DSL Internet Service

What is DSL? DSL Internet Service is a type of internet that is gaining in popularity and availability. More people seem to want DSL than ever. Why, you may ask? That seems to be a rather difficult question to answer. So let us break it down a bit and try to figure out what the significance is with DSL Internet Service and why so many people insist that they have it.

First, let us take a look at what exactly DSL Internet Service is. If we are going to try and figure out why so many people want DSL, then a good way to begin is to know what DSL consists of. How can we decide why it is so popular if we do not even understand what it is?

Now let us take a look at DSL Internet Service. DSL Internet is internet service you access through your telephone wires. DSL stands for digital subscriber loop. In the last several years DSL Internet Service has been adapted to become ADSL Internet Service. The difference is telephones use your low frequencies and the ADSL uses the high frequencies on a given phone line. DSL Internet Service can give you download speeds that are considerably higher than the dial up services. Typically it takes a while longer to upload files than it does to download them.

Ok that is the technical aspect of what DSL Internet Service is. Now let us look at it from the stand point of the typical user. I asked three people what DSL is. They were people of all different ages. The first person was an eleven year old girl, the second was a thirty-five year old woman, and the third was a 69 year old man. Let us look at their answers and compare them.

Eleven Year Olds answer to the Question What Is DSL- 'DSL is the internet we use.'

Thirty-five year olds answer- 'DSL is a solution to the problem of slow connections using dial-up internet service.'

Sixty-nine year olds answer- ' I do not know what DSL is I just know we have it'

In some sense all three of them are correct. However, not any one of them is totally correct. There are people that use DSL but it is not the internet it is simply the tool some people use to connect to the internet.

Did you know that there is more than one type of DSL? There are actually several different types of DSL. Let us look at the different types and what they do or the differences between them.

There are only two categories that all types of DSL fall into. There is the Asymmetric DSL and the Symmetric DSL.

Asymmetric DSL provides more bandwidth for downloading than it does for uploading of files. This is the type of DSL that is more popular in the residential service as most home users have more of a need for downloading than they do for uploading. The typical service o Asymmetric DSL supports 5Mbps for downloading files and only 1Mbps for uploads.

The Symmetric DSL provides its users with equal bandwidth for both uploads and downloads. This is the most popular type of DSL with the business sector. Companies have a larger need to upload so they would rather the typical 1.5 Mbps both for uploads and downloads.

What types of DSL fall into each category? Let us look and find out.

ADSL Types:

• ADSL - One form of digital subscriber line (DSL) that is most often used in home networking. Has rather fast download speed compared to its slower upload speed. This is usually adequate for the typical home user as they do not upload data as often as they download it.

• RADSL- RADSL automatically controls the speed of a connection for the quality of the telephone line. It allows the service to be used over longer distances. This is ideal in the suburban neighborhoods where there are more houses to connect.

• VDSL-VDSL is the technology that was developed for extremely high speeds of data transfer. It was developed for extremely high bandwidths like that used with high definition televisions. It is the fastest available from DSL achieving approximately 51,840 Kbps.

Symmetric DSL Types:

• SDSL-SDSL is the first type of DSL that was developed that did not require two separate phone lines. It supplies equal bandwidth for uploading and downloading. It was first developed in Europe.

• HDSL- HDSL was developed in the early 1990's thus it is among the oldest of the DSL forms still in existence today. This type of DSL requires two separate phone lines.

• SHDSL-SHDSL is a type of technology that is used in transporting data symmetrically ranging from speeds of 192 Kbps to as fast as 2,320 Kbps. This type of service is very attractive to the small business owners.

There is one more type of DSL but it is very rarely ever used. It is IDSL and it is a hybrid DSL. It has a maximum data rate of 128 Kbps so it is very rare indeed. Most people want faster service that is why they use DSL and if it is not faster why pay the added fee for DSL in the first place.

As you can see the term DSL can actually mean any number of different things. Being unaware that there are so many different types or versions of DSL people often simply say they have DSL and do not specify which kind of DSL they actually have. This is not a deliberate attempt on consumers to hide what they use; rather it is simply a case of not being correctly informed.

How important is speed when you access the internet? If people were not interested in speed when downloading or uploading information to and from the internet, then no one would ever have even developed DSL. They would have just been satisfied with dial up. Now with the added speed of DSL there are more options available to allow you to connect at different speeds.

Investigate your options and choose the one that is best for you. The choices are there, if you do not you are only cheating yourself.