A: One thing you can do is contact Pac Bell by e-mail on its Web site. Or call the business office and pray that you get someone that knows something about it, but I would look on the Web site specifically.

Yes, on the Web site they actually have a place on there where you put in your phone stuff, prefix and area code, and it will tell you whether or not there is a chance that you have service.

I did that and I'm close enough. I put in my phone number.

That only tells you whether your central office is equipped to handle ADSL. Go to the business office, tell them that you are interested, give them your telephone number. They type that into a computer and it tells them how far away from the central office you are and whether you are within that 17,500 foot limit. Remember, your wire could go this way, this way, this way, and then back down.

But let's assume that I am close enough because I think that I got that information from the Internet.

If you are in the Sacramento area, tell me what major intersections you are near, and I can tell you what office you are served out of.

Kenneth and Sunset in Fair Oaks.

Kenneth and Sunset is served out of California Avenue and Fair Oaks, and you are within range, I would say.

So the question is, then it costs $39.95?

On top of your telephone line charges. Plus your $10 for your ISP.

But I won't have to pay $21.95 for the ISP anymore, I just pay $10.

Right. Plus the cost of the hardware.

Which will be about $200.

Yes, and the installation will be free if you commit to 3 years (per information on the Web site). If you don't commit, it is $300 I think.

Q: I too am interested in the DSL. The part about the cleaning up the dirty phone line. My phone line is so dirty, I can't even get 28.8.

A: If you can hear audible noise on your phone line, then you ought to be calling in to repair service and staying on them until you cannot hear static on your line.

I don't hear the static, but I can't even get a 28.8 connection.

That could be because you are on what they call a digital loop carrier. The top end speed of a lot of those are 28.8, and that is why SacraBytes went off the air when they converted to digital loop carrier. So it is possible that your serving arrangement may preclude you from getting modems at that speed now. If you are on a subscriber carrier system, and they don't have cable in your area, only carrier systems, you are not going to be able to get the DSL.

I live on American River Drive, right near Munroe, by Country Day School, and I know the phone company has a lot of stuff in the corner of our yard, I don't know what it is.

That could be just a pedestal, a B-box, but that area, American River Drive, is served out of Watt and Marconi. Most of that is a subscriber carrier area. You'll have to check with the business office. They may have some cable in that area. Do you hear a hiss on your line when you talk normally?

One of our lines is noisy, but that is not the one that I use. One quick second question with the DirecPC satellite, with it allowing you 25 hours per month. Does it allow you to pay for more time?

Yes but the company didn't tell me what the rate was.

Q: Can you explain why a WinModem is so lousy, and what it is, and also how to tell one from looking at the box.

A: The difference between WinModem and a traditional modem is WinModems requires that the 'intelligence', or signal processing, be performed by the CPU as opposed to processing done on the card. It doesn't necessarily work well; choosing a WinModem is not a good choice. You save a few bucks on the price, but you end up in misery from then on. I don't recommend a WinModem for anybody.

The processor has to do time slicing in order to process the signal.

Right, so if the CPU is busy doing something else or a program makes heavy demands on the machine, you lose communications. WinModems is not a great idea. There was no real value in doing that; they didn't save much.

Having heard what modem noises sound like when making the initial connection to your ISP, that raspy noise must be demodulated into binary data and data from your computer must be modulated into more of that raspy noise. That's called 'signal processing." If the processing is done on the modem card, then you have a 'digital signal processor' (DSP) modem, but if the processing is done by the CPU, then you have a 'host signal processor' (HSP) modem, or WinModem. HSP modems require an intermediary driver.

Those drivers are written for Microsoft Windows and are virtually non-existent for other operating systems such as DOS, OS/2, LINUX, etc. If the box says, "Minimum requirements are: Pentium 200 MMX, Windows 95/98, 16Meg RAM (will not work in DOS), and an available PCI slot," then it is a WinModem.

