General Pacbell ADSL Questions and Answers Before You Buy / The Installation / Using Your ADSL Before You Buy What is Pacbell ADSL? In the quest for ever faster internet connections, Pacific Bell (a part of SWBell) now offers a variant of DSL (digital subscriber line) to its customers, known as ADSL (asymmetric). DSL allows high speed internet connections to be established between the Central Office and the user's house over standard telephone lines if the house in question meets certain criteria, primarily concerning distance. On this webpage, DSL and ADSL mean the same thing. What are the requirements for ADSL? Currently to receive ADSL service from Pacbell you must meet the following criteria: a) Have a non DSL and non ISDN telephone line operated by Pacbell (not GTE, etc). b) Have your telephone connected to a central office that supports ADSL. c) Live within 17,500ft. of total telephone cable length between you and the central office that supports ADSL. In addition, you need a Network Interface Card (Ethernet), a POTS Splitter, and an Alcatel 1000 ADSL Modem (included with ADSL installation). How can I find out if I qualify for ADSL from Pacbell? How do I order ADSL? You can try Pacbell's ADSL somewhat working DSL Availability Page or you can give Pacbell's DSL Order Center a call at 1-888-884-2DSL (2375) for more accurate information. What options can I get/how fast/how expensive is Pacbell's ADSL service? Currently Pacbell offers the following speeds: a) 1.5Mbps(MAX) to 384Kbps downloads / 128Kbps uploads b) 6Mbps(MAX) to 1.5Mbps downloads / 384Kbps uploads Different packages offer different amounts of Static IPs and domain hosting options. The most commonly chosen option is option a) with 1 static IP address and a one year term with Pacbell + Pacbell Internet (ISP) for 49$/month (including GSP charges). All Pacific Bell Internet ADSL packages come with a dial-up account for use in case your DSL goes down. Whether it is limited to 150 hours or is unlimited (like your DSL account) is unclear at the moment. Pacbell Internet maintains a page outlining DSL packages and prices here. Wait, you mean I can choose different ISPs than Pacbell? Correct. There are a number of alternate DSL service providers available to Pacbell customers. Pacbell itself only provides the DSL line, Pacbell Internet actually provides the internet service. The prices jump slightly when choosing other ISPs, obviously to promote the use of Pacbell's own internet services. Currently the discussion of other DSL ISPs available is beyond the scope of this document. Sorry. The numbers all look nice and big on the Pacbell page, but what do the download speeds really mean? How does it compare to Cable Modems? The numbers listed on Pacbell's pages are all in bits, but the download speeds you usually see are in bytes (8 bits = 1 byte). For example, if you have a 28.8Kbps modem, you usually see speeds around 3.0 k/sec at the maximum. With DSL's 1.5Mbps-384kbps, they are saying the maximum speed you can achieve is about 160 k/sec but the speed they guarentee you will reach (in ideal conditions) is only about 40 k/sec. As you can see, this is substantially faster than dial-up modem connections, but only on par and even slower than similar cable modem solutions. For more information on DSL vs. Cable modem see my page on that. My house is approximately 15,000 ft from the Central Office, which is near the distance limit of the DSL service. My download speed seems to max out at about 155 k/sec. Your mileage may vary. Pacific Bell? Pacific Bell Internet? Whoa this is confusing! What other companies are involved in giving me my DSL service? Pacific Bell provides the telephone line and DSL connectivity. Pacific Bell Internet provides the Internet Service Provider services. Prime Services Group does the actual on-site installation. Are there any usage limits on Pacbell ADSL service? In a word, no. Pacbell does not limit your time online, nor does it meter the bandwidth you use. Have fun! How does Pacbell charge me for my DSL account? The ADSL service charges are all applied to your phone bill. There is also an approximately 4$ GSP charge in addition to the ADSL charges. The following is a summary of DSL charges that I can find on my telephone bill: FasTrack ADSL Service Residence: $11.25 (the flat rate phone line) FasTrak ADSL 384Kbps/128Kbps Volume: $39.00 Global Service Provider: $4.00 DSL Basic-384 1 Year Term: $6.00 The Installation What is done during the installation of my DSL service? The installation of your DSL feature consists of three major steps. First, Pacific Bell usually sends out a technician to do a final verification of your line's "fitness" to handle the DSL feature. Then, Prime Services Group sends out their workers to actually install the POTS Splitter and Alcatel Modem. Finally Pacific Bell Allocation Services assigns you a working IP and Gateway address and arranges for the central office to recognize the DSL service from your house (theoretically done in advance of installation, but often not). I recieved my order confirmation but it lists the wrong prices for my DSL service! AFAIK, the order confirmation programs haven't yet been upgraded to new pricing. Pacbell has assured me that the correct price will appear on the actual phone bill. What's a MAC number/address and do I need it? A MAC number is a unique number assigned to every ethernet card. Often it is used by other DSL services to verify that the correct user is accessing the service. Currently, Pacific Bell DOES NOT require you to register your MAC number with them. If you really want to know your MAC number however, type "winipcfg" (for Win 9X). What's an IP address? What's a Gateway? An IP address is a number that identifies you on the internet. Currently, Pacific Bell Internet provides static IP addresses, which means your address never changes. This is unlike Dial-Up accounts and some other DSL/Cable modem services, which use Dynamic addresses that change everytime you