Does anyone use ISDN ?***UPDATE***

My wife is a stay at home mom and she landed a job, after 3 years of trying, doing medical transcription for a couple of hospitals which will allow her to work from home. With my health problems it could not have come at a better time. Problem is that since we live so far out in the country we dont have cable or DSL service. So we are having to get ISDN run to the house. It will be connected by the end of next week they say. I was just wondering if anyone else had it or have had it in the past and how good it worked. To make matters worse my current internet service does not support ISDN so I may have to go with AOL. I already tried Earthlink but it attached itself to my computer like a virus and I had to remove it. I may yet be able to find an alternitive to AOL but right now I have a 2 month free trial with them to get used to it just in case. Actually I am on AOL right now. I still have my old Bellsouth internet service also, it only cost $5 a month on the plan we have, because I am not ready to switch all my accounts over until I settle on another ISP.

***UPDATE***- First of all I want to say thank you to everyone for your support and help. I got the ISDN installed and everything is working great so far. I found a Adtran Express 3000 on Ebay and it works great. I also found an ISP called localnet.com that works with ISDN for only $10 a month unlimited usage, no per minute or byte fees. Right now my connection is 115.2 kbps which while not the 128 kbps I could get it is still darn faster than dial up. Hopefully know my wife can start training for her new job and everything will go smooth. Again thank you for all your help and well wishes.
Jeff

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

try satelite i think isdn is like 256 k?

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

raggie,
If you mean satelite tv like Directv it is a no go. The hospitals will not let you use it. Besides I dont have Directv anymore. I had to cancel it a couple of months ago because most of my money is going towards medical bills.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

i hope ya get better soon.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

Thanks raggie. There are people out there a lot worse off than I am so no worries. I am just going through a tough time right now. I am sure one day it will pass. Doctor said I needed to find another job. Boy that will be easy /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

Once you gewt past the initial configuration problems (configuring the SPID, etc) you should be ok. We used to use ISDN backup at work and we had very little trouble with it, and I have a friend who has been using it at home for a few years now.

Get well soon.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

I had ISDN for a few years, it's not bad. The speed is only 128k but it's pretty reliable at that speed.

As Photonwrangler already mentioned getting it setup will be the pain in the next part. The phone company really dropped the ball with this one. They could have made this affordable and understandable 10 years ago and there would be no cable modem, they would own the market. But they made it so expensive and difficult to order and maintain that nobody gets it as their first choice.

Once you get it working, the other problem is that when you do have a problem with it, nobody will be able to figure out what it is /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif So be patient with the guys at the phone company and go through all their garbage and when you finally get to a second or third tier fellow who can actually help get them to give you their number so that in the future you can talk directly to them.

I would recommend an ISDN router as an external stand alone device and not an internal modem card or USB style isdn modem. Especially with the pass the buck mentality the phone company support has the least number of things between you and the connection the fewer things they can blame it on besides themselves. This way windows and usb drivers and the like cannot be part of the problem. The router gives you a regular ethernet port and windows just connects regularly as if you had a cable or DSL modem or whatever. These are a little more expensive, but worth it in less aggravation if you can find one at a decent cost.

And yes, you have to have somewhere to dial in to with it, like earthlink. Here's a bit of advise. NO MATTER WHO YOU CHOOSE DON"T RUN THEIR DAMNABLE SETUP DISK. or you'll have the same problems that you did with earthlink.

The very nice thing about earthlink is that in addition to the package of software that will screw up your computer, if you scroll down a bit on the confirmation page of the signup receipt there is a bit that talks about "For the advanced user there is no need to run our software to connect, here is what you need to know" and in the next 4 or 5 lines you get everything you need to know to get connected and you don't have to run any of their crappy setup software that screws with every setting on your machine. This is the same for Mac and Windows setup software from ISP's, I have had nothing but pain on any platform by running what they give you. Figure out how to setup the 4 or 5 things you have to know about manually and you'll be much happier. Earthlink makes this easier than most, I had a great experience getting my moms machine on with them. we switched her from a generic service that was really lousy to them and even over the phone I had her setup manually to use earthlink with that "advanced" data in less than 10 minutes.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

Thanks guys for all the advice. I have an external ISDN router coming my way. The company my wife is going to work for had some extra ones they were not using and is sending her one for free. My computer already has AOL installed in it from the factory so I know it works well with my current system. I may have to give Earthlink another shot or find some other ISP provider which supports ISDN. I really hate to go with AOL but if it is the easiest to use for the time being I may have to. Also since PhotonWrangler's post I have found a webpage which explains how to configure the SPID for my operating system. Thanks again guys /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

ISDN is a reliable choice. I have done a few home/office installations. IMHO you would be OK with any ISP you want to choose IF you use your own software rather than the packages. A lot of providers would just let you assume you HAVE to use the software they provide. This is not true. As long as you have the information you need to authenticate: the server and youe user login....you can connect then you can use a variety of freeware, shareware or commercial programs that meet your needs.