Regular modems can function superbly in an ISA slot (the long black slots) while WinModems require a much higher data-bus transfer rate; the PCI slot (the short white slots).

Q: I've read that Palo Alto is planning a network. It would connect residences at 100-base T-very fast. You can get a wireless card from Fry's for $150 that will go 500 feet through walls. Have you heard of other communities or other residential groups setting up their own networks on their own?

A: Fiber is going everywhere.

It is in the high-tech towns-they're the ones that traditionally do it and some of the college towns are doing it too. Palo Alto is also one of the first ones to put in its own cable TV system. It constructed the cable TV in conjunction with Pac Bell quite a few years ago. Rather than having a commercial provider giving it the franchise, it chose to own its own system.

Actually, the last time I was up at Microsoft, Redmond was doing a test. They actually included an entire neighborhood and ran fiber to every house. There are some communities in the Bay area that have ricochet modems where you can be on the network. It's a little card that goes in the back of your laptop; you can be on anywhere in the community. So there are those kind around. But, Sacramento is a long ways away from any of that.

Ten years ago, Pac Bell started replacing the repeater-oriented T-1 lines with DSL technology. And interestingly, if you are willing to pay $1000 for the T-1 line, you can get HDSL access without an ISP through Pac Bell.

Yes, what happened is about three or four months ago, my office up in Folsom wanted T-1 Internet access. We got it from Pac Bell for $1600 a month on a three-year contract, and that also included a $1600 installation charge. But that was a three-year commitment. So if anyone wants a T-1 into their house, they can do that. We just put one in for a local company up in Placerville that was quite a bit less than that. So, you can get different flavors of that, too. Or, you can go frame, which can sometimes go faster than T-1 lines.

Q: I didn't hear any remarks or comments about cellular interfaces.

A: Right now, they're in their infancy. I just saw that somebody's got one that they say will work. I'll believe it when I see it. I keep trying to interface this poor thing (cell phone) to my laptop, and so far I haven't been successful. So, it is still a couple of years away.

I have a friend who has one working in Portland.

Then it may be here sooner.

They're claiming they may have it up by mid-October here in Sacramento.

That's on the Sprint PCS. The modem they're working on right now is specific to PCS band phones only. It won't work on a digital cellular; it won't work on an analog cellular. You have to have Sprint PCS phones.

They do have GSM modems that will work on Pacific Bell wireless, which is a GSM system, which is the international standard, and I have seen those. I haven't used them, but I have seen them.

Q: These very high speed connections sound impressive, but in my experience, the bottleneck is the Web itself. For instance, I have personally never even come close to reaching one-half the capability of my plain old telephone service and modem. How much will these actually speed up your service?

A: That's a good thing that you actually said that. If you're going to put out a house fire and you've got a two-inch line and then you hook it up to a garden hose, you're only going to get so much water to that house. So the bottleneck basically is wherever the smallest pipe is. So, if you are hitting a Web site that is housed on a little frame sitting at 128 K, you are going to bottleneck there. It depends upon what you are hitting. The Web, of course, with all the switches out there and all the routers and so forth, they're doing gigabyte transfers and everything like that, but as we add more PCs, it's still getting slower and slower. That's a good question.

Q: On Pac Bell's Web site, I notice they have offerings that they have partnering companies that will do the DSL so that you can get your DSL as well.

A: That's because they have to. They have to open the technology up to your choice.

Some of those are more expensive. Somebody directed me to one called Flashcom.com. It supposedly has an all-DSL network provider that is offered at the same price as Pac Bell. Are there any advantages/disadvantages of going with one of these others instead of Pac Bell?

What long-distance company do you have?

Sprint.

Do you see any advantages over ATT?

I don't know.

The only disadvantage of switching to another one is that you've got to change your e-mail. The other thing is that you are using the same cable pair. One of the advantages around the e-mail switching is I use a bigfoot e-mail address.

But you have to change it once.

