How DSL Works

When you connect to the Internet, you might connect through a regular modem, through a
local-area network connection in your office, through a cable modem or through a digital
subscriber line (DSL) connection. DSL is a very high-speed connection that uses the
same wires as a regular telephone line.

Photo courtesy HowStuffWorks Shopper

A DSL modem

Here are some advantages of DSL:

 You can leave your Internet connection open and still use the phone line for voice
calls.
 The speed is much higher than a regular modem
 DSL doesn't necessarily require new wiring; it can use the phone line you already
have.
 The company that offers DSL will usually provide the modem as part of the
installation.

But there are disadvantages:

 A DSL connection works better when you are closer to the provider's central
office. The farther away you get from the central office, the weaker the signal
becomes.
 The connection is faster for receiving data than it is for sending data over the
Internet.
 The service is not available everywhere.

In this article, we explain how a DSL connection manages to squeeze more information
through a standard phone line -- and lets you make regular telephone calls even when
you're online.
Telephone Lines
If you have read How Telephones Work, then you know that a standard telephone
installation in the United States consists of a pair of copper wires that the phone company
installs in your home. The copper wires have lots of room for carrying more than your
phone conversations -- they are capable of handling a much greater bandwidth, or range
of frequencies, than that demanded for voice. DSL exploits this "extra capacity" to carry
information on the wire without disturbing the line's ability to carry conversations. The
entire plan is based on matching particular frequencies to specific tasks.

To understand DSL, you first need to know a couple of things about a normal telephone
line -- the kind that telephone professionals call POTS, for Plain Old Telephone Service.
One of the ways that POTS makes the most of the telephone company's wires and
equipment is by limiting the frequencies that the switches, telephones and other
equipment will carry. Human voices, speaking in normal conversational tones, can be
carried in a frequency range of 0 to 3,400 Hertz (cycles per second -- see How
Telephones Work for a great demonstration of this). This range of frequencies is tiny. For
example, compare this to the range of most stereo speakers, which cover from roughly 20
Hertz to 20,000 Hertz. And the wires themselves have the potential to handle frequencies
up to several million Hertz in most cases.

The use of such a small portion of the wire's total bandwidth is historical -- remember
that the telephone system has been in place, using a pair of copper wires to each home,
for about a century. By limiting the frequencies carried over the lines, the telephone
system can pack lots of wires into a very small space without worrying about interference
between lines. Modern equipment that sends digital rather than analog data can safely use
much more of the telephone line's capacity. DSL does just that.

A DSL internet connection is one of many effective communication tools for keeping
employees in touch with the office.

More on Home Networking

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Networking | Phone-line Networking | WAP | PDAs | Laptops | PCs

Asymmetric DSL

Most homes and small business users are connected to an asymmetric DSL (ADSL) line.
ADSL divides up the available frequencies in a line on the assumption that most Internet
users look at, or download, much more information than they send, or upload. Under this
assumption, if the connection speed from the Internet to the user is three to four times
faster than the connection from the user back to the Internet, then the user will see the
most benefit most of the time.
Precisely how much benefit you see from ADSL will greatly depend on how far you are
from the central office of the company providing the
ADSL service. ADSL is a distance-sensitive
technology: As the connection's length increases, the
signal quality decreases and the connection speed goes
down. The limit for ADSL service is 18,000 feet (5,460
meters), though for speed and quality of service reasons
many ADSL providers place a lower limit on the
distances for the service. At the extremes of the distance
limits, ADSL customers may see speeds far below the
promised maximums, while customers nearer the central
office have faster connections and may see extremely
high speeds in the future. ADSL technology can provide Photo courtesy Corning
maximum downstream (Internet to customer) speeds of DSL signals can't pass through
fiber-optic cables.
up to 8 megabits per second (Mbps) at a distance of
about 6,000 feet (1,820 meters), and upstream speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second
(Kbps). In practice, the best speeds widely offered today are 1.5 Mbps downstream, with
upstream speeds varying between 64 and 640 Kbps. Some vast improvements to ADSL
are available in some areas through services called ASDL2 and ASDL2+. ASDL2
increases downstream to 12 Mbps and upstream to 1 Mbps, and ASDL2+ is even better --
it improves downstream to as much as 24 Mbps and upstream to 3 Mbps.

