter how far I live from the verizon facility to get high speed? Because I was hearing something about the further you live from the verizon facility the slower your DSL Speed. Thanks!!

Bob Carrick · Post by **Bob Carrick** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 8:58 am

Why AOL? WHy not get a real ISP?

zxc47 · Post by **zxc47** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 10:34 am

AOL may have some draw backs but they are not as bad as some may say.But if you use AOL you are using someone else's line.Your better off getting DSL from who ever line your on.you well get better service.

Road Runner · Post by **Road Runner** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 2:44 pm

"Why AOL? WHy not get a real ISP?"

Because I like AOL, AOL has been great for me for the past 2 1/2 years, and I would like to upgrade to DSL Broadband with them.

"But if you use AOL you are using someone else's line.Your better off getting DSL from who ever line your on.you well get better service."

What do you mean someone else's line?, Im using DSL on my line.

What is the average AOL DSL BPS Speed? Thanks!!

mnosteele52 · Post by **mnosteele52** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 2:46 pm

AOHELL will do nothing but limit your speed, spy on you and crash your pc. I'm sorry to let you down, but I'm only being honest.... they SUCK! You cannot tweak it either.

Road Runner · Post by **Road Runner** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 2:48 pm

Actually AOL is the best provider I've had, my godmother has AOL DSL Broadband and her's is lightning speed.

mnosteele52 · Post by **mnosteele52** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 2:52 pm

Read this thread about AOL, it's pretty informative.

Loonatic · Post by **Loonatic** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 3:01 pm

AOL, from what I've read/seen/experienced, is pretty poor.

I used it back in the dialup days. No need for an explanation there

I'm sure the speeds are fine, but their network is total...well...crap.

Needlefreak · Post by **Needlefreak** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 5:41 pm

Yes the farther you live the lower the speed...I may be wrong but I belive you have to be within 18000 feet of the hub,my parents are roughly 10000 feet and get just over 1400kbps on their Bellsouth line..

zxc47 · Post by **zxc47** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 8:33 pm

But if you use AOL you are using someone else's line.Your better off getting DSL from who ever line your on.you well get better service."
What do you mean someone else's line?, Im using DSL on my line.
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Well! What I am telling you is that AOL is not a Phone Co. or Cable Co.. And you do not own the phone line after it leaves your house. Who ever you pay your phone bill to own the line, like bell south or whatever the name is. All AOL is doing is renting the line from the phone CO. so if you have a problem AOL can do little to help you if it in the phone line. So you better off just getting DSL from the phone CO. to start with

Road Runner · Post by **Road Runner** » Thu Jan 02, 2003 8:37 pm

Why is it the further you live from the facility, the slower the DSL speed? And Is there anyway to find out on the web how close you are to a phone co.?

zxc47 · Post by **zxc47** » Fri Jan 03, 2003 9:17 am

Precisely how much benefit you see will greatly depend on how far you are from the central office of the company providing the ADSL service. ADSL is a distance-sensitive technology: As the connection's length increases, the signal quality decreases and the connection speed goes down. The limit for ADSL service is 18,000 feet (5,460 meters), though for speed and quality of service reasons many ADSL providers place a lower limit on the distances for the service. At the extremes of the distance limits, ADSL customers may see speeds far below the promised maximums, while customers nearer the central office have faster connections and may see extremely high speeds in the future. ADSL technology can provide maximum downstream (Internet to customer) speeds of up to 8 megabits per second (Mbps) at a distance of about 6,000 feet (1,820 meters), and upstream speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second (Kbps). In practice, the best speeds widely offered today are 1.5 Mbps downstream, with upstream speeds varying between 64 and 640 Kbps.

Old Fart · Post by **Old Fart** » Fri Jan 03, 2003 2:34 pm

DSL, the limitation of 18000 feet has to do with the length of wire a signal will travel at a given frequency.

aDSL actually works beyond 23000 feet, but no telco is going to install it past 18k, because of erroring with decreased signal strength.

Your theoretical speed doesn't decrease with distance, the quality of the signal does, however. Retransmission of garbled packets, due to poor signal strength causes the data to appear to come in slowly. Every packet you recieve, your machine adds it up and gets a checksum, if the checksum and the sum in the packet do not match, it will not acknowledge that packet, and the originating host will retransmit. This continuous retransmittal of packets causes data transfer to slow way down.