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Lebanon finally joins the High Speed Internet bandwagonWednesday, June 6, 2007ADSL is on the roadThe wait is over, ADSL is finally here. Where? Few weeks ago, Telecommunication Minister Marwan Hamade made the announcement. It was really good news, at last we can say good-bye to those huge nasty phone bills. What it ADSL?Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line or for short ADSL is a technology that enables you to get high speed Internet over the existing telephone line. You can make/receive phone calls and surf the web at the same time. Your line will never be busy! If you don’t have a phone line and you’re planning to use the service at home, you will need to contact Ogero. You might wonder how it is possible to move from the lazy 33.6kbps to high 128kps over the same line. Well, the answer is simple; the slow Internet connection you had was not due to a limitation in the copper wire, but in the technology that dial-up modems use. If you wish to know more about the ADSL technology, I advise you to visit Wikipedia How to get ADSL and what are my optionsIn addition to a telephone line, you need to purchase a DSL modem and a filter to split voice and data signals. Don’t worry, any ISP you choose will take care of this. Although most ISPs in Lebanon are currently offering ADSL service, it will take up to four weeks to hook you up. For now, you can visit your ISP homepage and fill in an application. Here’s a quick list of the ISPs offering ADSL
You can choose from a range of speeds 128, 256, 512 Kbps and 1Mbps
depending on your needs. The story without the bells and whistlesSuppose you signup for the 128k plan, what will you really get.
Now that you have an ADSL connection, how long will it take to download a
file with a size of 1MB file? When you talk about information/data use the term byte, 1 KB(kilobyte) = 1024 bytes (if you’re interested to know why 1024 and not 1000 click here) When talking about connection speed, bits/second is used. 1kbps = 1000 bits/second So, let us see how long it takes to download a 1MB file over a 128k ADSL connection.
1MB = 1KB x 1024 bytes = 1024 Kbytes
The same file takes more than 4mins to download over a dial-up connection (33.6kbps)
Although you are not charged by the minute, the fact does not mean you can browse the web, download music and videos 24/24. There’s a limitation. The maximum amount of data you’re allowed to download and upload is 2GB per month (for 128kbps) If you don’t know what download and upload means, well here’s
an example to clarify the terms. Let us play again with numbers.
Size of data = 2K x 1024 x 1024 = 2097152Kbytes Yes, your 2GBs will run in less than 2 days!! ConclusionADSL is really big news; we still have to see how fast it is going to be. If you’re a music/video download addict, 2GB of bandwidth won’t be enough for you, make sure you download with moderation. |