Yes, but if I change ISPs, I can still keep the same e-mail address.

I'm going to change ISPs anyway because my ISP is not going to offer DSL.

It probably told you it was lousy technology, didn't it?

I haven't even talked to it yet. Flashcom advertises that it is all DSL and that it is on the fiber backbone across the nation. I'm just wondering if that might be something better than Pac Bell offers or does anybody have any comment on that?

Unless it is cheaper, I don't see any benefits.

It is the same price. Because it is new technology, I don't think you are going to see any real savings yet, as far as money is concerned. For speed, it's the same.

Q: Speaking of money, all of your calculations for the cable modem prices were if you have the cable TV all ready. Now, what if I wanted to keep my satellite dish and not get cable TV?

A: It will cost you the same as getting cable, the basic cable, and you'll just not use it. It's $39.95 or whatever.

What is the basic cable for TV? Does that make it higher than DSL if I actually didn't want the TV?

That's a good question. I'm not sure.

It is $12 for basic cable, and then assuming you get it, is going to be $30, so that would be $42. Well, DSL is what, $39?

Plus $10.

It's about the same.

So the price comparison it really isn't lower.

It's one of those things. None of these companies can make it (the price) too far off each other. And, that's the way it is.

Q: Does anyone have a cable modem here now?

A: I have used it when I was down in San Diego visiting friends, and I was impressed.

But, you were using regular modems though; you'd be impressed by anything.

I also have access to fast connections through work, and for a phone system, I was still quite impressed with its speed.

Today I have one computer. So, if I'm looking at DSL, do I use their card in my machine? Two months from now, I'm going to have a second machine. I really want to be planning for my second machine. What should I be looking at if I'm going to go DSL for that kind of situation?

Put a network in and run it off a hub or something like that.

You were saying that they would want to bring their own card but...

Only into the primary machine.

You get the card anyway, so why not scam a card out of them. You don't have to use it.

If you're going to add another computer, I just had DSL installed, and you can fan that out to other computers. We have five computers on our network. We're all using DSL. I enjoy downloads usually in excess of 100Kbps-sometimes as slow as 40 or 50Kbps-but I need to address that bottleneck. That bottleneck is still there. You'll get on Web pages where it takes 30 seconds or a minute just for it to change to the next page. It is still there. With the DSL I have been using for the last month, I don't think my wife has seen me for more than about two days. It's hot; it's impressive. We have the enhanced DSL at our office for $79 a month. We called and about 2 weeks later the technician dropped off the Kensington card, plugged it into our network, spent about 15 minutes, plugged in an IP address, then he left. And, it has been a pleasurable experience.

Now did you do what I suggested and put it behind the proxy, or did you put it in front of the proxy?

We put it behind the proxy.

That's what I do, and that is a very recommendable thing.

Only Milt has been able to hack into my server, so I'm not too worried. We got it from Pac Bell. I did not want them as an ISP. We could have gotten it like that, but it would have been more expensive. So, I kept my current ISP, which is Cal Web; it's charging me $20 a month for my regular service, and then I use the DSL.

Q: I live in Mexico, and we are connected to our ISP by cellular because we have no phone lines. So I thought you might be interested. That is possible. And I would just like to ask you if you could peek into the future and see what is the best way for us to go down there cause it looks like the phone lines-well, it's a third world country is the best I can say.

A: I suspect the cellular and the combination of the satellite would probably be your best bet.

We can get the satellite, but we can't upload yet.

Yeah, 2002; in 2002 you'll be in great shape. You'll be able to run big time-46 megs.

I've got a comment on the question of sharing the modem. With the Windows 98 second edition, I've got a small network at home. I just put that in and can share the Internet connection. I was getting a lot of flack from my wife because she's always calling from the other room, "Are you off the net yet?" So now we use one Internet connection, pay one service, and we can both be browsing at the same time. It really works very easily and works pretty slick.