You might wonder -- if distance is a limitation for DSL, why is it not also a limitation for
voice telephone calls? The answer lies in small amplifiers called loading coils that the
telephone company uses to boost voice signals. Unfortunately, these loading coils are
incompatible with ADSL signals, so a voice coil in the loop between your telephone and
the telephone company's central office will disqualify you from receiving ADSL. Other
factors that might disqualify you from receiving ADSL include:

 Bridge taps - These are extensions, between you and the central office, that
extend service to other customers. While you wouldn't notice these bridge taps in
normal phone service, they may take the total length of the circuit beyond the
distance limits of the service provider.
 Fiber-optic cables - ADSL signals can't pass through the conversion from analog
to digital and back to analog that occurs if a portion of your telephone circuit
comes through fiber-optic cables.
 Distance - Even if you know where your central office is (don't be surprised if
you don't -- the telephone companies don't advertise their locations), looking at a
map is no indication of the distance a signal must travel between your house and
the office.

Next, we'll look at how the signal is split and what equipment DSL uses.

Splitting the Signal

The CAP System
There are two competing and incompatible standards for ADSL. The official ANSI
standard for ADSL is a system called discrete multitone, or DMT. According to
equipment manufacturers, most of the ADSL equipment installed today uses DMT. An
earlier and more easily implemented standard was the carrierless amplitude/phase
(CAP) system, which was used on many of the early installations of ADSL.

CAP operates by dividing the signals on the telephone line into three distinct bands:
Voice conversations are carried in the 0 to 4 KHz (kilohertz) band, as they are in all
POTS circuits. The upstream channel (from the user back to the server) is carried in a
band between 25 and 160 KHz. The downstream channel (from the server to the user)
begins at 240 KHz and goes up to a point that varies depending on a number of
conditions (line length, line noise, number of users in a particular telephone company
switch) but has a maximum of about 1.5 MHz (megahertz). This system, with the three
channels widely separated, minimizes the possibility of interference between the channels
on one line, or between the signals on different lines.

The DMT System

DMT also divides signals into separate channels, but doesn't use two fairly broad
channels for upstream and downstream data. Instead, DMT divides the data into 247
separate channels, each 4 KHz wide.

One way to think about it is to imagine that the phone company divides your copper line
into 247 different 4-KHz lines and then attaches a modem to each one. You get the
equivalent of 247 modems connected to your computer at once. Each channel is
monitored and, if the quality is too impaired, the signal is shifted to another channel. This
system constantly shifts signals between different channels, searching for the best
channels for transmission and reception. In addition, some of the lower channels (those
starting at about 8 KHz), are used as bidirectional channels, for upstream and
downstream information. Monitoring and sorting out the information on the bidirectional
channels, and keeping up with the quality of all 247 channels, makes DMT more complex
to implement than CAP, but gives it more flexibility on lines of differing quality.
Filters
CAP and DMT are similar in one way that you can see as a DSL user.

If you have ADSL installed, you were almost certainly given small filters to attach to the
outlets that don't provide the signal to your ADSL modem. These filters are low-pass
filters -- simple filters that block all signals above a certain frequency. Since all voice
conversations take place below 4 KHz, the low-pass (LP) filters are built to block
everything above 4 KHz, preventing the data signals from interfering with standard
telephone calls.

DSL Equipment

ADSL uses two pieces of equipment, one on the customer end and one at the Internet
service provider, telephone company or other provider of DSL services. At the customer's
location there is a DSL transceiver, which may also provide other services. The DSL
service provider has a DSL Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) to receive customer
connections.

