Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
ADSL technology makes the most of its bandwidth by catering to the asymmetric nature of Internet data transmission, i.e., most of the channel bandwidth is allocated for downstreaming data with a relatively small portion reserved for upstreaming. For the sake of comparison, the U.S. Robotics USB ADSL Modem (Figure 17.8) is capable of producing downstream rates of up to 8 Mbps and upstream rates of up to 1 MB. That's quite a difference in rates, but it also makes sense when you consider how we use that bandwidth, e.g., telecommuting, virtual office networking, streaming audio/video, etc.
Figure 17.8. U.S. Robotics SureConnect ADSL Ethernet modem (model 9001).
How Does ADSL Work?
Like other forms of DSL, ADSL ...
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