admbws's Journal: Subject

Since I'm in lazy mode, I'll only write a few sentences for this JE.

Firstly, on 30th October, it was my birthday, and I was able to increment my age by one more year, which was very nice.

On 31th October, after spending almost a month waiting for BT to install a new phone line, I got ADSL installed on it, so that was very nice too. It took a bit to persuade them to supply it (as digging up the road was in order), so I think a grudging thankyou to BT for making the effort to supply it, instead of just sticking a line-sharing device on the neighbours line, rendering ADSL impossible.

And finally, on 1st November, I stayed in and.. well.. played with the 1Mbit connection, which was very nice as well.

Just gives you some idea of how exciting life is around here.

Oh, and why is is such a pain in the arse to think up subjects?

Line sharing

[Alioth]

The line sharing box is called a DACS unit. It not only prevents ADSL, but modems won't get above 1200 baud on the shared line (on the 'original half' they do work, but ADSL probably wouldn't).

I'm surprised there wasn't any spare copper - the telco here lay four pairs to my house by the looks of things.

Re:Line sharing

[admbws]

Modern DACS units today (unimaginatively named DACS2 units) allow a maximum of 33.6k. Indeed, today I believe BT is obligated to provide lines capable of at least 2400 baud, though in practice BT tries to provide 9.6k as a minimum.

There are actually four copper pairs to this house. Two for the neighbour (who appears to have two lines), and two for this house. One of those copper pairs, the one in use at the time, "went bad" a couple of years ago (I remember that well - not being able to connect above 14.4k