Date: 16 Mar 96 22:47:38 GMT From: peter@jhome.DIALix.COM (Peter Wemm) To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Win32 (was:Re: Go SCSI! Big improvement...) Message-ID: <peter.827016458@jhome.DIALix.COM> References: <199603161831.KAA03892@rah.star-gate.com>, <199603161852.LAA17601@phaeton.artisoft.com>
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terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) writes: >> Two things that can can attract more individuals to FreeBSD: >[ ... ] >> o fast internent connection: isdn, adsl, etc... >> isdn is specially very attractive since it is becoming very popular. >> It is very hard for me to think of the days in which I was connected >> to the Net via a 9600 or 14.4baud modem. It sort of reminds me of the >> 300baud days 8) >> >> For many moons now, hackers at least in the US have avoided even >> thinking about writing ISDN support for FreeBSD. That my friends >> is a shame. >It's a matter of principle. ISDN is evil, plus it priced out of the >range of usability in my area anyway. >ISDN is evil because it is technologically possible to charge connect >time charges; if something can be done, it eventually will. Even >PacBell, the ISDN king, has a reservation clause in their Tarrif that >lets them reduce the number of "free-hours-before-time-charges", so if >you think you are safe, think again. Huh? So, long distance voice is also "evil" because that's time charged too? It sounds to me like you want something that behaves like a leased line but dont want to pay for it. I didn't know that you had free T1 and 56K links in the US... >It would cost me in excess of $3000 to write an ISDN driver because of >the need to have two cards and two lines (since there is no one else to >talk ISDN to in this very expensive area except very expensive ISPs), >not to mention programming documentation. Many people in the US are >in the same boat (or worse). Dont forget, most PRI ISDN links are 2B+D, so you've got two independent 64K links.. Many ISDN cards are also dual channel, so you can call yourself from one channel to the other.. :-) Mind you, you're in a great position over there compared to *.au.. Here, the phone company owns the NT1, so everything you connect to the S0 bus has to be "approved", including the software. ie: developing the software yourself is completely out of the question here. This is partly the case here because ISDN is implemented as an "overlay" network, where the local exchanges do not speak ISDN at all. The exchange is fitted with a B-mux (B-channel multiplexor) and all the PRI circuits are carried back to a more central exchange over a 2Meg link. These B-Muxes are notoriously unreliable and crash at the slightest provacation, taking you and the other users down with it. Result: they dont *dare* let users beat them up via custom software. Nobody that I know of uses ISDN for anything but permanent connections, which, incidently, is what we use it for. This may change once the exchange upgrade is complete and every exchange will speak ISDN just as easily as voice and the horrible annual line rental comes down. (We've just had a change of government, and one of the election promises was to accelerate the upgrade and to make the domestic ISDN prices comparable to voice) -Peter > Terry Lambert > terry@lambert.org >--- >Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present >or previous employers.
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