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Ok I have a question for all you networking people out there. I have DSL through a local ISP using Verizons phone lines. the phone lines are frame relay lines not ATM lines. Yes I know thats out of date, but welcome to living in a small town.

Anyway Verizon says that a Fujitsu Speedport modem, and ONLY a fujitsu speedport modem will work on this system. Does any one know if/why this is? I bought a netgear DG814 modem because it had the modem and router all in one unit and said 100% compatible with DSL service. But Verizon is saying that that unit will not work.

I was having connectivity issues with it, basically the thing just wouldn't even try to connect. However I got a fujitsu I borrowed and connected it and it still didn't work. Finally Verizon realized they should do a trace and found a short in the line out in the field somewhere. Anyway they say that that will be fixed by this afternoon. At which time I should be able to get the fujitsu modem working, but I'm just wondering if there is a chance the DG814 will work with it or not.

Does anyone have any experience with frame relay lined dsl and alternate modems?

Thanks

Dunno - try it and see is all I can say.

Best of luck!

Don't believe the lies. All verizon is trying to do is make a quick buck. Regardless of if your DSL is Frame relay or ATM does not mean only such-and-such equipment can be used. If you have DSL any DSL MODEM will work. UNLESS, they do something like only allow the MAC address from the fujitsu one.

In other words Verizon has a contract with Fujitsu stating the will sell X amount of DSL MODEMS and Fujitsu will then do something for them. And then Verizon in turns tells the customer ONLY OUR DSL MODEMS work.

I have a friend who works for ALLTEL and they do the small thing in and around the small towns here in Georgia.

See that makes sense to me that it is a contract issue with Verizon and fujitsu. But I called Netgear directly and they said that the modem I bought wouldn't work with Frame Relay either.

I think tech support people just don't know what they are talking about. I work for the local ISP that I'm using. I work as a web guy, but the network folk down the hall said the exact same thing you did. That there should be no reason what so ever that the modem shouldn't work. There isn't a difference between frame relay and ATM lines. I guess once the line is fixed and active I will test out the fujitsu and Netgear modems and see if they both work.

Thanks for the info tanker27.

From what I read somewhere those Fujitsu modems are the only modem that works with their Fujitsu DSLAM. When you use frame relay or ATM you sometimes do need certain equipment but I'm not familiar with that service too much. What is that costing you anyway? Must be over $100 a month.

Well, to be fair to the phone company, it's a lot easier for their tech support if everybody is using the same modem. As you've discovered, phone company techs aren't generally the brightest ornaments on the tree, so keeping things simple for them is a good strategy. And they may not have a contract issue -- they just bought a crap-load of DSL modems at a low price and they want to use them up.

That said, I'd take the word of ISP network guys over any phone co tech support. I got DSL when it first rolled out (4+ years ago) and got friendly with my ISP folks while working through the tangle that was USWest (now Qwest). I was paying for their "256K" service but discovered I was getting more like 480K down and 320K up. The ISP folks explained that the equipment USWest was using at the head-end didn't allow them to throttle the bandwidth lower than that, and in effect I was getting the same service as the people who were buying the 512K service... I just wasn't paying for it. After about 9 months USWest sent me a letter informing me I was going to get "more bandwidth for the same price." Of course, nothing had changed -- they had just started acknowledging reality (which apparently was cheaper than actually adding equipment to throttle my bandwidth, especially with competition from high-speed cable on the scene).

There are different flavors of DSL... but from what I've seen, the consumer service rolled out by pretty much all the phone companies is the same. So your modem+router should work, but the proof is in the trying.

I wish all the telcos used modems with integrated routers, or at least NAT -- we'd have much less of a problem with worms.

Thanks for the info. Thats the one thing the ISP tech guys said was that the dsl modem not working might be some sort of issue with the DSLAM not working with it.

Anyway the Verizon guy was just in looking at the lines and aparently there is a load on the line somewhere and dsl can't work with a load on the line. Last I saw he jumped down a manhole and I haven't heard word from him since.

Lets hope there are no alligators down there like the rumors say. I want my DSL. They can have dinner once he is done working on my lines.

Just so everyone knows I got the dsl up and running over the weekend. I tried out that netgear modem and it in fact doesn't work. But the fujitsu modem that verizon supplies does work perfectly fine. I guess that proves that verizon does either block all other modems or their DSLAM is a fujitsu one and only excepts fujitsu modems.

Luckily I had a spare modem I could borrow to test things out, and then ordered one brand new off of ebay for 13.55. Not a bad price considering verizon wanted to charge me 200.00.