Travel Technology - ISDN connections in Europe?

Some of the places I'm looking at staying in Germany and Italy offer ISDN connections rather than ADSL.

Do the ISDN terminal adapters or modems have ethernet ports?

Do ISDN connections run DHCP or do you have to configure TCP/IP differently?

In the US, ISDN is almost non-existent. Not sure if there's special support needed for my PowerBook running Mac OS X 10.4.x or you configure it as you would an ADSL (hopefully without having to deal with login) or cable modems.

My suspicion is that its a matter of terminology.
I have co-workers who think DSL is a term for broadband. I see hotels refer to high-speed/broadband internet as DSL all the time. The fact is they probably have a T-1 or cable modem or satellite or two tin cans on a string...

My guess is that the hotel has broadband of some sort, maybe it is ISDN, but regardless it shouldn't effect you as the end user. That is, unless they have this terminating in a business center and you are plugging directly into an ISDN modem...in which case I'd be VERY surprised if they didn't support DHCP, etc.

To answer you question, I've never seen an ISDN modem that connects any way other than ethernet, you should be fine in that regard.

Again, I bet you get there and its wifi or an ethernet jack in the room / business center and you won't be able to discern the difference b/t that and your connection at home or at work.

Germany is one of the few countries that took up ISDN in a big way (i.e. into every home) so don't be too suprised if some hotels still only have ISDN data connections in room, especially if the hotel isn't used none German guests.

Actually, and especially in Germany you'll still run across a lot of ISDN lines. These places may not even have a modem, just the RJ45 jack in the wall and expect you to provide both the modem and the dialup account to an ISP with ISDN dial-in numbers.

There are not THAT many ISDN modems that have direct ethernet out, most of them are either USB or... SERIAL :D

Made sure of one thing: never plug your ethernet port into the jack unless you are 100% sure that it is not an ISDN line, with voltages of around 100volts you are sure to fry your ethernet hardware (or more).

If they do provide an ISDN modem be sure to have access to an ISP (like ipass) and knowledge of how to setup a dialup connection. If it is an ISDN router then you shouldn't need anything.

That's what I suspected, that you can't assume it's ethernet, even if the plug is physically the same.

And yeah, dialing in for ISDN is another thing I vaguely recall.

I believe around the mid to late '90s, most of northern Europe, especially Scandinavia, was on ISDN.

Best to make sure a place has ADSL.

ISDN is still in German hotels and a few places in Holland. You cannot use it unless you have an ISDN TA either built into your laptop or with a PCMCIA card or some other such device. Many Germans still have these devices. Mostly Siemens employees I think.

ISDN uses pins 1,2,4,8 as I recall which is different than 10BT. I wasted far too many brain cells on ISDN in the 80's and 90's. :rolleyes:

ISDN is still in German hotels and a few places in Holland. You cannot use it unless you have an ISDN TA either built into your laptop or with a PCMCIA card or some other such device. Many Germans still have these devices. Mostly Siemens employees I think.

ISDN uses pins 1,2,4,8 as I recall which is different than 10BT. I wasted far too many brain cells on ISDN in the 80's and 90's. :rolleyes:

Actually, ETSI's EuroISDN uses the 4 middle pins on an RJ45. The 2 outer pairs were for optional power supplies, but power usually went phantom.

You may still be able to find an ISDN modem hidden away in some German stores like MediaMarkt, Conrad or Saturn. Teles and ITK were always popular brands, but T-ISDN is getting pretty rare, and so is ISDN in Holland. In the consumer market it is finally going the way of the dodo.

ISDN on an operator level was a PITA and I'm glad its finally dying :D