Whats the difference between DSL and a DS1 or T1 line?
The primary difference between DSL and a DS1 or T1 is in the level of over subscription that occurs before the service reaches the end user. When you purchase a full DS1 or T1 of Internet access, what you are generally getting is access to 1.544 Mbps of transmission on the carrier’s network, regardless of what other customers are transmitting and receiving. To better illustrate this, let’s assume that a carrier has capacity for 150 Mbps at any given time. This means that the at the most, they would sell is 100 T1s; Tier One carrier networks are seldom oversubscribed. For every megabyte of capacity, they can sell one megabyte access to a customer. DSL works differently – and costs less – because of over subscription. When you use a DSL connection your service runs through a piece of equipment called a DSLAM, as opposed to running directly into the Internet. The DSLAM acts as a point of aggregation between the DSL subscribers and the direct connection to the Internet (normally a T1 DS1 o
