WHAT YOU
NEED TO KNOW

FOUR IMPORTANT
QUESTIONS TO
ASK

1. Do you have one of the following you want to be able to use with your new ISDN phone number(s)?
   1. Modem
   2. FAX machine
   3. Plain old telephone

   If the answer is yes, then you should make sure there is a RJ-11 connector (regular old phone jack) on the ISDN access device. You can plug your existing stuff into it. You will need one jack for each device, *don't* try and split them with an analog phone splitter. If you do, remember I told you so.

   There is this thing called Ring Equivalence or REN (if you want to sound cool). It determines the number of phones that can be rung off a given phone line. Some equipment has a REN lower then the analog line from the phone company. The longer the wire, the worse it gets. The phone itself has a lot to do with it too.

   So after all that... Try it, it will most likely work. If it doesn't try a different phone. Get a phone that doesn't have one of those monster solenoids they use to hammer out an audible ring. ("Goes tweet tweet, not RING RING")

   The same can be true for FAX machines and those cursed little boxes you can buy that are suppose to switch between fax, phone and answering machines, ("ugh! shudder").

2. Do you need a modem? Some devices have them built in. But remember, you're buying an ISDN device *not* an analog modem. How well the built in modem performs and upgrades may be in question here. A better bet may be to use your existing modem, or just go buy one.

3. How do you want to connect the computer to the ISDN ? Modems almost always use a serial port, which is just fine since they are low speed devices. At ISDN speeds you may want to consider using an Ethernet Port. Again, ask yourself are you using a modem to access the internet NOW? If you are, then you have invested in software, and installed it to run on your computer so that it talks to your serial port. If you want to use the ethernet port, you will likely need different software, and need to reinstall everything.

   All this considered, the ethernet port is about 100x faster than a serial port, and you can connect as many different computers as you have bandwidth to support. By using the ethernet port you can route packets from your local network out to the net, and conversely onto your local net.

   This is very cool and should be preferred, particularly if you want your computer to act as a host on the internet, so that others may access your site directly. Buffer an tell you more if you browse his web page.

<--- | back to more questions | top of page

CREDITS