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Your Service Provider’s ADSL service operates over a normal telephone line. This means that your telephone line can be used to send and receive high-speed digital data and make phone calls at the same time.
ADSL transforms the twisted copper pairs of wires between the local telephone exchange and your telephone socket into a high-speed digital line. It is called "asymmetric" because it moves data more quickly from the exchange to you than vice versa. This makes it ideal for applications where you would typically receive more data than you transmit, such as use of the World Wide Web and reception of digital audio/visual material. ADSL is the first generation of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology.
Think of ADSL in this way when you download a web site page onto your browser. The request you send the system to download the page is much smaller than the page itself, so the system is designed to make the most of available bandwidth to fit in with the way you typically use the Internet. |