MOTM

Hugo Haesaert wrote:
>
> What's a DSL line ?  Remember i'm not from the US :-)
>
Digital Subscriber Line. The phone company's answer to cable modems.
There are two versions; ADSL (Asymetric DSL) and SDLS (Symetric).
Uses your current copper wiring to the house to provide full time
connection with your regular phone service. SDSL provides "up to"
1.5 mbits per second download and under 256k upload. SDLS is more 
expensive and has the same upload and download speeds "up to" 1.5 mbits.
"up to" means how close you are to the switching station and how
good the lines are. A new neigborhood might reach full expectations.
An older one won't. The is very little incentive to upgrade lines
for a monopoly.

I have both cable modem and SDSL (long story). With a cable modem it
is like being on a network with your entire neighborhood. All of you
share a very high speed connection (late night I get 130k bytes per 
second, bytes! not bits), but if your neighbors are all watching 
streaming porn your connection will suffer. The worst problem at 
least in the US is that the cable companies haven't quite figured 
out what reliability means. Our cable modem was down for almost a 
month. We had to buy a dialup account because neither me or my wife 
can go that long without the internet (take my phone, take my cable, 
but not my email).

I added the SDSL line shortly after. DSL is not shared, so the only
bottleneck is your ISPs connection to the internet.

SDSL is a business line, so there are no restrictions on running
a high traffic web site out of your home. Eventually cable companies 
will frown upon your web site run from your home sucking up all of 
the bandwidth. Cable here is around $40 a month. $60 a month for 
ADSL. $200 a month for SDLS at 384 kbits.

> I might get a cable modem connection sometime in the future, but my
If you do there is no turning back. Bandwidth is addictive, as well
as having an "always on" connection. Just remember that "always on"
means you need to pay more attention to security. 

Thomas