Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 17:11:07 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: jehamby@lightside.com (Jake Hamby) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Microsoft "Get ISDN"? Message-ID: <199603132311.RAA21342@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.AUX.3.91.960313102359.25177B-100000@covina.lightside.com> from "Jake Hamby" at Mar 13, 96 11:44:24 am
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Hello Jake, > Microsoft's Web page now has an entire section called "Get ISDN" > encouraging consumers to install ISDN lines, and making it just a matter > of completing a fill-out form and they will forward your request to your > phone company. Presumably they will also sign you up to Microsoft > Network, I didn't try it. :-) > > Anyway, my question is this: Other than the ISDN telephones at work, I > have no experience with ISDN, but it does sound like something I would > eventually want. It looks like I may be receiving a free ISDN Internet > connection through work, and even a free ISDN adapter, but I will have to > pay for the line installation myself. The Microsoft page has a lot of > information on ISDN, but I think I'll have to take a lot of it with a > grain of salt, for example, the section on "provisioning": > > >"ISDN is a very powerful and flexible service, providing support for > >solutions as diverse as PC connectivity, burglar alarm monitoring, and > >virtual PBX telephone services. There are hundreds of options possible on > >an ISDN line. The power and flexibility of ISDN can make it a very complex > >process to get configured just right. Go through that section and do s/ISDN/plain old telephone service/g and reread it and see how silly it sounds. You can hook up all sorts of garbage to an ISDN line, just as you can to an ordinary phone line (fax, answ. machines, cordless phones, modems, home remote control devices, burglar alarms, etc). The fact of the matter is that most people buy ISDN lines for a single purpose. > > If you request an ISDN line through the Get ISDN Now facility on > >this web site, your line will be configured by default for connection to a > >Windows-based PC and you can avoid the complicated provisioning process > >altogether. " > > Now, the idea of configuring the ISDN for a "Windows-based PC" sounds like > typical Microsoft-speak, but is the provisioning process as difficult as MS > makes it out to be if I don't go through them? It is slightly harder than dealing with an analog phone line. 1) You have to make sure that you and your telephone company are reading off of the same page. This is generally pretty easy. You need to know what kind of switch they use, if they provide 56k or 64k B channels, and some magic numbers that make it all work (I may be forgetting some things). They generally provide you a nice sheet with all this data. 2) You need to program it into the ISDN TA. In my opinion, it is just about as easy or difficult to configure an ISDN circuit as it is to set up a SLIP link. Very few things in this business are as simple as plugging it in and turning it on. Not even analog modems are THAT simple. ISDN setup is also much easier the second time around, because you have a better idea of how it works. > Also, I just checked FreeBSD's ISDN support as of -current, and it only > supports two "Dr. Neuheus" brand internal ISDN adapters! Does this mean > that, given a choice, I should ask for an external ISDN modem? If so, > which brands are recommended for use with FreeBSD? Also, am I correct to > assume that an external ISDN modem is treated just like a regular > Hayes-compatible modem, or does it require special kernel support? I like the Motorola devices. Having used the UTA/220 and the Bitsurfer Pro, I would recommend the BsP for casual use or the UTA/220 for ISP use. They can behave like analog modems and that is how I configure mine. I have a fellow with a 115k (2 B channel) connection into one of my border routers and at maximum bidirectional utilization, the 486DX2/50 router is running at about 6% busy. ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/546-7968
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