[OT] Re: DSL Coming -- I may need help! : My ranting :)

Bruce wrote... Um... you might want to check the fine print on the DSL service agreement. At least in SWBell (and I strongly suspect it's also true in other DSL carriers infrastructure) DSL speed guarantees are only from the copper jack in your house to your central office DSLAM. When your DSL traffic hits the DSLAM it is moved off from the PSTN to a cell relay ATM network, where all the DSL-offering ISP's (including SWBell if that's your ISP) actually compete for bandwidth availability. As a result, DSL speed guarantees have absolutely NOTHING to do with the internet speed you get. I won't go into examples, but I'm sure many folks here will immediately see the ramifications of this. Think of a file download where each packet comes at 256k but there's 300ms pauses between each packet! Add to this that most ISP's are implementing PPP over ATM for authentication, so there's also some minor extra overhead in addition to the above cell relay latency. Not to mention that DSL traffic is carried as UBR (unspecified bit rate) on the ATM cell relay network. This means no QOS, no commited cells, no standard ATM service classes of any kind! UBR basically means "We might get your packets there if we have absolutely nothing else to do. Then again, we might not". Just my own 2c worth. Jay West