[109452] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: How do dialup ISPs allow multiple clients under one access number?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Choprboy)
Mon Nov 24 05:03:30 2008
From: Choprboy <choprboy@dakotacom.net>
To: nanog@nanog.org
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:03:41 -0700
In-Reply-To: <17c8e29e0811232314x144f0103m493d452b59d1c348@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
On Monday 24 November 2008 00:14, John Musbach wrote:
> I'm interested in figuring out how dialup ISPs work and have found
> plenty of info on dialin server setup but not much on how ISPs allow
> multiple clients under one access number, how do they do it?
One phone number != one phone line.
Each phone circuit has a single associated billing/account number. Notice I
say circuit, not line, which is 1 or more channels over some medium. It may
be a single line POTS, a 2 channel ISDN, a 23/24 channel T1, a 600+ channel
T3, etc. In addition to the account number, one or more additional phone
numbers can be directed at that account or agroup of accounts, either as a
direct routing to a particular channel(s) or a roll-over between groups of
various accounts. A call to a phone number is therefore is directed at a
particular account number which, if all channels are busy, may roll on to
other account numbers in the group.
Adrian
