Flow Traditional Land Line vs Flow Cable Land line
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DSL vs HFC. The right person for this would be Brandysull or anyone that's in the ISP field.
Not my field though I have general knowledge - so correct me where I'm wrong please.
DSL is older technology. The speeds are slower. It is limited by the number of ports/cards available in the DSLAM. The speeds degrade over distance (attenuation). Service is available when there is an outage because the ISP has backup power/generators at the enclosed areas where their equipment lies.
HFC still suffers from attenuation, but the buildout of the network addresses this by not having any equipment associated with a node that's too far away. Doesn't mean you can't - but they just don't do it for best practices. You can get backup batteries for the nodes - but there's a history of them being stolen. So it's not usually done.
Fiber does have attenuation issues as well, but the distance is FAR more than copper lines. The links to each node isn't always fiber it seems like they use a main node in some areas with coaxial amplifiers.
DSL stays up because it travels on POTS. The thing is - your friend got lucky. If you have a storm and a tree takes down a line - that's it. We don't get major earthquakes in Jamaica so they should have invested in better infrastructure with most of the lines being buried. Less interruption to all services. If the link from your friend to the DSLAM went down - no internet. If the phone is what you're concerned about - the same principle applies. If there is a break somewhere the service would go down.
The difference in the services being up or not - POTS is focused on phones. The data is just a perk. HFC is focused on data/media with the phone being a perk. Basically. But all services go down on HFC - because there's no battery backup. Partly because the get stolen - partly because - FLOW. The reason POTS stays up is because the equipment is on a compound that's fenced. Persons going in do so at their own risk. The HFC backups are in boxes on the poles - people climb them and vandalize. They just need the battery.
If things were done differently - or underground - we wouldn't have these issues. Hopefully you can take away something from the long ranting - and hopefully it was somewhat informative.
For the persons in the industry - please make the corrections where needed.
as what he said is largely accurate and covers most of your questions.
Originally Posted by BNOVA
