I’m moving into a new place this weekend, and have been talking to the phone company (BellSouth) about their “DSL” options. They claim to have download speeds of up to 1.5 MB/sec, but say the whole thing runs on a phone line. There’s a special modem you have to buy, and it somehow works so that you can still use the phone while you’re on-line.
So I’m a bit skeptical about the possibility of download speeds that fast over a phone line, just because I’ve always heard that the telephone hardware simply isn’t hi-fi enough to cary that kind of data transfer rate.
Anyone tried this? Or know anything about it? Does it work?
I have SBC Yahoo! DSL and I’m very happy with it. It’s been very fast - as fast as 150K/sec downloads, which is as fast as the cable modem at my parents’ house in Florida and faster than the Charter cable modem at my grandmother’s house a few blocks away. It’s also cheaper than cable, at least here. I know a lot of people have horror stories about DSL service, but it’s only gone down once in the year and a half I’ve had it and it was only out for a few hours.
I see. I somehow had the idea (please pardon my ignorance) that “DSL” meant something about coming through a cable, like cable TV does. I guess that’s “cable modem” or something like that.
I used it for awhile (with DirectTV of all people, until they decided it wasn’t making them enough money or something). I was quite happy with it.
If you want a decent explaination of how it works, see this: basically DSL takes advantage of the fact that plain ol’ voice traffic doesn’t use the full capacity of the telephone wire.
If you do go for DSL, I’d reccomend instead of placing your DSL modem on an existing jack and placing filters on all the others to run a sperate line for your modem and place a main filter out on your box. (Does this make sense?)
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I’ve got DSL. I’ve had it for a couple of months now. I had a cable modem before. They say that it’s not quite as fast as cable. However, it’s definately in the same ballpark for speed.
I occasionally play online video games and I still have no trouble with a graphics intensive first person shooter with 40 players. That is about as good of a test as anything else you could come up with.
One odd feature is that once the DSL is turned on, you will have to install filters on your phone lines. They block the DSL signal and allow you to use a normal phone without interference. Setting them up isn’t too difficult.
For me, it was cheaper than cable, so it was well worth it.
A key thing to remember is that your speed is directly related to how far you are away from the telephone company’s own equipment. “Up to 1.5 mb” is possible and I had it when I lived 2 blocks away from the phone company’s switch. It was rock solid and the speed never fluctuated. You have to get a DSL modem which should also come with little in-line filters that you’ll have to plug into every phone outlet in order to use them with a voice telephone.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you live far away from the switch, your speed might not be near as good. I had a DSL connection that got 384Kbps at best. You should be able to log into your DSL provider’s website and enter your address and it should give you an idea of the speeds available.
Of course, that about two years ago before I switched to cable. It’s $10 more a month, but it gives me a 3mbps connection!
Works fine for me. Much cheaper than cable, especially if you are not a cable subscriber. (We’ve got a dish.) Another benefit is that it doesn’t slow down if your neighbors have it also - you have the whole connection to yourself.
Phone lines could always handle more bandwidth than we used. The frequency band for voice is rather small, so we’ve been multiplexing on existing lines for a long time to save on rewiring.
We often have three computers on our network hooked up to our DSL at once, with no issues. We don’t download video, though.
In addition to what ElectricZ said, you need to take into account the condition of the phone lines where you live. I’m way out in the country where the wires are ancient and have a lot of line noise, particularly when it rains. I never achieved a dial-up connection faster than half the speed of my modem, and a DSL connection would have been similarly affected. My phone company said they are aware of the problem and intend to replace the wires someday but not soon. I went with cable instead.
As mentioned before, if you are close to the phone companies switch, the transfer rates can be very good. A friend of mine has DLS, and we used to put 6 of us on a network and play fairly graphics intensive on-line games using his DSL. Never had a problem with the line.
There’s a lot of excess bandwidth in what the broadband folks call “twisted copper lines.”
(old fart hat on)
Back in the analog days, the phone companies offered broadcasters four types of service. A regular phone hookup was “Class D.” A direct line (like between the studio and transmitter) was “Class A.” They all used the same telephone wire.
The standard telephone bandwidth (300-3,000 hz, if you care) was developed in the days when telephone microphones couldn’t do any better than that. Old radio news reporters learned their first day on the job that they could remove the handset microphone and wire their tape recorders directly to the connections. This would give them much wider frequency response and better fideilty.
Yes there is, it’s sometimes called ‘naked DSL’, but it does come over a standard twisted pair from the phone company (the same wire that could provide a dialtone, or combined service)
As for the OP, that’s how DSL works and it does work just as they say it will, if all goes right.
I get a giggle out of the ads for cable modem service about how much faster they are than DSL. Oh really? So far, the local cable company doesn’t come close to my 6 megabit DSL line.
As Nightsong suggests, it’s somewhat better to have a “splitter” installed at the MPOE (main point of entry, also called a “demarc” - it’s where the phone line enters your home) instead of a pile of filters scattered among all your phone jacks. Trouble is, splitters are not the easiest things to get your hands on. Radio Shack doesn’t have them, and a quick Google shows that they sell for about $50, so your best bet might be to talk your phone installer into giving you one.
If you don’t have filters or a splitter, you’ll have static in the phones and severely impaired performance of the DSL.
I have DSL. I’d suggest checking others before going with bellsouth however. We have bellsouth in our area, and instead I went with Earthlink. It’s about the same price, but it seems to have much better tech support than my friends who have bellsouth. It seems you can never get them on the phone, and the one time I had a problem with Earthlink I got a real person on the phone in less than a minute.
You have an independent connection to the DSLAM at the central office of your local phone company. From there, you share bandwidth to whoever your internet service provider is.
Generally though…it’s easier to upgrade that one shared line at the DSLAM
“At that point, an upgrade by the service provider can provide additional performance for all the users connected to the DSLAM.”
