ADSL

ADSL - Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. ADSL uses existing copper wire telephone lines to provide high-speed (or broadband) data transfer. It is asymmetric because the downstream (towards the customer) data rates tend to be faster than upstream (towards the network) rates. In theory, ADSL supports up to 9Mb/s downstream and 640kb/s upstream, compared with ISDN that supports 128kb/s downstream and upstream. ADSL operates alongside the existing telephone service, and so supports Internet use as well as a normal telephone line for example.