December 11, 2000, 11:00 AM — I had planned for this to be a column comparing simple DSL bridges. These are the
devices commonly called "modems" to make it easier for the mass market to understand
what they do. After all, just about everyone knows what a modem is used for, and a
bridge would be something entirely new. But, no matter how you slice and dice it, they
are bridges, not modems. There's nothing to "modulate" or "demodulate" since both
sides of the box are digital.
So, why am I not writing about bridges? Because my DSL has only been installed for a
few days and I haven't had time to move between bridges and evaluate the differences
properly.
OK, what IS this story about then?
DSL acquisition.
There are several companies competing for your DSL service. They provide the Internet
connection at the other end of the line. But the signal itself travels over normal
telephone lines, which means the Good Old Phone Company gets involved. 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" web site, I was able to get DSL service last
May. I ordered it and had a due date of June 13th. I won't go into the blow-by-blow,
but the service was finally turned up on October 4th and I received my "self install"
kit on October 6th. BellSouth figures that their customers are too simple-minded to
install an Ethernet device, so the only "self install" options are a PCI card or a USB
device. Slots are more precious than gold around here, and I have never liked the idea
of plugging something attached directly to my computer bus into the public phone
network, so I elected to try the USB device.
The Alcatel Speed Touch USB arrived by UPS on October 6. It's cute little thing -- it
looks like a 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. Here, the plot takes its first twist. BellSouth provides NTS EnterNet 300
version 1.3. This software installs as a PPPoA (Point to Point Protocol over ATM) or
PPPoE (Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet). The manual said to use PPPoA so I
decide to try 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. Checking on
the NTS web site (http://www.nts.com), version 1.4 is available and it DOES support SMP
(and it improves support for Windows 2000). There are both a 30-day demo and a "buy it
on-line" options on the web site. I downloaded the demo version. (It's only $29.95 to
register, which I wound up doing a few days later.)