The Transceiver
Most residential customers call their DSL transceiver a "DSL modem." The engineers at
the telephone company or ISP call it an ATU-R. Regardless of what it's called, it's the
point where data from the user's computer or network is connected to the DSL line.
 Photo courtesy Allied Telesyn
DSL modem

The transceiver can connect to a customer's equipment in several ways, though most
residential installation uses USB or 10 base-T Ethernet connections. While most of the
ADSL transceivers sold by ISPs and telephone companies are simply transceivers, the
devices used by businesses may combine network routers, network switches or other
networking equipment in the same platform.

The DSLAM
The DSLAM at the access provider is the equipment that really allows DSL to happen. A
DSLAM takes connections from many customers and aggregates them onto a single,
high-capacity connection to the Internet. DSLAMs are generally flexible and able to
support multiple types of DSL in a single central office, and different varieties of
protocol and modulation -- both CAP and DMT, for example -- in the same type of DSL.
In addition, the DSLAM may provide additional functions including routing or dynamic
IP address assignment for the customers.

The DSLAM provides one of the main differences between user service through ADSL
and through cable modems. Because cable-modem users generally share a network loop
that runs through a neighborhood, adding users means lowering performance in many
instances. ADSL provides a dedicated connection from each user back to the DSLAM,
meaning that users won't see a performance decrease as new users are added -- until the
total number of users begins to saturate the single, high-speed connection to the Internet.
At that point, an upgrade by the service provider can provide additional performance for
all the users connected to the DSLAM.

For information on ADSL rates and availability in the United States, go to Broadband
Reports. This site can provide information on ADSL service companies in your area, the
rates they charge, and customer satisfaction, as well as estimating how far you are from
the nearest central office.
ADSL isn't the only type of DSL, and it's not the only way to get high-speed Internet
access. Next, we'll look at ADSL alternatives.

Alternatives to ADSL

There are lots of variations in DSL technology -- many of them address DSL's distance
limitations in one way or another. Other types of DSL include:

 Very high bit-rate DSL (VDSL) - This is a fast connection, but works only over
a short distance. It is capable of handling Internet access, HDTV and on-demand
services at rates of 52 Mbps downstream and 12 Mbps upstream.
 Symmetric DSL (SDSL) - This connection, used mainly by small businesses,
doesn't allow you to use the phone at the same time, but the speed of receiving
and sending data is the same.
 Rate-adaptive DSL (RADSL) - This is a variation of ADSL, but the modem can
adjust the speed of the connection depending on the length and quality of the line.
 ISDN DSL (IDSL) - This is a combination of the Integrated Services Digital
Network (ISDN) and DSL technology. ISDN was the solution to dial-up Internet
-- it allowed voice, text graphics, video and other data to share one telephone line.
This made it possible to talk on the phone and use the Internet at the same time.
IDSL is faster than ISDN connections but slower than DSL. It can travel a longer
distance of 5 to 6 miles, so it is usually a good option for people who can't get
DSL in their area.
 Universal DLS (Uni-DSL) - This emerging technology, developed by Texas
Instruments, is backwards compatible with all existing versions of DSL. It offers
somewhat of a middle ground between ASDL
and VDSL -- at longer distances, it can reach the
speeds of ASDL, but it can provide greater
speeds than VDSL at shorter distances. In some
locations, Uni-DSL can provide four times the
amount of speed as VDSL.

Alternatives to DSL
With DSL's distance limitation and lower availability,
what are some other options? There are two major
alternatives to DSL -- cable and wireless.

Cable and DSL are the two big rivals in the world of
broadband. Cable isn't limited by distance like DSL -- cable wires reach most
neighborhoods, and signal strengths don't weaken over long distances. While DSL allows
you to use the telephone and Internet simultaneously, cable lets users watch television
and surf the Internet at the same time. Many cable companies are also beginning to
bundle services with cable TV, Internet and digital telephone on one bill. Although cable
and DSL speeds are about the same, the one disadvantage with cable is bandwidth --
connection speeds can slow down if too many people are using a cable service at the
same time.
A new technology, known as WiMax or 802.16, looks to combine the benefits of
broadband and wireless. WiMax will provide high-speed wireless Internet over very long
distances and will most likely provide access to large areas such as cities. WiMax
technology will be available in most American cities in 2008.