WAY OT: phones, et al (was Re: OT: click license (was Re: Software Licensing and Sanity (was...)))

[Bill Akers]

Bill Vermillion wrote:
> 2^216193 -1 on the wall, he suddenly said":
> 
> 
>>Yo, homey, in case you don' be listenin', Bill Vermillion done said:
> 
> 
>>>Not since the DCMA went into force.  Now you can look at the code
>>>without violting the law let alone modifying it.  There are
> 
> 
>>I think you meant "cannot".  :)
> 
> 
> Hm. Spell checker missed that :-)^32.
> 
> 
>>>In that case you may find them with a little machine to drill under
>>>the earth and pass you a new cable.  "could not fix" often means a
>>>new cable run, so they have to schedule a truck with cable to do 
>>>a reinstall.
> 
> 
>>The lines here are all above ground. The chase from the
>>phone pole to the building is a 40-foot span of cable that's
>>less than sufficiently shielded. SFAIK, nothing around this
>>neighborhood is actually underground. I could be wrong, but I
>>know exactly where our iines come in from, and it's off the top
>>of a pole, over to the 2nd storey, and then down to a break-out
>>box outside the building for the complex.
> 
> 
> Typically there will be an underground feed coming to a pole and
> then lines will go overhead from the pole to the individual houses.
> Last time I lost a line the checked from the house to the pole -
> across the street - and then found that the wires coming up from
> the ground to the pole had a pair go bad. 

In my neck of the woods, the main feeder lines come in overhead and the 
secondary lines to some of the individual houses are underground and 
have been that way for at least 30 years in this particular area. In 
other sections of this area you will have both the main feeder and 
secondary lines underground, but I have never seen the main feeder lines 
underground and the secondary lines to the houses overhead. That seems 
counterintuitive to me, but I suppose there could be reasons for that to 
be the best solution, unless it is simply a case where the main lines 
were moved from overhead to underground and the homeowners were allowed 
to opt for the new configuration or keep the old one, or the builder 
didn't feel like tunneling under a street to put the lines underground.

> 
> It's usually mixed with underground and overheads.  But you are in
> Louisville - so anyting can happen :-)
> 
> 
>>>That's not hard to figure if you look at how things are handled.
>>>Voice is basically carried on bare copper and must be able to carry
>>>a current.  DSL is more like RF.

As my limited understanding of DSL goes, DSL works at higher frequencies 
than voice, but the technology is the same as voice. The bandwidth is 
just expanded over voice transmission bandwidths.

>  Not a great analogy but I hope
>>>you get the idea.   
> 
> 
>>Explains why with that nice 40' span, whenever there's a storm
>>my DSL gets flaky and bursty, not to mention drops like a rock.
>>Doesn't even have to be terribly close sometimes...just like
>>45min on either side of being over us will do it.

That may not be the fault of the 40' span. There could be problems as 
much as a couple of miles or more away that are causing the dropouts. If 
you are in an area that has mostly 40 or 50 year old infrastructure, but 
has had a new switch installed just for the purpose of furnishing things 
like DSL, there will probably be areas that are operating marginally 
under normal conditions, and any type of degradation of environmental 
conditions causes the signal strength to deteriorate further. I 
previously lived in a section of Hendersonville that had a new switch 
installed two miles away from my house but DSL was not available because 
the wiring from the switch on to my house was so old and poor. You also 
have an approximately 18,000 foot distance limitation from the 
DSLAM(internet access point) to your DSL appliance. If you are near that 
limit almost any change in conditions will cause a problem.

> 
> 
> So something is leaking and the high-frequencies are getting
> killed.

This whole description from Mark sounds like there might be something as 
  simple as slightly corroded connections somewhere between his domicile 
and the switch or even at the switch. With voice in the ~100-4,000 cycle 
range in a normal telephone system and upstream DSL in the 
25,000-160,000 cycle range and downstream in the 240,000 to 1,500,000 
cycle range, the downstream(highest frequency) becomes flaky more 
quickly with any small degradation in conditions. Of course you see the 
results of downstream feeds so the whole system appears to be down.


>  It's like running a TV coax cable and then getting it
> crushed and/or stepped on and flattening it and then wondering why
> the picture has gone bad.  Or like the flat TV cable that someone
> runs under an aluminum framed window.  RF just likes to play games
> with your best laid plans.
> 
> Bill


-- 
William Akers
MGM Industries, Inc.
Hendersonville TN USA