Strencom

Business Services
12Mb                          1Mb & 2Mb        24:1
10Mb                          832K                  24:1
7.6Mb                         672K                  24:1
6Mb                            512K                  24:1

Residential / Teleworker Services
7.6Mb                          672K                 48:1
3Mb                             384K                 48:1
1Mb                             128K                 48:1

Full details of all services are available at index.cfm/page/broadband

So what is Rate Adaptive DSL?
Rate Adaptive DSL is another variant of DSL, which, by varying its own speed when the line conditions deteriorate, allows DSL to be delivered over slightly longer lines. On these longer/poorer lines the speed can reduce to 64/256k, which is still significantly better than ISDN.
Rate Adaptive should work over lines up to 1km longer than ADSL but even this will vary with the quality of the copper pair in question. Nationally this should increase coverage by about 10% on average. The actual increase in any one exchange will depend on the exchange. For city centre exchanges, where there are fewer long lines, the increase may be negligible. But in city edge exchanges and rural exchanges it should have an appreciable effect.
Rate Adaptive DSL is also provided with a contention ratio of 48:1 as opposed to 24:1 for ADSL.
Remember the modem will itself decide on the speed to use depending on line conditions and the same customer may get different speeds from time to time as conditions change. The modem will always try to connect at the highest speed allowed and 'step down' (in 32k steps) until a successful communication can be established.

What types of data can it carry?
As with almost all of our data products, DSL can carry almost any type of traffic. Text, graphics, music, movies, spreadsheets etc can all be comfortably carried by DSL. It is expected that the main traffic on most DSL circuits will be web browsing (TCP/IP), as all users will use this as their link to their ISP.

What are its benefits?
- Very high-speed access to the Internet. (15 to 50 TIMES faster than PSTN or hi-speed)
- “Always-on” connection – no need to ‘dial up’ and connect.
- Multiple users on the same connection
- Flat fee for time online (as little as €1.06 /day), regardless of duration (maximum monthly download allowance may be applied!).
- Split billing for companies who wish to supply this to their staff at home.
- Your telephone service works normally even when you’re online.
- Real-time delivery of e-mail while you’re online.
- No 'Set-up' time or getting engaged tone from ISP.
- Financial break-even (ignoring the above benefits) with PSTN/ISDN can be surprisingly early for Broadband. Further down this page we graph the various possibilities (ISDN/PSTN, subscription / subscription free, peak/off-peak etc).

What is the contention ratio?
Contention ratio is the term used to describe the situation whereby customers share capacity on a line or within a network. For example if everyone in Cork phoned someone in Dublin at the same time, not all calls would get through because there is only a limited number of circuits between Cork and Dublin. But the chances of this happening are extremely remote so the contention ratio used has little effect on the service to the customer. However if the number of circuits were further reduced people would begin to notice a reduction in the quality of service (i.e. more busy tones when they try to ring Dublin) so the balance is what's important here.

For IP traffic a contention ratio is even less of an issue (provided the ratio is not extremely high) because, unlike voice telephony, Internet traffic is 'bursty' in nature: when a customer is connected to the Internet they do not use 512kbps at all times. Browsing the web may only use a part of this bandwidth for a number of seconds then none at all until the customer loads the next page.

The 'contention ratio' is the ratio of bandwidth sold to bandwidth provided on the backbone: in Strencom’s case the contention ratio is 24:1 (48:1 on "Teleworker"), meaning that for every 24 1Mbps connections sold, 1Mbps in total is provided on the backbone for them to share. 48 customers would share 2Mbps and so on. This is about the usual contention ratio for business-class DSL services worldwide.

We do not give any guarantees to customers on contended links, however the chances of them experiencing poor service on our networks is low. Remember Broadband is a best effort service and should be sold as such. Remember also that this service connects them to the Internet! If congestion is experienced on Broadband circuit the chances are that they have hit a slow connection some where on the Internet.

What is Prequal or prequalification?
This is a process whereby the customers line can be checked to see if it will support a DSL product. The response is simply a Pass or Fail and the reason for the fail will not be available. A line may fail for a variety of reasons

How reliable are the DSL prequalification results?

The prequalification test is a predictive tool and is not an absolute guarantee that the line tested will support a DSL service. Service cannot be proven until the installation on site has been completed. Prequalification has nevertheless proven to give a reliable and accurate indication that lines passing can support service.

