ADSL Technology Comparisons

As the years, or, more likely months pass, there will be a multitude of services striving to use bandwidth on the internet.

Take a look at the graph below.

We're all familiar with analogue modems. They've been around in one flavour or another for many years.

Dial-up or leased line, everyone knows that even 56kbps (even if your phone line and ISP can can actually achieve it) is not going to be enough.

Many new sites contain multimedia performances which are just too painful to wait for if you have to download them at 56kbps, or even worse....33.6kbps!

So, what do we do?

We move to ISDN?

Wrong!

ISDN offers in relative terms a small step in performance compared to emerging XDSL technologies.

The only thing ISDN offers that faster XDSL technologies doesn't is the ability to "dial" other ISDN terminal adapters across the PSDN.

Comparing ISDN to even a flawed technology like HFC (cable modems) is like comparing a moped with a superbike.

Okay so what shall we do?

Urge your network operator to install optical fibre to your home as soon as possible.

The answer you will receive is that fibre is too expensive to deploy on a country wide basis.

Network operators have too much investment tied up in the copper loops which already join their exchanges to our homes and offices to give it up easily.

XDSL technologies give the network operators the means of extending the life of their investment by many years.

Their problem is that if they give us a quantum leap in performance now, it will be a very short time before we ask for the next step.

However, increasing use of the internet for all manner of tasks mean that we should demand XDSL now, because, with the best will in the world (take ISDN as an example) deployment will take at least two years.

What do you think your network access performance will be like in six months, let alone two years?