There are free email, ftp, messenger, file sharing and other programs that will work with any ISP.

What I have found is that people have the toughest time with email. You will need to get the server name for email and use it to configure your choice of email programs. MS Outlook is OK....if you have an A/V program that scans email and you keep it updated. There are others that have better features.

Get a good A/V program. Learn the setup on your router. Get a good firewall. In spite of the negativity about software firewalls using one can pay off. The downside to all of this is that you will have to spend some time and effort learning the stuff. The upside is the level of comfort you will have when you are properly set up.

I find that in spite of the fact that this is a flashlight forum there are many here with computer experience and they are willing to share and answer questions. You will find more help.

Forge on.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

Why couldn't you run a ISDN through a NAT Firewall/Router.

Voila! hardware firewall and if you reallllly wanted you could get a second computer on the connection.

I know nada about ISDN so one of the other guys will have to confirm if this could/would even work.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

Yes it would. it is the usual setup.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

I looked at ISDN not that long ago. I cannot get DSL (but I now have cable). ISDN is expensive (you need to replace at least one telephone, and ISDN phones are a whole lot dearer than POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). It is also metered, you get past the base traffic level (easy to do on the Internet, and you can get a hefty bill). I'd suggest you look into Satelite Starband to be precise.
www.starband.com. The uplink is kind of slow, but the downlink leaves ISDN in the dust, and it leaves your existing phone service in place.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

If you can avoid using AOL you will be better off, aol is a memory hog that just fills your hard drive and slows any connection down. Find the cheapest ISP for work purposes.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

[ QUOTE ]
smokinbasser said:
If you can avoid using AOL you will be better off, aol is a memory hog that just fills your hard drive and slows any connection down. Find the cheapest ISP for work purposes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, especially one that doesn't require you to use their own "special" interface (like AOL does). Fortunately most of them don't, but it's something to add to your checklist of things to ask.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

[ QUOTE ]
mattheww50 said:
I looked at ISDN not that long ago. I cannot get DSL (but I now have cable). ISDN is expensive (you need to replace at least one telephone, and ISDN phones are a whole lot dearer than POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). It is also metered, you get past the base traffic level (easy to do on the Internet, and you can get a hefty bill). I'd suggest you look into Satelite Starband to be precise.
www.starband.com. The uplink is kind of slow, but the downlink leaves ISDN in the dust, and it leaves your existing phone service in place.

[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the pointers. I had already looked at Starband but the hospitals said no go. Bellsouth ISDN service is supposed to be $82 a month unlimited usage. I shall give them a call back just to be sure about that though.
Thanks everyone for all your help.
Jeff

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

ISDN should be peachy after you get it set up. For most people the main problem is the cost. I don't know if you are looking at a nailed up connection or dialup, but the former can be pretty expensive unless you happen to own the line on the other end (work provides).

For a couple of years I had a nailed up connection terminated on a Cisco router on both ends. This was to my office and I got my Internet from them. This worked well and it was enough bandwidth to deal with busy "X" applications such as Legato Networker. We had tested the Intel Proshare video conferencing system over this type of setup and it worked as long as you didn't have anything else going on. Basically 128Kb sync isn't too bad.

Note that (at least at the time) phone companies had residential and business rates (the latter being more expensive) and in each case there was an metered and unlimited rate. In the metered rate, you got so many minutes and then they started charging you something like $.04 a min (for EACH channel!) after that. So basically if you weren't careful, you could really ring up a big bill. In the end, make sure you understand the rate structure so you don't get hosed.

In regards to sat Internet connection (DirectPC, etc) these have a lot of latency, so even tho they have a fair amount of (downstream) bandwidth, they may not "feel" responsive. A lot of places who use some sort of security access (SSH, VPN) don't want to use this because the latency can wreck havic with the security protocols.

Good luck!

-john

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

You don't need an ISDN phone /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif The router will have 2 "POTS" (which really does stand for "plain old telephone service" I swear!) ports on it and you just plug your regular phones into them and disconnect from outside.

If the router is any good then it will drop one of the data lines and drop your speed down to 64k while you make the call (or receive a call) and then reconnect one of the 2 lines for data again when you're done.

Be careful on the charge though. There are 2 kinds of ISDN, regular which can handle phone lines and what they call "centrex" (don't remember the spelling) which cannot be a phone line. In my case I was paying around $90 a month BUT if I had the non-centrex I would have to pay a federal tax of $.02 cents a minutes PER B channel. Since 128k is 2 B Channels that was $.04 a minute! So needless to say I kept my regular phone lines in tact and had a second one brought in for ISDN separate from it. I used my connection 10 or 12 hours a day or more and so that little tax would add up in a hurry.

