Digital Subscriber Line.
the two major consummer broadband connections that exist in the US today are DSL and Cable (of course these would be the two major competitors, your telephone company and your cable company)
Both have their ups and downs, I use Cable , because like their founding companies, they treat their products the same way.
I typically find the telephone company charges low on the monthly rate, but makes you pay 200$ for modem, 100$ for setup fee, and a lot of other little bitty cost, where as the cable company charges you a little higher (about 10$ more a month) but give you the modem and ethernet card free of us, and only charge 50$ for setup if you chose to set it up yourself.
DSL uses frequencies on the line instead of tones, which is why it's possible to be on the phone and internet at the same time, the modem reconizes what it needs, and your phone just receives what audible.
Cable is pretty simple, it's digital, just sends back forth back forth, they say it would be a little less secure, depends on the company, my RoadRunner one is pretty secure for outgoing traffic.
DSL is dedicated to you on your single line, problem though is, the speed you pay for is the speed you get, no higher, no less, with cable, depending on your neighborhood usage, I find myself being able to download upto 1.5MegaBits if it's not busy, and sometimes much slower on a busy day (good thing my node isnt always busy) so its really good for the price for me.
Just thought you'd be interested to know.
ADSL = Asynchronous DSL (it's more dedicated to downloads than uploads)
thats the most common DSL service you'll get
SDSL will give you same speed, both up and down
they is RDSL, and LDSL, which are less common for consummers.
