December 11, 2000, 11:04 AM — Several companies are competing to provide you with DSL service. They provide the
Internet connection, but the signal must be transmitted over normal telephone lines.
That means the good old phone company must become involved.
In my experience, it seems that a DSL ISP's favorite words are "we won't support
you." If you ask Earthlink for the password to access your DSL bridge, they won't
support you. If you use a device other than the one provided by the ISP, they won't
support you. If you run Windows 2000, they won't support you. One can only hope that
attitude will improve as ISPs learn about the business.
My ISP is BellSouth Internet Services (formerly known as BellSouth.Net). My
telephone company is BellSouth. One might conclude from this that getting DSL should be
pretty easy. Not so fast!
According to the BellSouth
FastAccess Website, I should have been able to get DSL service last May. When I
ordered it, I was told I'd have it by June 13. I won't go into the blow-by-blow, but
the service was finally activated on Oct. 4, and I received my "self install" kit on
Oct. 6.
BellSouth figures that its customers are too simple-minded to install an Ethernet
device, so the only "self install" options are a PCI card and a USB device. Slots are
more precious than gold around here, so I elected to try the USB device.
The
href="http://www.cid.alcatel.com/products/products_az.jhtml">Alcatel Speed
Touch USB is a cute little thing. It looks like an aquamarine manta ray with a long
tail. The tail has a jack for the phone line and a USB plug at the end. Simple enough.
The software should have been easy to install, too. But here, the plot takes its
first twist. BellSouth provides version 1.3 of NTS EnterNet 300. This software installs
PPPoA (Point to Point Protocol over ATM) or PPPoE (Point to Point Protocol over
Ethernet). The manual said to use PPPoA, so I tried that.
The first rude awakening was that version 1.3 doesn't support symmetrical multi-
processing (SMP). At least the installation software was smart enough to tell me this
before it loaded into the OS and killed the system. According to the
href=" http://www.nts.com/">NTS Website, version 1.4 is available, supports SMP,
and improves support for Windows 2000. I downloaded the demo version. It's only $29.95
to register, which I wound up doing a few days later.
This version installed properly. I followed the instructions, installing the
software before plugging in the USB device. Then I connected the USB adapter to the
computer and plugged the DSL line into its tail. Guess what? It actually worked -- for
about 20 minutes.
There are only two lights on the Speed Touch USB. One is labeled USB, the other
ADSL. After 20 minutes, both lights went out. I tried switching over to PPPoE. No
change.
A check of the manual and some research on the Web revealed that the USB port is
limited to a half an amp of current. The Speed Touch USB is right at that limit. A warm
boot failed to bring the USB port back to life. Only a cold boot -- either power or the
reset button -- would. According to the documentation I found, this indicates that the
USB is probably overloaded and shut down.
I was able to keep the USB device up for about three hours once -- by not touching
my computer's keyboard or mouse, and letting Win2K function as the NAT for the rest of
the computers. As soon as I moved the mouse, KABLAM! The USB turned off again.
Oct. 6 was a Friday, so naturally, all of this occurred on the weekend. I called
BellSouth as soon as possible to switch to an Ethernet device. Despite the fact that
I've already gotten one DSL device running, BellSouth insisted that only a professional
installer can install the Ethernet variety. (What am I, chopped liver?) I agreed to pay
the $150 for the installer to come out and install the DSL/Ethernet bridge.
Of course, when the installer showed up a few days later, he didn't want to touch
the Windows 2000 machine. I directed him to one of the Windows 98 computers. He merrily
installed Ethernet drivers on the single-CPU Windows 98 machine, attached the computer
directly to the Alcatel Speed Touch home bridge, got it running, and left. I then shut
down the software on the Windows 98 computer, disconnected the bridge from the
computer's Ethernet card, and connected it to my Ethernet switch (swapping from a
straight-through cable to a crossover cable). Since the EnterNet software was already
installed on the Windows 2000 server, I fired it up, created a new connection, and
configured the NAT. All the other computers now have access.
