The basic procedure is as follows:
Once you have ordered the service, the Telco should provide you with a Due Date. I was able to do the entire order in one phone call through my Telco, and they coordinated with the order with my ISP. I was given a due date that was one week later, and everything was completed on time, with no problems.
The system (PC, workstation, router or hub) that will be directly connected to the ADSL ANT .
You need inside wire (2 or 4 wire) from the Telco Demarcation Point (the side of your house) to your PC location. Your existing phone line can be used. However, this inside wire can only be used for the ANT, and no other phones or extensions can be connected to this line. The Telcos or other companies can be contracted to install a new wire for you as well.
Who will wire it up in your house? You can do the splitter wiring yourself (My local Telco provided a wiring kit and instructions for performing the inside wiring ) or you can contract them do it for an additional fee. You can save around $ 150-250 dollars by doing it yourself, which I did, or you can save yourself the hassle and have them do it. You can decide what you want to do after reading the procedure that I have included in this document. The bottom line is if you are used to dealing with phone and/or network LAN wiring procedures, and feel comfortable with doing this, then you should consider going for it. If you haven't, and your company is going to pay for it, then have them do it.
The Telco will normally test your line before you order service to see if it is can pass the ADSL signal. You must be within 2-3 miles (11-16 kilofeet) of the Central Office, and have a loop that has no loading coils, bridge taps, DAMLs, or other impediments. Most of the Loops that support ISDN can also support ADSL, but since ADSL is more restrictive, this is no guarantee of success. Your Telco will help you here.
Is the ADSL/DSLAM equipment is available at your Central Office? Again, the Telco will check to see if it available in your area. Every major Telco in the US, and many new dedicated ADSL providers have announced plans for ADSL. I expect wide scale deployment by 1Q99.
ADSL is priced according to the Bit Rate - Check with your Telco. You can usually order some combination of 128k,256k,384k, or 1.5M speeds. Your loop may restrict the bit rate you can be offered. My Telco also prices the service differently if you're a Residence or Business Customer.
Some providers (usually the big Telcos) offer POTS with ASDL. If you choose this option, you will need to specify which phone number (new or existing) you want assigned to it. You will need to designation whether you want the ADSL to go over an existing POTS service, or whether you want a new phone number for the analog phone line. If you have ISDN service, and want to use the same line, the ISDN service must first be disconnected. Note that some Telcos (usually dedicated DSL providers) do not offer this option.
Your ISP of choice must be presubscribed with the ADSL Telco provider. Check with your ISP to see if they are connected. If they are not connected then you must either move to another ISP, convince them to connect up, or decide not to use ADSL.
First, you'll need to know whether your IP addressing will be static or dynamic. Dynamic addressing is set through the use of DHCP.
Additionally, for static addressing, ISPs will allow anywhere from 1 to 254 IP addresses to be assigned to an ADSL line, with the corresponding Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM).
My ISP charges more money as you get more hosts. I suspect that most applications will use either 1 host (32 bit mask) or 6 hosts (29 bit mask). If your confused, then read the IP-Subnetting HOWTO. Also remember than multi-host subnets require 1 of the hosts to be the ISP router address (meaning that the 6 host subnet is really 5 hosts to you) and you can use IP Masquerading/ (see the HOWTO) or Network Address Translation (NAT) to support a larger number of addresses behind your LAN. If you request more than 30 hosts, be prepared to fill out a justification form for your ISP.
The default gateway address. Normally, this is the first host address in your subnet. (e.g. if your subnet range and mask is 192.168.1.240/29, then your host range is .241 through .246, with the default gateway assigned to the .241 address.
The ANTs can support a set number of MAC addresses for bridging. For example, the ADSL ANT that I use is limited to 16 MAC addresses. This should be sufficient for most applications. However, if you plan to support a large number of machines directly off the hub of the ANT, you should check first to see what your limit is.
The ISP should provide you with one or more DNS server addresses to support Domain Name Lookups. Some ISPs also provide Domain Name Server hosting (either primary or secondary server) for you as part of the dedicated service packages. See your ISP for more details.
The ISP will normally assign you a login/password for shell, mail, etc. access. My ISP also provides web space, mail server, and some other goodies.