I heard DSL is cool. What is it?
DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is an always-on internet connection that normally terminates in a socket on your wall, one that looks much like a phone socket. In the US, the socket is exactly a phone socket, and, for the popular residential DSL, (ADSL), the same housewiring does indeed carry both phone and data. DSL is billed on a monthly basis, usually for a fixed price, and for the majority of providers it includes unlimited usage. In other words, whether you use it for email once a day, or you are a net addict and use it constantly, your bill is always the same. Once you have a DSL line, you can use all the resources of the internet in the same way as you did from a regular modem and a dial-up account. The difference is now you can use them 24 hours a day with no connection delay, and usually (although not always) without a ‘username’ and ‘password’. You need not worry about busy signals or any connection/disconnection process. The key advantage of DSL over a dial-up modem is speed.
