Dysmey Post Archive > Pages for 2001 > Late XMas Season 2001 Edition

Late XMas Season 2001 Edition

work

At work two departments have swapped spaces. One of those is mine, and now that it is over:

This Friday departments bring in food. The network admin has brought his spicy hot praise-winning jambalaya. I bring the usual (as I cook only for myself): Two bags of tortilla chips and two jars of hot salsa.

My niece will get her gift, probably on time (although that will depend on UPS's humors). Her mother will be getting a card, saying her gift will be coming but not on XMas. What she wants has turned out to be too popular, and there was a run on them.

This week's page, however, will be devoted to…

dsl

I got some junk mail from my local telephone company advertising the power of DSL.

A Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) uses the other two of a four-wire telephone cable to deliver Internet access at speeds advertised as up to one million bits per second—better than dial-up (56Kbps), better than ISDN (128Kbsp), also as good as T1 (1.5Mbps).

(Of course, this will slow down a bit as more people use it.)

This means that you can transfer files much faster than you can with a modem dial-up. That means I can maintain this web page as fast as I can if I were to do it at work.

The connection is on all the time. This removes the need for dial-up; however, you will need a firewall to keep the crackers and script kiddies to pay you unwanted visits. My best bet is to use my Linux server as the router/gateway for my Windows machine, since XP is too vulnerable to cracking.

The DSL charge is $46/month, which looks steep, but remember that it includes both telephone and Internet charges. When I add up my current phone and Internet dial-up service charges, and I find I pay that much a month already.

Installation charges are $100 if the phone company installs it, and $40 if I do the install…and I can do the install!

I will wait until after XMas to give DSL a try.

(BTW, do not use your Internet connection at work to work on your home page. That is not what it's there for, and you can be fired for doing so.)


Copyright © 2003 by Andy West. All rights reserved. Last updated 30 November 2003.