What is the fastest speed that DSL connections are capable of?
There are a lot of variables to consider with answering this question. Typical residential offerings now usually have a maximum of 6.0 Mbps. Keep in mind that you will not normally see 6.0 megabits in a speed test … due to overhead. However, one of our members reports some enviable residential speeds in Korea: (Aug ’08)”I just came from Korea and I had 1Gbps download AND UPLOAD VDSL residential service for about $47 a month. You can get 2Mbps/512Kbps in Korea for $2 a month if you pay a $10 installation fee for the initial service. It is common to find 100/100Mbps in Seoul with usenet, 7 eMail accounts with attachments up to 1GB, and dedicated webpages for about $28 for month to month with no contract. On Korea’s national Internet site, I see that there is residential service available for 20Gbps, but I never saw any advertisements for that and I doubt that service that fast would be available outside the capital.
(Back to Top) Typical residential offerings usually have a maximum of 1.5Mbps (1.5 megabits per second), but special connections for home and office can be obtained to go well above that. There are two limiting factors that are in place for most connections: the modem and the wiring used to transfer the signal from the modem to the computer. Most home use DSL modems are limited to 10Mbps on the user (LAN) side. The wiring from the modem to the computers is normally Category 5 wiring, or thin Ethernet, and that is limited to 100Mbps speed.
