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How does DSL work with my phone line? Can I talk on the phone while connected to my DSL line? How does DSL make my Internet connection so fast? What is downstream versus upstream? What types of DSL are available from Omsoft? Can multiple users sign on to the Internet at a time with a DSL account? Will I be able to use DCN/Omsoft email and webspace? Can I run my own mail or web servers with Omsoft DSL? Why would I want ISDN or 56k modems over DSL service? What advantages does DSL have over ISDN or dial-up for the Office LAN? What are the Minimum PC System Requirements for DSL Internet Access? Are industry standards in place for xDSL? How does DSL compare to cable modems? The term Private Virtual Circuit or PVC is? DSL is Digital Subscriber Line a new high speed Internet access technology. It is a dedicated digital circuit from your home to PacBell's central office, using your telephone line. DSL also provides support for simultaneous voice/fax analog calls at the same time high-speed data is flowing across the line. xDSL is a generic term that refers to the family of DSL technologies. There are several flavors:
How does DSL work with my phone line? DSL service will be provisioned on your telephone line without affecting your ability to place and receive voice calls. You keep your existing phone number and add DSL as a feature (like voicemail or call forwarding) to that line.This means you do not need to add a second phone line for DSL. The DSL service feature (on your phone line) will be billed with the Pacific Bell phone line and the DSL Internet access will be provided by Omsoft. If the phone line is a measured business line, usage will only be measured on the voice calls. Internet access is billed at a fixed monthly rate. Can I talk on the phone while connected to my DSL line? The most appealing feature of DSL is the ability to use the same old phone line to make calls and and surf the Internet simultaneously. A passive splitter also known as a low-pass/high-pass filter separates the voice and DSL signals onto different wire pairs. The customer premise splitter splits two wires to activate phone jacks and the other two to activate data jacks. At the local PacBell Central office voice calls are handed to the PSTN (public switched telephone network) or go over fiber optic ATM connection to Omsoft. How does DSL make my Internet connection so fast? The difference in transfer speeds and overall high speed functionality of DSL does not reside in the phone line. Instead, the difference in performance has to do with the difference in the line frequencies used for modem versus DSL (analog uses 3.4 kHz and DSL uses up to 1.2 MHz), the customer equipment (analog modem versus a NIC, DSL modem, splitter combination), and the Network configuration (Circuit Switch Network Vs Cell Relay Network). What is downstream versus upstream? Every Internet connection is capable of sending data away from your computer to other computers on the Internet, as well as sending data from other computers down the Internet connection to your computer. All web surfing, emailing, and general Internet use sends data from the Internet downstream to your PC. If you are intending to serve webpages or host an email server then you will be sending data upstream. The large majority of home and business users will be utilizing the downstream speeds only. What types of DSL are available from Omsoft? Two speeds of ADSL are currently available from Omsoft Technologies. The basic speed available is guaranteed 384 Kbps burstable up to 1.5 Mbps downstream and up to 128 Kbps upstream. The faster speed available is guaranteed 1.5 Mbps burstable up to 6 Mbps downstream and 384 Kbps upstream. Omsoft Technologies also offers a number of different speeds of IDSL and SDSL service Can multiple users sign on to the Internet at a time with a DSL account? The number of computers you can connect to the Internet at one time is limited by the number of IP addresses you have. HomeDSL comes with one static IP address and therefore you will only be able to use one computer on the Internet at a time, UNLESS you purchase an NAT router OR you purchase additional IP addresses. Omsoft does not provide any technical support for NAT routers. Omsoft has additional IP addresses available for all levels of service at the price of $6 per IP address. The SohoDSL package comes with five usable IP addresses, while our BizDSL packages comes with 29 usable addresses, more may be purchased from Omsoft. Will I be able to use DCN/Omsoft email and webspace? Yes - The HomeDSL package includes one (1) email/Unix shell account, one (1) extra email account, and 5 MB of disk space with the shell account. The SohoDSL package includes one (1) email/Unix shell account, four (4) extra email accounts and 5 MB of disk space with the shell account. The BizDSL package includes one (1) email/Unix shell account, eight (8) extra email accounts and 5 MB of disk space with the shell account.Both products include the option to add additional email accounts for $2.50 per address per month. Can I run my own mail or web servers with Omsoft DSL? Yes. Establishing Mail, FTP, and WWW servers involves server hardware/software, domain name registration with Network Solutions, and setting up DNS services with Omsoft. Omsoft Technologies and DCN will provide DNS for $10 per month for your domain. If you need help registering your custom domain name, Omsoft staff can register this for you for a one-time charge of $50. Why would customers want ISDN or analog modems when they could have DSL service? ISDN and analog modems are switched access technologies that offer the ability for customers to dial many different locations for Internet access or other online services. With DSL services, the connection is a permanent connection to the Internet Service Provider. ISDN and analog modem customers who qualify for DSL service and only need to connect to the Internet from one location will want to switch to DSL in order to take advantage of the benefits of higher speeds and an "always on" connection. However, customers who do not have DSL service available from their central office, or who live beyond the local loop requirements, or need the mobility and flexibility of a switched service will remain as ISDN or analog modem customers. What advantages does DSL have over ISDN or dial-up for the Office LAN? DSL has the following advantages over other Internet technologies for connecting the office LAN:
What are the Minimum PC System Requirements for DSL Internet Access?
