Has anyone had any luck lately getting dry pairs from AT&T? I'm in the
Chicago area attempting to get a dry pair between two buildings (100ft
apart) for some equipment, but when speaking to several folks at AT&T the
response I get is "You want AT&T service without the service? That's not
logical!". Had no problems 3-4 years ago getting these sorts of "circuits",
but it appears it's gone the way of the dodo now. Any emails off-list are
appreciated.
Years ago I managed to get a dry pair from Verizon for some homebrew DSL,
but there was some telco specific term for the dry pair, like "series 7
alarm circuit" or something. AT&T may have their own term.
-Ryan
From: Ryan Shea
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2010 2:21 PM
To: Brandon Galbraith
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: AT&T Dry Pairs?Years ago I managed to get a dry pair from Verizon for some homebrew
DSL,
but there was some telco specific term for the dry pair, like "series
7
alarm circuit" or something. AT&T may have their own term.
-Ryan
Just plain "alarm circuit" works in most cases but it has been a while
here as well.
If your sales contact don't know what an alarm circuit is, go find
AT&T's tariff filed with your state's PUC. It will contain the name of the
service. This will take some digging...
Verizon Maryland calls this an "Intraexchange local channel, regular voice
grade" and they go for $15.53/month. There are a plethora of different types
of "dry pairs" that you can order depending on the signal bandwidth of the
circuit and allowed attenuation.
If the buildings are a 100ft apart, can't you just go with a wireless connection? Speeds would probably be better and no monthly fee!
Wireless is not the end all solution for everything.
~Seth
Understood, but for $160 you can get equipment that acts as a L2 bridge with RJ45 and PoE at 50Mb/s duplex. (UBNT Nanobridge 5, they're $79 per and do 5Ghz 802.11n MCS-15 @ 40Mhz channels).
Just trying to help 
You may now shoot the off-topic messenger.
- Jared
The industry standard term is "UNE" (unbundled network element.) However, the sales drones may not recognize that either.
--Ricky
The biggest laugh I always got when I worked at the local university as
a student were trouble tickets to the Faraday cage rooms because the
campus wireless internet didn't work inside them. "But it's wireless!"
"Yes, that's the problem. Please just use the damn cable."
~Seth
Try asking for one of the following:
1. Farmer Line
2. Alarm Circuit
I think there are a few other ways to ask for a dry pair that might circumvent
the limited know-how of the people you are talking to, but, I don't recall
them off the top of my head.
Owen
I'd set up something wireless between them. Just my $0.02.
--Curtis
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Hibernia-Atlantic-to-bw-3184701710.html?x=0&.v=1
Roderick S. Beck
Director of European Sales
Hibernia Atlantic
Budapest, New York, and Paris
http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com
Landline: 36+1+784+7975
AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth
rod.beck@hiberniaatlantic.com
info@globalwholesalebandwidth.com
``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Hibernia-Atlantic-to-bw-3184701710.html?x=0&.v=1
Roderick S. Beck
Director of European Sales
Hibernia Atlantic
Sales spam - but still - very close to minimum possible latency!
3471 miles @ 186,282 miles/s * 1.5 in glass * 2 round trip = 55.9ms.
My first thought is that they've found a way to cheat on the 1.5. If you can
make it work at 1.4, you get down to 52.2ms - but get it *too* low and all
your photons leak out the sides. Hmm.. Unless you have a magic core that
runs at 1.1 and a *cladding* that's up around 2.0?
Yeah, I wonder when we're gonna see cable that's pumped down to a vacuum in
the center?
Yeah, I wonder when we're gonna see cable that's pumped down to a vacuum in
the center?
Start pumping.. 
Actually, to my surprise, the refractive index in air is quite close
to a vacuum - so I figured we could set up a laser link between NY and
London, with 'yo mama' sitting in a boat in the middle of the Atlantic
to give it the required bend...
ps. that concludes my very poor attempt at humour.
Or a (utility) telemetry circuit.
None of these will necessarily get you a dry copper loop, depending on the facilities serving your two locations. Also the circuit length will undoubtedly be longer than 100ft so keep that in mind for whatever you're planning to do with it.
You might also try a local CLEC. They can get dry loops from AT&T in different qualities that match your intended use from a simple dry voice grade loop to an unloaded DSL capable loop. Whether the CLEC provide it to you in that form is another matter. Even if they do so, the loops may not be straight copper all the way through.
We order these all of the time ( as a CLEC) for EoC connections or DSL on our equipment. The correct terminology is usually 2-wire or 4-wire copper loops. There will be specific NC/NCI codes depending on the iLEC region you are in and LEC you are working with.
Within these loops, you will generally see at least the following "types" of circuits, normally these are really just different levels of qualifications the LEC is required to meet on the copper they provide (in terms of noise, attenuation, load coils, and # feet of bridge tap):
HDSL (best)
ADSL
UCL (Unbundled copper loop - worst)
Now the main issue is that these circuits are normally provisioned between a CO and an end-user location. I don't know if you'd be able to get them directly between two sites that are not ATT facilities without going back to the CO first (greatly increasing total loop length and probably decreasing max DSL speeds).
The other thing to know is that in "busy" CO's, some of these line types (especially the higher quality loops) may be "blacklisted" meaning you either can't order them at all, or you can order them a different way at a much higher rate.
The last issue I can think of is that you may not be able to get these at all from ATT's retail or business side of the house. If that is the case, find a local CLEC and see if they will help you out.
-Scott
Is that a straight line calculation or did you take into account that a straight line is not the shortest path on a curved surface?
Well that is pretty obvious to most, but no - I didn't go to the
effort of factoring in curvature of the earth - especially given that
1.5 is very rough figure anyway for RI of glass. If anything, my
comment was compliment to your network being close to minimum possible
latency!