Explain upstream & downstream?
These refer to the direction of the data flow. Information from the user to the exchange is considered upstream and information from the exchange to the user is called downstream. The requirements are usually very different. If you consider a typical user on the Internet they send very small amounts of information ‘to’ the net (usually only URL’s requesting pages or files*) but the pages or files requested will usually be much larger amounts of data, which must be delivered back to the customer. To more efficiently use the capacity, ADSL assigns more bandwidth to the downstream direction where it is more usually needed. For this reason ADSL might not be as useful to someone who maintains large websites from home as they may have large files to send to the ISP on a regular basis. Having said that, however, it will still be a useful technology for this type of customer, as it will provide at least 128k upstream.
*Naturally, where customers send many e-mails with large attachments there will be increased upstream traffic.

For the Self-install option, does the customer have to purchase the modem/router from Strencom?
No, the customer is welcome to source an ADSL modem elsewhere, however, Strencom will not provide support for this modem beyond providing the necessary configuration settings.

In addition, the Broadband starter kit includes a Micro filters which must be used when self-installing ADSL. When self-installing micro filters are required in any second or subsequent phone on the line being used for DSL. It simply filters out any 'noise' the DSL might cause on voice calls. Information on ordering these separately can be obtained by calling 1890 92 43 92.

What if a customer has difficulties with self-install?
Strencom can send out an engineer to configure and install the router if you are having difficulty. This is charged at a cost of €165 for the basic setup. The engineer will configure the router and connect a laptop to show you that Internet access is working.

What does the Engineer Install give me?
With the engineer install option, a qualified engineer goes to your business premises. The phone socket is replaced with a micro filter, which is like a double adaptor for a phone socket. Your existing phone/fax connects into one side of the micro filter, and the Strencom ADSL Router connects into the other side. The router is then configured and the engineer will demonstrate on his laptop that it is operational by browsing the web. The engineer install does not include configuring your PC or Local Area Network (LAN) as this may be a more complex requirement and would require more in-depth planning and implementation. We recommend that you contact the company that looks after your network if you are unsure how to do this.

What equipment do I need to get Strencom Broadband?
First, the customer must be an existing Eircom line rental customer. (customers whose traffic is CPS'd may have Broadband)
The customer will be supplied with a splitter that will have sockets for both their PSTN phone and their computer. Customer will need a DSL modem (or DSL compatible modem) as a normal PSTN modem expects a PSTN line (dial tone etc) and will not work on a DSL connection.
The customer must also have a suitable computer and software capable of using ADSL. The specification will include min. Windows ’98 SE or later, 2 speed CD-ROM drive, Pentium II processor or better, min 32 Meg RAM, 300 Meg free hard disk space, Ethernet card OR USB port. There may be additional specs for Laptops (PCMCIA).
Macintosh Requirements include OS9 or higher, 32MB RAM, Power PC processor, 10MB free hard disk space, 2 speed CDROM drive, Ethernet card or USB port.

Note: Strencom will retain ownership of equipment up to and including the splitter (and Modem if provided free). Beyond the splitter Strencom will provide the internal wiring, which will be owned by the customer. If the customer upgrades the router on purchase, it will always remain your property.

Where is the service available?
(Exchanges are added almost weekly, so if your exchange is not listed, please phone Strencom ADSL sales on 1890 92 43 92)

What happens if a customer has ISDN or Hi Speed?
This will depend on the customer’s needs or requirements. Customers will be advised to consider the features of both ISDN/Hi Speed and DSL to decide which access technology best meets their requirements. Many existing ISDN/Hi Speed customers will choose to keep their ISDN/Hi Speed service to avail of ISDN/Hi Speed-specific features that DSL does not support.

Strencom’s DSL services cannot be delivered over an ISDN/Hi Speed line but a migration package now exists which seamlessly migrates the customer to PSTN and provides DSL service on that line. Technician install is required to remove the ISDN equipment but this is provided at the self-install rate so as not to penalise ISDN customers.

ISDN/Hi Speed equipment (e.g. modems) will not function on an ADSL line and ADSL will not support some of the voice services that ISDN/Hi Speed does.

Can a customer keep their ISDN number?
The customer should be advised that they can keep their main number i.e. the first number of the ISDN connection. Operations have requested that it must be the main ISDN number that’s migrated.