Saaby, an ISDN router is just like a cable router or other hardware NAT box, they will do all the same things and gives you the ability to have multiple machines and the firewall and all that.

Here I feel I should relay my best support story ever, it was when having ISDN trouble.

My ISDN line went out about 4:50pm on a friday afternoon. And of course they were all gone when I tried to call. The weekend people were completely useless and even the people I paged were unable to help as they had no access to the ISDN stuff, knew nothing about it and refused to page whoever was supposed to be on call about it.

So on Monday I get through to the right person after going through all the garbage again with the low level guys (including answering the question 3 times of what browser i'm using and insisting that the light was red on my router and that there wasn't any damn browser running thank you) Finally the guy told me I'd have to call my router manufacturer and make them fix it cause it was my router and not them. then the guy said, hold on a second... One of the network guys had just walked past his cube, they spoke for about 3 sentences. Then he came back on the line and said, wait just a minute. The network guy walked into the back room, was gone less than 30 seconds, and came back. "Try it now" they said, and my line came right back up.

they had been giving me the run around for 3 days and were about to write me off when they realized they had forgotten to plug back in my part of the neighborhood or something. I was FURIOUS and happy at the same time /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

In 3 years I only had 2 outages of more then 10 or 15 minutes, this was typical of what happened both occasions. Like I said, it's very reliable when it's working. but when it goes down you're screwed /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

If you think ISDN is bad, read up on "Broadband ISDN" - it's a nightmare.

Imagine if telcos had designed the internet, but instead of it being based around software and packet networks, it was based on hardware and circuit networks.

That's what B-ISDN looks to be all about.

Everything would require its own device. Everything would be vaguely compatible, but impractical. I can only imagine the billing - think that wireless networks are scamming you @ $0.20 per picture that has to be transmitted over the air to an email address rather than just transferring it to the neares PC via, say, USB? That's straightforward and honest by comparison!

It was such a 70s/80s vision of the future, being perpetrated in the late 90s. It was amazing how doomed to failure the concept was, but I guess they still dream about it - perhaps as a way to make telecommunications more expensive again.

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

Having installed, configured, supported, etc ISDN at MANY locations, I'll add my $.02

1) seems to be very reliable 99.5% of time
2) when it goes down, you're up a creek. NOBODY knows how to troubleshoot the darn service/etc
3) latency is some of the best I have EVER seen, makes that 128k seem a WHOLE lot faster
4) if the company is giving you some leftover isdn equipment, ASK FOR A SPARE SET. ISDN stuff is getting HARD to come by. With a spare you'll have stuff to troubleshoot with/etc.
5) learn how to go into the router and do a loopback call
6) know your spids and isdn type (there are like 3 or so)
7) go ahead and pre-emptively call bellsouth tech and try to get some phone #s ahead of time. You WILL need them.
8) get an isdn lightning arrestor (see www.apc.com)

Depending on what your local telco has in your area (yes, even though you are remote) you may be able to get a frame connection/etc instead of isdn.

I had 1 guy that lived in the boonies. He was like 85 miles away from the nearest town that even offered ISDN. He wanted me to get him the fastest net connection I could find (dialup was being used at the time). I told him that dsl/cable/satellite was out and that his only theoretical choice was to try for isdn. We finally got bellsouth to backhaul 2 isdn lines 85 miles for him. They charged him by the foot!!! You should have heard the ISP signup guy when I told him we were ready to signup for a dual channel isdn account and we were in a different area code!!! Ahhhh, fun times. After I got it working, it got struck by lightning about 2 months later. After some hasty equipment purchases (including an APC isdn surge arrestor), he was back up and running. Yes, before you ask, dude was loaded. (can you say 9 zeros?)

Re: Does anyone use ISDN ?

Further to Turbodogs comments:

- Make sure whatever ISP you're working with will support DUAL ISDN connections. Basically your two ISDN numbers (64 kbps "B" channels) will both call in to the ISP so you get 128kbps.

- Although you can theoretically ditch your POTS, I'd recommend against it, if you don't have another backup (e.g. cell phone). If your ISDN goes out, or your NT or router coughs up a furball, or you lose power you won't have a phone. Also makes calling somebody to complain about your ISDN tricky /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

- Make sure you know what you need, too. Does the company your wife is working for expect her to connect to them over the internet? Or will she be dialling their servers directly? If it's the latter, the ISP issues are moot (except unless you want it for personal use).

- A buddy of mine had ISDN for about a year and it was pretty reliable once they get his line tweaked up. I think he was using the phone co. as his ISP (Verizon). Billing was a constant furball, though.

Cheers,
Bob