DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is an always-on internet connection that normally terminates in a socket on your wall, one that looks much like a phone socket. In the US, the socket is exactly a phone socket, and, for the popular residential DSL, (ADSL), the same housewiring does indeed carry both phone and data.

DSL is billed on a monthly basis, usually for a fixed price, and for the majority of providers it includes unlimited usage. In other words, whether you use it for email once a day, or you are a net addict and use it constantly, your bill is always the same.

Once you have a DSL line, you can use all the resources of the internet in the same way as you did from a regular modem and a dial-up account. The difference is now you can use them 24 hours a day with no connection delay, and usually (although not always) without a 'username' and 'password'. You need not worry about busy signals or any connection/disconnection process.

The key advantage of DSL over a dial-up modem is speed. DSL is from several to dozens of times faster than a modem connection. A complex web page that could take up to a minute to finish loading at 56K can appear in just seconds over DSL.

Connection speed, reliability, and the 'always-on' nature of DSL are the main reasons it is so popular. For small businesses, DSL is also a great way to save money compared to pay per minute ISDN service, or expensive T1 lines.

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by KeysCapt
last modified: 2004-02-20 13:47:41