On Mar 25, 2007, at 11:10 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Apropos to the vintage aspect...
Telcos used to (maybe prior to 1990) offer copper-to-copper
connections for things like fire and burglar alarms. Some
enterprising souls were making a go of using these connections
instead of ISDN (probably over a short haul, it might work). I was
surprised at how quickly all of the RBOCs got rid of the all-copper
arrangement.
That's not so apropos to the vintage aspect, actually. I managed
a DSL plant as one of my company's "side projects" using telco dry
copper until I changed jobs four months ago. We had maybe thirty
lines on that setup. Many (most?) telcos will still happily sell dry
copper circuits even today.
Prior to that, my connectivity used the very same dry copper setup
for two years, until I moved from Maryland to Florida five years
ago. My employer at the time (which had about 80Mbps of external
bandwidth) was right next door to the telco C.O., and both were about
two blocks from me. I had 2.5Mbps bidirectional, and it was rock
solid...that was verrah nice.
Though I was the closest, about a dozen other people in town had a
similar setup; their speeds ranged from about 2Mbps down to about
512Kbps.
In my case, it was "instead of a T1", not "instead of ISDN", as
I'd sooner exercise the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magtapes
before actually depending on ISDN for anything serious.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL