Technology

Broadband ADSL is a new type of connection to the Internet.

Broadband ADSL is a new way of transferring data at high speed over an existing telephone line. By upgrading your line to carry digital signals instead of the current analogue signals, it becomes capable of carrying data at a much higher rate than ever before, nearly 400 times faster. Currently, home and small business users have had to use modems to connect to their ISP over a Standard phone line. The vast difference between Broadband and a standard analogue system is that with the analogue system it always had to convert the analogue signals into digital signals, which takes up most of the time used. With Broadband, the signal is already digital, therefore the modem has much less work to do, overall speeding up the process.

Up to now, ISDN has been the only alternative before looking at expensive leased lines. ISDN gives a guaranteed digital speed of up to 128k (dual channel) after a line upgrade. Now, with a Broadband ADSL line, your can reach download speeds of up to 2Mbps. Broadband ADSL is asymmetric which means that different speeds apply for uploading and downloading. As Broadband ADSL is intended for 'clients' rather than servers, the speed you transmit data is restricted to 256kbps, regardless of your download speed. This is still twice the speed of the fastest possible ISDN connection. Your download speed is determined by what type of line you buy. Speeds start from 512kbps and scale up to 2mbps (megabits per second). However these are the fastest possible speeds based on how busy your local Broadband ADSL exchange is. The less people online, the faster you will go.