Are industry standards in place for xDSL? There are several xDSL engineering working groups all developing standards and guidelines for the various types of DSL. The ADSL Forum is developing technical guidelines for architecture, interfaces and protocols for telecommunications networks incorporating ADSL transceivers. The ADSL forum and other industry working groups are still developing standards for faster Internet access and increased service range using current DSL technology. When will you support faster transports such as HDSL or VDSL? HDSL (High-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line) is a symmetric DSL technology (same speed upstream and downstream) with information transfer rates of up to 1.5 Mbps. VDSL (Very high-data-rate Digital Subscriber Line) is a much faster type of ADSL supporting a downstream information transfer rate of 13 Mbps to 52 Mbps with an upstream information transfer rate of 1.5 Mbps to 2.3 Mbps. Omsoft will be adding these services as the technologies become more generally available, and the customer premise equipment becomes cost effective for end users. Also these technologies tend to have closer distance requirements (local loop restrictions) between the customer and the central office to allow for the faster speeds. Omsoft anticipates adding additional HDSL (SDSL) service offerings in 3Q 2000. How does DSL compare to cable modems? Cable modems promise to support transfer speeds of up to 10 Mbps. While this speed is possible, it is unlikely, because of the way cable networks are structured. Cable network users share network resources with other members of their neighborhood. Thus connection speeds will be decreased as the amount of users online increases. DSL allows each user to get a CIR (committed information rate) of at least 384Kbps or 1.5 Mbps to the Internet. Also, new VDSL technologies will surpass the transfer rates of current cable delivery systems. The actual throughput rate that a customer receives may be impacted by conditions on the Internet. Omsoft will make every attempt to connect the customer's service at the optioned speed. Omsoft will deliver your CIR all the way to its PBI/Sprint Internet backbone connection, but will not be liable for any conditions on the Internet. It is important to note that DSL service is provisioned by Pacific Bell as a best-effort (Unspecified Bit Rate) Quality of Service on the ATM backbone, and as such, does not guarantee a specific constant or throughput rate. The term Private Virtual Circuit or PVC is being used a lot around this product. What does PVC mean? PVC, (Permanent Virtual Circuit), is an Internet technology term which refers to a dedicated point-to-point connection from the customer site to the ISP. A PVC is an "always on" high speed connection to the Internet making the customer site part of the Internet. There is no phone number to dial and no delay in establishing a connection. DSL Internet access includes a point-to-point dedicated, "always on" connection to DCN/Omsoft, and the whole Internet. An ATM Network is a network that runs according to the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol. This transmission protocol outlines a means of transferring data on this Network. ATM data transmission requires the information be packaged into 53 byte cells (5 byte header and 48-byte payload). One of the reasons this protocol is so efficient is it allows different types of information such as voice, data, and video from different or same user(s) to be transmitted in the same cell. This makes use of every byte of space available on the Network at all times. Because it is an efficient transport, the bandwidth is higher with ATM than with other types of Network. ATM is generally used for megabit and gigabit bandwidths. |
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