Can you have 2 dsl accounts (different isps) on the same phone line? As they need to connect it up at the exchange, im guessing now.

Would i need an engineer to physically install a new line?

No you'd need a single line for each DSL account.

You dont need a engineer, you just need a trained monkey

thanks

If you want to use both lines at the same time for load sharing reasons I would highly suggest a Linksys RV082 router. It'll do load-balancing / fail-over etc. Also runs a vpn server and all sorts of goodies on it.

so it is possible to connect 2 ADSL connections into one network?

definately! Unless you have a spiffy ISP you can't aggregate the bandwidth but you can use load balancing to spread the load between both. They don't even need to be the same ISP, or even technology. The RV082 takes 2 ethernet WAN cables, this means you still need a DSL/Cable modem on each line but it also means you can mix and match differing broadband connections.

you wont be able to have 2 ADSL lines using the one phone number/line. if you have them on separate numbers then its possible but it isnt possible to have 2 ADSL connections on one number as the line can only have one set of speed codes on it.

I think PPPoE will let you have up to 8 sessions (accounts) per line (same isp). Different ISPs per line, possible? Sure, gets sticky when you have to bill each isp for LSS (who gets billed for what, what percentage, rah rah) Consequently - no different isp per line in practice.

You cannot run two DSL connections over 1 phoneline. Fullstop. DSL is logically a copper pair going from the DSLAM to the exchange end of your phoneline. sure you could probably piggy back a couple of copper pairs to the one line but then they'd be competing for space on the spectrum of the analogue signal that DSL uses, this would cause wacky s*** to happen.

don't confuse line sync on the port (physical) with ppp sessions (logical).
you can have multiple PPPoE sessions per line. We have 2 or 3 accounts simultaniously on at work, and many ISPs who wholesale off Telstra already piggyback a management PPPoE session over the same pair/connection so they can support them to a greater extent (ping tests, etc)

What stinky said

Sending stuff over the phone line is kinda like sending stuff over the air by radio, in that there are actually a couple of channels that exist side by side on the wire. Traditional phones only use the 500Hz - 3.5kHz channel*, leaving all the other channels on the wire free. All DSL uses all the channels between about 120kHz and 1.5MHz to transmit digital data (exactly how it uses these channels depends on what kind of DSL you are using).

So if each DSL modem normally uses all the available spare channels, then having two DSL connection on the same line means they would have to share access to these channels, and thus only be connected half the time, just like when your talking on the phone both people share the one channel, so you can only talk for half the time.


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* Incidentally, telephones don't actually have a tuner built in to select the 0.5-3.5kHz channel, so if you are going to use DSL you have to plug one in (the line filter)