Introduction to ADSL

ADSL stands for the Asynchronous Digital Subscribers Lines that is used to provide the high speed internet connectivity over the existing telephone lines.  It’s a relatively new technology and it provides the fast and permanent broadband internet connectivity.  It was specifically designed to support two way multimedia communications.  It provides the excellent broadband solutions to the small to medium sized organizations and the home users. ADSL technology lets the users to transmit data, voice, fax and streaming video signals simultaneously and at very high speed.  It splits the telephone line into two different channels one for voice and one for data it and provides the different uploading (upstream) and downloading (downstream) speeds. 

It has been used as the replacement of the dial up connections and the ISDN and can provide the speed up to 9Mbps.  Another significant benefit of this technology is that your telephone line can’t be engaged while using ADSL over the same phone line i.e. you can place/receive the phone calls and connect to the internet at the same time.  ADSL has become the most popular broadband internet technology for the home and the business users all over the world.  Some of major benefits of this technology include the following.

• It provides the 24/7 internet connectivity without dialing the internet connection.
• Subscribers are not charged on the per minute basis as in the dial-up.  The service providers offer multiple monthly subscription packages.
• It allows you to transmit the data at a very high speed.
• It allows you to use telephone for making phone calls and connect to the internet at the same time.
• No extra wiring or infrastructure is required as it can be setup on the existing telephone line.
• Low cost monthly plans.

ADSL technology also has some limitations, which have been described below.

• The services are not available everywhere.
• It provides faster download then upload.
• It provides the variable speed during the daytime and nighttime.
• The connection works fine when you are located closer to the telephone exchange or the service provider.

The ADSL provides more bandwidth capacity and the data flow as compared to the DSL.  The most common supported applications and the services are video on demand, remote LAN access and the video conferencing. It supports the downstream data transfer speed ranges from 1.5Kbps to 9Mbps and the upstream data speed from 16 to 640Kbps. 

However some businesses require the same data transfer rates i.e. same as upstream and downstream.  SDSL is the solution for such businesses because it requires the dedicated telephone line and the voice, data and video cannot be shared on the same phone lines.  SDSL provides 1.5 to 7Mbps data streams in both the directions.  It provides the excellent broadband solutions to the enterprise organizations.