DSL – Different types and in-depth review

Most of us must at least have heard about the DSL technology. DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line, which is a recent technology through which we can access high speed internet through our existing telephone lines. And the main beauty of these DSL internet is that we don’t have to access the telephone when we do the internet, unlike the dial –up access. This DSL technology though uses the telephone line for connecting to the ISP, doesn’t block or make the phone busy, because it uses a high frequency of the telephone line, which doesn’t interfere with the regular telephone service.

DSL comes in basically two types –ADSL and SDSL.Both of these have similarities as well as differences. ADSL stands for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line. The reason it is called ADSL because, the download speeds and upload speeds are different. This is the most common type of DSL type, as most residential users using DSL have this ADSL type. This usually requires that you have a DSL modem which connects to the phone line through a splitter and then you are connected. Cost varies from countries to countries as is usually around 30 to 50 $.

Another type of DSL is SDSL, which stands for Synchronous Digital Subscriber Line. This is usually not the type which most residential users have. This is mostly employed by Corporate companies and enterprise businesses. This is also very expensive and is not cheap.

But do be aware that if you have multiple computers in your house and your ISP gives you with a USB ADSL modem, then it is pretty difficult to share the internet in your LAN. Another issue is that make sure when you have this kind of USB modem, you need a special router.This type of router, should also have a DSL modem feature in them.And specifically if your ISP requires you to dial – in then you must buy a PPPoA or PPPoE enabled router.

I have an ADSL connection and since I have two computers and a laptop, I bought a D-Link wireless router for my house. It was pretty easy to install and is not that difficult for any one to do it.The wireless router is pretty good and does a fine job of giving me flexibility of roaming inside my house and outside as well.

But the only disadvantage with the adsl I feel is that the upload is always much slower than the download speed.While this is great for most normal users, as usually people download a lot of stuff than what they would upload.But for those who want to run a web server on the adsl connection, then it would bog down the speed for your potential visitors, especially if you have interactive content in it like flash and streaming audio and video.