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What is DSL?
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What is DSL?

DSL is short for "Digital Subscriber Line" - a key technology that enables the Digital Lifestyle. Let's start with the Internet. You've already discovered its benefits, but sometimes it's like being stuck in a traffic jam - waiting for pages to download, waiting for your modem to connect to the Internet and busy signals.

What if you could bypass the traffic jam, and get to your destination using a different, faster road? That's exactly what DSL does.

Three Quick Facts about DSL

1) DSL is always fast!
DSL modems are much faster than analog modems. Different varieties of DSL provide different maximum speeds, from twice as fast to approximately 100 times faster than a 56.6K analogue modem.

2) DSL is always on!
Your DSL connection is always there. There's no need to dial up and listen to your modem squawk every time you want to do something online. And there's no frustration about the line dropping when you're in the middle of browsing or downloading. Want to check your email? Set up your computer to check for new email and notify you when you receive something instead of logging in and checking it yourself. Want to look at just one web page? Simply open your browser and look. With DSL you are always online!

3) DSL is always reliable!
The NEXTEP Broadband DSL service is designed to minimise downtime. A service qualification program is conducted to ensure high service levels are achieved.

Why DSL Technology?

This new technology platform is leading customers into the future. With DSL technology, businesses can take advantage of a large suite of services designed to enhance the use of virtual private networks, the Internet and the productivity of its users. NEXTEP provides a series of end-to-end, managed solutions to give you the leading edge with high-speed tailored business communications.

Let's talk technical. How does DSL work?

DSL uses equipment that separates data transmissions into different frequency bands, or channels. This allows a single existing twisted-pair copper telephone wire to carry three or more channels of information, including:

• Normal telephone communications in low frequencies,
• Data upload from the customer at medium frequencies, and
• Data download to the customer at higher frequencies.

This use of a broad range of frequencies is called broadband communications.

Symmetric vs. Asymmetric

Symmetric DSL is the transmission of two data channels, upstream and downstream, each with the capacity of up to 2.3 Mbps. The equal speeds make symmetric DSL ideal for local area networks (LANs), bi-directional video conferencing and web hosting.

NEXTEP employs SHDSL (Symmetric High bit rate Digital Subscriber Line), which is the industry standard conforming to ITU G.991.2 (referred to as G.shdsl). This achieves 20% better loop reach than older versions of symmetric DSL and generates less crosstalk interference.

Symmetric DSL installations that are based on G.shdsl are fully inter-operable, and are best suited to data applications that require high-upstream bit rates.

Asymmetric DSL (ADSL) is the transmission of multiple data channels at different capacities. This type of broadband transmission uses much higher data rates downstream (to the user) than upstream.

The NEXTEP ADSL service can be configured to deliver over 6 Mbps from the network to the user. This makes it ideal for Internet access, remote data access, datacasting, multicasting, remote video monitoring, streaming video, and video-on-demand.

Our ADSL installations conform to ITU standards G.992.1 and G.992.2 and ANSI T1.413