Digital Subscriber Line

Digital subscriber line (DSL) creates a relatively short (miles long,

not tens of miles) high-speed
link WAN between a telco customer and an ISP. To do so, it uses
the same single-pair telephone line
used for a typical home phone line. DSL, as a technology, does
not try to replace leased lines, which
run between any two sites, for potentially very long distances. DSL
instead just provides a short
physical link from a home to the telcos network, allowing access
to the Internet..
First, to get an idea about the cabling, think about typical home
telephone service in the United States,
before adding DSL service. Each home has one phone line that
runs from a nearby telco CO to the
home. As shown on the left side of Figure 3-15, the telephone
wiring splits out and terminates at
several wall plates, often with RJ-11 ports that are a slightly
skinnier cousin of the RJ-45 connector.
Figure 3-15. Typical Voice Cabling Concepts in the United
States
Next, think about the telephone line and the equipment at the CO.
Sometime in the past, the telco
installed all the telephone lines from its local CO to each
neighborhood, apartment, and so on. At the
CO, each line connects to a port on a telco switch. This switch
supports the ability to set up voice
calls, take them down, and forward the voice through the
worldwide voice network, called the public
switched telephone network, or PSTN.
To add DSL service at the home in Figure 3-15, two changes
need to be made. First, you need to add
DSL-capable devices at the home. Second, the telco has to add
DSL equipment at the CO. Together,
the DSL equipment at each side of the local telephone line can
send data while still supporting the
same voice traffic.

The left side of Figure 3-16 shows the changes. A new DSL
modem now connects to a spare phone
outlet. The DSL modem follows the DSL physical and data link
layer standards to send data to/from
the telco. The home now has a small LAN, implemented with a
consumer-grade router, which often
includes an Ethernet switch and possibly a wireless LAN access
point.