What is DSL versus Broadband?

Answer 1

DSL is broadband, just not as wide of a band as cable or fiber. Still suitable for most internet browsing and downloading. Very reasonable if you can get it. If you do a lot of large downloads it may not be suitable. Most downloads only happen at the fastest connection in the line, so most times you are restricted to no faster than DSL. I have worked on several customer computers that think it is great. I hope this helps.

Answer 2

Although some may say DSL is slower and not suitable for some, I beg to differ. First it depends where you live, but you can get DSL at high speeds such as cable. We just switched from our local cable provider to DSL and still have an amazing 3 mbps download speed, they even offer up to 6 mbps! I know someone might say that they over rate their speeds so I will write down my internet speed from http://pcpitstop.com/ "3256 kilobits per second". The city I live in is not that big so im guessing that the big providers like verizon, which is who we go through, are making it easier for people to get high speed internet.

The main drawback with DSL is 2 things, the further away you are from the home office who provides your internet serviece, the lower your signal, so that is 1 thing you want to ask your provider before hand! It usually starts to drop off after 19 miles.....

2 is you have to have a land line phone, most people now just use their cell phones, so if you dont have a home phone, you would have to activate one to get DSL.

Not to rag on cable, but we have not had one outage since we switched to DSL.

Answer 3

DSL

(Digital Subscriber Line) A technology that dramatically increases the digital capacity of ordinary telephone lines (the local loops) into the home or office. DSL speeds are based on the distance between the customer and telco central office. There are two main categories. Asymmetric DSL (ADSL) is for Internet access, where fast downstream is required, but slow upstream is acceptable. Symmetric DSL (SDSL, HDSL, etc.) is designed for connections that require high speed in both directions.

DSL provides "always-on" operation. At the telco central office, DSL traffic is aggregated in a unit called the DSL Access Multiplexor (DSLAM) and forwarded to the appropriate ISP or data network. DSL arrived in the late 1990s with more versions and alphabet soup than most any other new transmission technology.

BROADBAND

(1) High-speed transmission. The term is commonly used to refer to Internet access via cable modems or DSL, which is faster than dial-up. For years, "broadband" has referred to a higher-speed connection, but the actual speed threshold has varied. While T1 (1.5 Mbps) has been widely used as the threshold, others have used T3 (45 Mbps) for broadband. For example, after the turn of the century, South Korea leapfrogged the U.S. in Internet access, offering DSL up to 50 Mbps and calling their 1.5 Mbps service "light." In every case, however, it implies transmitting at higher speeds.

(2) A method of transmitting data, voice and video using frequency division multiplexing (FDM), such as used with cable TV. Modems are required to modulate digital data streams onto the line. Broadband in this context is used in contrast with "baseband," which is all digital transmission and uses time division multiplexing (TDM). However, the term is mostly used as defined in definition #1 above.

Answer 4

Broadband refers to high speed Internet. DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is phone service high speed vs. cable high speed.

Answer 5

Broadband is faster.

Answer 6

just like highroadway vs city street :)