connect to their service. A Gateway address is the address of the computer you must be connected to in able to access the internet. If your IP was WWW.XXX.YYY.ZZZ., your gateway is usually WWW.XXX.YYY.254. Both of these addresses are absolutely necessary to establish the most basic of connections to the internet using Pacbell's DSL service. What is a DNS server? Why do I only have one? A DNS server is the computer that translates all those WWW.XXX.YYY.ZZZ numbers into names such as www.coffee.net. You usually need this to browse the WWW. Often during installation, you are only provided with the location of one DNS server, but it is always best to have more than one configured in case your primary DNS server goes down. These are the addresses for current Pacbell DNS servers: San Francisco: 206.13.28.12 Sacramento: 206.13.31.12 Los Angeles: 206.13.29.12 San Diego: 206.13.30.12 What if I run Linux/MacOS/FreeBSD/etc? Will Pacbell install service? From all accounts, Pacific Bell does not care what type of computer/operating system you are using (unlike some other DSL/Cable modem services). If the Prime Services Guy does not seem to know what he is doing/is frightened of your computer, kindly ask him to provide the IP address, Gateway, and DNS settings and inform him you will correctly enter it on your own machine. Prime Services Guys usually have a correctly setup laptop they can use in the event they feel a system is misconfigured to verify service. The Prime Services Guy never called to give a date for installation/never showed up! What do I do? Give Prime Services a call at 1-888-844-2375. Notice the number is VERY similar to the Pacbell DSL Order Center's number. Make sure you dialed it in right (I didn't the first time). Have your Pacbell order number ready. The Prime Services Guy put the POTS Splitter inside my house! Is that ok? Usually that is acceptable. You can request them to put the Splitter outside and run a new cable into your house, if you feel like making them earn their money. How does the Prime Services Guy/how do I verify my connection? Most modern operating services with the TCP/IP protocol installed have the ping command, which is very useful in verifying your DSL installation. When using the "ping" command, when a reply is returned, the ping was successful. If a message such as "Request Timed Out" appears, you have a problem. First, try to ping yourself using the following command "ping your.own.ip.address". This is to verify the Network Interface Card installation as well as the TCP/IP protocol installation. If that works, try pinging your Gateway with the command "ping your.own.gateway.address". This verifys your connection to the gateway. Finally if that is successful, verify that your DNS configuration is properly setup by typing in "ping slashdot.org". You should receive a response somewhat like "Reply from 206.170.14.75... etc". The Prime Services Guy took off before my ADSL even started working! What do I do? In most of these cases, the provisioning people at Pacbell haven't setup your DSL connection correctly at their side. To the best of my knowledge, Prime Services Guys are only required to verify that your modem can sync with the central office. Usually they are kind enough to stay until you have established connectivity with your Gateway but the current workload may prevent that. In that case, call the 888-884-2375 DSL order number or try 877-375-3375 (the emerging products center) and explain your situation. If they still don't seem to have a clue, ask for provisioning. Using Your Pacbell ADSL Service How do I setup my email account and dial up account? Check out Pacbell's DSL Account Management Tools (secure page). What news servers can I use? Pacbell's news server is at "news.pacbell.net". You can also use "news.swbell.net" and often the South Western Bell news server is faster than PBI's. Ok my DSL connection was working fine before, but now its all wacky! Help! If you still have problems with your DSL connection, check out the Troubleshooting FAQ! How do you get higher transfer rates? How do you optimize your dsl connection? Check out the resources on modifying your TCP/IP settings on my links: optimizing page. I want MYOWNNAME.COM. How do I get one? Since Pacbell ADSL features static IP addresses, you can get a domain name for your computer/connection. Pacbell includes this option in its non-basic DSL packages, with a 100$ charge for domain name registration. If you don't have an enhanced DSL package, you can also try one of the following: Domain Host Services offers domain names to the people much like the now defunct Monolith Internet Services. You can try one of the domain registration/hosting services. Explain that you do not have access to a DNS server yourself and see what they can do. You can do it all yourself. Register a domain name at the InterNIC and find a public DNS server to host your name or setup your own DNS server(s). It is unknown whether Pacbell Internet allows DNS names to be hosted on servers outside of their own. Do so at your own risk. I want to share my DSL connection with a few other computers, but I only have 1 IP address. Help! Since Pacbell doesn't offer extra IPs with their basic plan (unlike @home) the only way you can get more than one computer on your ADSL connection is to use an IP masquerading or Native Address Translating program. Some popular programs for Windows that provide these services are Sygate, NAT32, and Wingate. You could also get a proxy/firewall but that gets complicated. If you have a spare computer lying around, the best solution is to install some variant of Linux or other freeware UNIX and use IP masquerading or IP Chains to share your internet connection. Check out the links page for appropriate links to sharing resources. AFAIK, Pacbell does not mind that you put multiple computers on your IP address. You just have to figure out how.

any comments/questions/suggestions? email me at golemite@pacbell.net © 1999 the raid group