How does the IP addressing work?
See the product matrix for whether dynamic or static IP addresses are possible on the various products.

To move a static IP address from one DSL line to another Mail support@strencom.net and they will reroute them for you. This can normally be done within the same working day.

What if the customer requires more than one static IP address, or subnet routing?
Subject to approval from RIPE, Strencom will route up to ONE subnet onto an ADSL connection. There is no facility to route more than one subnet at this time. If the customer already has IP addresses assigned to them by RIPE, Strencom can facilitate the routing of these addresses, subject to the restriction above.

What is Interleaving?
Interleaving is a technique to increase resistance to noise bursts on a line. Interleaving "smears" out micro bits of data (interleaves them over time) so that a short burst of signal destroying noise can only remove part of any given larger block. Data blocks reserve some space for error-correction data, which can salvage a partially damaged block. Interleaving increases the chance that noise on the line will only cause partial damage, not complete loss of data.

Is interleaving used on Strencom ADSL connections?
Interleaving is an error correction process. This increases latency. The more interleaving the more latency.
It also increases the overall 'smoothness' of the service - there will be less dropped frames when streaming video and less chopping of sound when streaming radio.
Low error rates are desired for most applications but some users e.g. gamers will require the lower latency
We use high interleaving on 4Mb Unlimited and 3Mb Medium Biz, we use low interleaving on 2Mb Small Biz and 1Mb Teleworker.
We are unable to change interleaving settings on a per-customer basis.

What is the ‘download allowance’?
This is amount of information that an individual customer can download each month. The download allowance is 10Gigabytes on Teleworker, 20GB on Small Biz and its unlimited on 3Mb Medium Biz & 4Mb Unlimited (1Gigabyte = 1000 Megabytes). If a customer downloads more than this they will be charged for each Megabyte over this amount.

Note: customers may be familiar with the word ‘Download’ already and conclude that only requested ‘downloads’ (such as software upgrades or documents they request) will be measured. Be clear that the download allowance measures everything that comes from the net, every page, every file, every image; it does not refer only to download requests made by the customer. 4GB would equate to about Plain text (2kbyte per page) = 2 million pages of text.
Movie Trailers (Spielbergs A.I. medium resolution, 320x156, 1 minute 45 second trailer is 5 meg in size) = 800 movie trailers in a month.
Web pages tend to vary in size depending on the amount of graphics involved but to take Strencom’s home page as an example, and it would be considered quite a heavy page with all the animation etc, you could download 110,000 heavy web pages in a month. For average web pages of say 20 kbytes you could download 200,000 average web pages each month.
Audio streaming is about 20kbps so you could listen to about 444 hours audio streaming of this per month.
Lo-res streaming video takes about 3 times the bit rate so over 150 hours of video streaming per month.
An average MP3 file of a song will be about 3Mbytes so you could download about 1300 MP3 songs per month

Remember each of the above is either/or, you cannot have all of the above added together and each page you go through to get the above files also eats into your download allowance. In short the 4GB allowance should accommodate most users.

NB For those of you who want to check the above figures or do other such calculations for yourselves REMEMBER the download is given in Bytes as are most file sizes on the Net but the line speed is measured in bits/second and there are 8 bits in a Byte. So a 1MB file coming down a 1Mbps line will take about 8 seconds, not 1 second. In fact it will usually take slightly longer as the systems involved must use a small amount of the bandwidth for themselves (This will be the same for all suppliers not just Strencom).

What are the implications for sending and receiving mail?
To receive mail (POP or SMTP) it is not necessary to engage the ISP.
To send mail (POP), no changes are necessary to POP accounts if the other ISP allows the use of their mail servers with a Strencom IP address.
To send mail (SMTP), SMTP mail hosting may have to be changed.
The ISP must be contacted to effect the change. If the ISP does not allow mail to be sent with a Strencom IP address it will not be possible to send.

What are the names of the modems we provide?
Strencom actually provide routers instead of modems. Routers have a higher specification, and are more scalable for future growth. Routers have much more functionality than modems, and are recommended for business users.

SMC 7401 BRA USB & Ethernet
SMC 7204 BRA 4-Port Ethernet router
SMC 7804 WBRA 802.11 Wireless Routers

Details of these routers can be found at http://www.smc-europe.com

What are the support nos for the SMC broadband routers?
The support number for customers is 01-2421802