What is ADSL?
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is currently the most
popular flavor of DSL. It is widely deployed and used by many home
consumers and Small Businesses. ADSL is called "asymmetric"
because most of its two-way bandwidth is devoted to the downstream
direction that sends data to the user. Only a small portion of
bandwidth is available for upstreaming. Most Internet users, and
especially those who use graphics- or multi-media intensive Web
data, need lots of downstream bandwidth. For these applications,
user requests and responses are small and require little upstream
bandwidth. Using ADSL, up to 15 Mbps of data can be sent
downstream and up to 1 Mbps are available for upstreaming. The
high downstream bandwidth means that your telephone line will be
able to bring large data files, video, audio, and 3-D images to
your computer or hooked-in TV set. And, since it supports Plain
Old Telephone Service (POTS), a small portion of the downstream
bandwidth can be devoted to voice, rather than data, so you can
make phone calls without having to use another separate line.
ADSL