DSL vs. Cable

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DSL VS CABLE

The market for interactive home video services via x.DSL and Cable offer consumers a variety of opportunities over a high-speed connection. Each service, with its own advantages, share one important factor that consumers value most; high quality service at relatively low costs. Although, currently both technologies are in competition with each other, eventually one will prevail creating a standard for interactive home video.

The first service to be analyzed is x.DSL or Digital Subscriber Line. DSL is a technology for bringing high-bandwidth information to homes and small businesses over ordinary copper telephone lines. xDSL refers to different variations of DSL, such as ADSL, HDSL, and RADSL. Assuming your home is close enough to a telephone company central office that offers DSL service, you would be eligible to receive data at rates up to 6.1 megabits per second, enabling continuous transmission of motion video, audio, and even 3-D effects. It is most likely that individual connections will provide from 1.544 Mbps to 512 Kbps downstream and about 128 Kbps upstream. DSL assumes digital data does not require change into analog form and back. Thus a huge bottleneck is prevented which is normally the issue with analog transmission from local phone companies. Digital data is transmitted to your computer directly as digital data and this allows the phone company to use a much wider bandwidth for transmitting it to you. A DSL line can carry both data and voice signals and the data part of the line is continuously connected. Compaq, Intel, and Microsoft working with telephone companies, have developed a standard and easier-to-install form of ADSL called G.Lite that is expected to accelerate deployment. DSL has pretty much replaced ISDN in many areas. Dataquest, a market research firm, forecasts 5.8 million lines installed by the end of the century.

Installation of DSL requires that a signal splitter be installed at the home. This requires the expense of a phone company visit and installation. However, it is possible to manage the splitting remotely from the central office. Next a DSL modem is required for modulation. DSL modems are using Discrete Multitone Technology (DMT), Carrierless Amplitude Modulation (CAP) and Multiple Virtual Line (MVL) for modulating. To interconnect multiple DSL users to a high-speed backbone network, the ...

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* Effective Download Speed reflects the actual online performance as reported by customers. While the various technologies may be capable of much higher data rates, under typical web browsing conditions the internet operates at 500 kbps or less. The bottom line is that many of these high speed technologies can pump data as fast as the internet can handle.

The ideal service in my opinion for the present time is CATV. However, considering the future of x.DSL and the proposed upgrade to VDSL, would suggest that x.DSL is the ideal option. If VDSL is ever implemented, it will combine all multimedia services into one including voice and video services. However the most important concept of x.DSL technology is the fact that a dedicated circuit will provide exceptional service to each user. This is bottlenecking is very prone to occur with CATV in the future and most users will not be satisfied when their high speed connection slows to a crawl. Cost is the same as CATV at only $50-60 a month for high-speed connectivity. Therefore the choice for the interactive home video service should be x.DSL.

Bibliography:

www.networkcomputing.com

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