[ILUG] ISDN

[Brendan Kehoe]

> Neighbour of mine got one installed on Monday I set it up for him.  The TA
> was a stock standard Eircom supplied one made by Zyxel.  I'm full sure he's
> got basic rate ISDN but he can only connnect at 64k, Now thats no bad thing
> and he doesnt really want to pay for two calls at a time anyway but I was
> just curious. The configuration software doesnt give you an option to use
> both B channels.  Anyone have any ideas?

I'm not sure about the router side of things (I'm using a WebRamp 410i), but I
can offer some bits on the availability side.

Eircom (aka "eircomnet") currently only allows the use of a single 64k channel
for a "normal" account.  You can get the second channel if you pay (I believe)
an extra amount to be considered a business customer, or something similar.
It's even worse: if you call the "regular" tech support folks, you'll go
through some serious pains trying to get them to understand your question.

When I was looking into all of this at the end of September, I was eventually
tossed over to the tech support line for business accounts, who also reject
the idea that they support anything but the single channel.  It was only later
from a nice person who works there that I learned that it's in fact a
different kind of account, with different rates.

I've been told that EsatNet, IOL, and possibly other ISPs also support it some
form or another, but I'm unsure of their billing.  I would suspect that
eircomnet would be likely to change their tune at some point soon,
particularly if their competitors end up proving to have a better offering.

That was actually a project I was going to work on this week---find out if I
can get a better deal than what I've currently got with Eircom, since it seems
really silly to have gone through all of this effort only to get to use a
single channel.  I wasn't able to get to it, though; perhaps next week.  (Ahh,
the echoes of the upgrade path that has kept my laptop running RedHat 5.1 for
the last two years...)

Not that I'm complaining, this single 64k ISDN channel is still a heck of a
step above what I'd been getting with a 56k analog modem, and is beaten only
by the insane dual T1 lines I was using in my office back in Sunnyvale a
couple of weeks ago.  Boy can that spoil you...ah well, this is still pretty
good.

If you happen to beat me to finding out about any of the other ISPs, I'd love
to know what you learn. :-)

Hope this helps,
B

-- 
Brendan Kehoe

Web page: http://www.zen.org/~brendan/