DSL speeds????

Question

In my neighborhood or more specifically.... my phone number according to the phone company website says that I am able to receive 3 different speeds of service. 550 kbps being the slowest and 10mbps being the fastest in my neighborhood....., what does the telephone guy do to change the speeds that I can receive....., is there a filter of some sorts or a different dsl modem that allows a higher speed or is there a combination of the two......, what does he/she change outside or inside to make this happen????

Answer 1

With a dedicated DSL line (unlike cable modems) your copper of FIOS (fiber) connection goes to a card in the telephone central office or a utility support building within a few miles of your house. These cards can be programmed to "gate" or slow-down your DSL traffic. Those that have paid for faster speeds get their connection set to the higher speeds.

Okay, this does NOT guarantee that you'll get 5mb or even 1mb of speed out of your connection. Lots of things can slow it down. These include, a fuzzy copper connection, a broken or overloaded interface card, a bad modem on your end. However, more commonly, the slow-down is in the data source. That is, the site providing the content. If it's busy (or even if it's not) the site can only provide the page or picture or downloaded video at a given rate of speed. These can also be gated to permit the site to support more people at the same time. Instead of giviing one customer 1mb download, they give 4 256K download speed. Make sense?

hth

Answer 2

from my rememberence, its related to how much bandwidth they allow you from their server, I don't believe the difference is in the modem (although that may be where the software limiting is) as when I upgraded speeds from dsl and cable I never needed a new modem. Unfortunately it is not like the old days when you could overclock your modem and get more speed (technically you can do this to an extent still, but won't see much difference. And with the cheap ghetto modems they dsl services supply I wouldn't recommend it either.

And for the 10 mbps, its b/s because dsl is shared connectivity throughout the neighborhood, so basically you can get UP to 10 mbps, but likely will never reach that amount. (I recieved 256k download max, and 128k upload on a supposed 10 meg line, well one time - ONE time I hit 512k)

I called my company out on this, through recorded testing over 6 months, all times of day. Couldn't get the speed from a backbone server used for nothing but testing rates. So they refunded my entire bill for 6 months and I went to cable. 5megs, and I actually get 5 megs on a daily basis. Used for streaming dj shows, collaborating on music, and gaming with 5 pcs lag free thus far - most important for live music collab.

So make sure you read the fine print on your dsl, they never mentioned in the paperwork the shared bandwith until I called em out, and it cost em alot in back pay (line was 80/mo + phone service 40/mo with the bundle - 120 * 6 = 720+tax back in my pocket. got my set-up fee back as well - took em 6 hours to get it working in my house lol, they got killed on that deal, and made the news :D)

Answer 3

I don't think it has anything to do around your home. It is all set up at the phone company main office to give you the speed you subscribe to.

Answer 4

Hi. This site has a good explanation with links to explain DSL vs HDSL vs VHSDL. http://www.answers.com/topic/very-high-speed-digital-subscriber-line None seem to require any special lines to your house.

Answer 5

Sometimes they pretend to change the modem. The truth is that they don't do anything. The speed is controlled.

Answer 6

Usually , they switch something at the main building , that s it and how much you want to pay for the higher speed. Something to do with ports at the switching building.