Devolo MicroLink ADSL Modem Router - Manual (Page 6)

Introduction
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1 Introduction
1.1 What is ADSL?
The sheer speed of development of computer technology over the last few
years has resulted in a huge increase in the volume of electronic data traffic.
More users every day want to send and receive a constantly increasing
volume of data. Conventional transmission technologies (analog modems or
ISDN devices) are no longer equal to the demand.
New technologies are eliminating the restrictions and are offering the user
true broadband communications at significantly higher transfer speeds. An
important criterion for the spread of these access technologies is their avai-
lability in as many offices and private households as possible. One of the
technologies is transfer by ADSL, which bridges the section of the network
that connects to the customer (“the last mile”) over standard copper wires.
ADSL can thus be used for broadband access to the Internet, for example.
ADSL technology (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) uses three regions of
different sizes on the copper wire of a standard telephone line. Two regions
are used for data transmission and one for telephoning. The term 'Asymme-
tric' indicates that the transmitting and receiving channels can carry different
quantities of data:
b When the user surfs the Internet, the data sent to the Internet Service
Provider (ISP) tend to carry less information (e.g. addresses of web sites
or e-mails). The transmission rate of up to 1 Mbps is generally sufficient
for this purpose.
b To load multimedia content (video sequences, animations, images etc.)
onto the computer from the Internet at acceptable quality and speed, a
transmission rate of up to 8 Mbps brings a significant saving in cost and
time.