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Digital Subscriber Line or DSL provides a computer user broadband or high-speed connectivity to the Internet. Like dial-up access, DSL relies on your telephone line to establish this connection, but unlike dial-up, DSL allows you to use your telephone while your PC is connected to the Internet.
DSL is a relatively new digital technology adapted to the old two-wire telephone system. Dial-up modems rely on a much older, less efficient analog technology. DSL is generally considered the most affordable broadband Internet access option.
DSL has limitations though; the service can only be delivered a relatively short distance from the local telephone company’s central office (CO) switch. Anywhere beyond approximately 3 miles from the CO is too far to push DSL’s digital signal.
Not only is the quality of DSL service directly related to distance from the switch, but also the condition of the telephone lines the DSL signal must travel through to reach your computer. Older telephone lines can be problematic.
With these limitations, the quality of service varies greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood. Sometimes from house to house! The trade-off of course is bandwidth which begs the next question:
What is bandwidth? Bandwidth, put simply, is the diameter of your data pipe. Think of a water pipe; the larger the diameter of the pipe, the greater the rate of flow at a given pressure. More bandwidth equals higher data rate.
Bandwidth is measured in bits per second (bps). A bit being the most fundamental fragment of digital information. Due to the number of bits traveling at modern data rates, bandwidth is now often measured as kilo bits per second (Kbps), mega bits per second (Mbps) or even giga bits per second (Gbps).
Basically, there are 3 levels of DSL service:
768 Kbps/384 Kbps
1.5 Mbps/384 Kbps
1.5-7 Mbps/512-768 Kbps
To add to the confusion of what DSL actually is did I mention Asynchronous DSL (ADSL)? Most DSL services do not offer the same upload and download speeds. The logic being you are more likely to download rather than upload vast amounts of graphics and multimedia content from the Web. Your uploads are pretty much limited to e-mail, a few pictures, short video clips and sending web page requests all of which don’t require lots of bandwidth.
So the 3 levels of service referred to above indicate first, the maximum download speed then second, the maximum upload speed of the DSL service.
We currently offer DSL service over the ATT, Verizon and Covad networks.
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