PSU Magazine Fall 1999

Online By Melissa Steineger ~o you're cruising the information ~highway with your supercharged 56K bps modem-fastest thing on the road, you smirk-when out of nowhere comes a blur of electrons passing you 20 times faste r than your top speed. Welcome to tomorrow today. Using a standard telephone line, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) tech– nology is so fast, industry observers are calling it a fundamental advance that wi ll transform the way we shop, bank, and relax. Not convinced? Consider: • With a 56K bps modem (the fastest conventional modem on the market) it would take 13 hours to download the Encyclopedia Britannica. With DSL the world's knowledge book would be on your desktop in about 8 minutes. • DSL technology allows you to download virtual real-time video and audio-or send it. You could become a virtual televi ion or radio station from your home to the world. • DSL is always on . No more dialing up your ISP and connecting. With DSL, you're online anytime your computer is on. Need a phone number for someone in Tuscaloosa? Find it on the Web. Wonder how your stocks are doing? The answer's a key stroke away. • DSL lets you talk or fax on the phone line at the same time you're surfing the Web. Haven't heard of DSL? You will and soon. Nearly 5.8 million subscribers are expected to sign up by the end of 2000, and that could be the iceberg's tip if DSL pans out. For now, Portland State students will be the first in Oregon and southwest Washington to be able to study DSL technology. 10 PSU MAGAZINE FALL I999 anytime So what is DSL? At its simplest, says PSU engineering professor Fu Li, who is bringing the curriculum to PSU, think of how a radio lets you tune in many different channels. In this analogy, your telephone is the radio. With your current telephone, uh, radio, you've been able to dial in only one channel: voice. With DSL, you'll be able to get voice and Internet "channels." Here the analogy breaks downs, because DSL allows you to receive both channels at once with no static. The generic term for this rapid access, by the way, is broadband- a word that also encompasses cable modems. In techno-speak, broadband access is a "fat pipe" or large-capacity pipeline. POTS, by the way, is the offi– cial acronym for "plain old telephone system"-what Alexander Graham Bell envisioned. With a special DSL modem and some machinations by your phone company, you're on the information highway faster than you ever thought possible. Of course, there are a few jolts in this digital roadway-POTS holes, so to speak. Currently you must live within three miles of a telephone switching station. Fortunately that covers about 60 percent of the urban population. And the price of fast isn't cheap. Installation of the DSL modem can cost $100 or so and local phone companies charge $35 to $80 a month, plus you still have to pay for an Internet provider, another $20 or so a month. l:\sL blazed onto the technology '-!I radar screen almost as quickly as DSL technology moves information. Relatively unknown until the early 1990s, by 1998 350,000 users-mostly on the East and West coasts-were sprinting onto the Internet with DSL modems. That number is expected to grow astronomically, to 16 million or more by 2003, as more people hear about DSL. &"f.t&hy the interest ? If you have an 'VInternet connection at work and at home, you know the difference a fast connection makes. DSL would bring to your home or small business the same blink-of-an-eye speed the big guys have. With DSL, you could hold a live video conference with a sales– person when you're thinking about buying a car-a possibility not lost on retailers. And since DSL is on when– ever your computer is on , you may find yourself more likely to surf up a tele– phone number or maybe order a book as you're passing by the desktop. For current contenders to the Internet access throne, the future is looking bleak. Currently some house– holds connect to the Internet over their cable telev ision line. But DSL is well-poised to thrash cable technology. DSL is cheaper; phone lines are more prevalent than cable; and cable access can slow if multiple users are online simultaneously. DSL never slows. Another contender, integrated serv ices digital network (ISDN) operates at a max imum of 128K bps and is more expensive than DSL, making its days appear numbered. Li sees many possibilities fo r the new DSL technology. Video phones would be more viable with transfer speeds close to real-time. Consumers could download multimed ia content like video on demand with almost life– like results. Employees could create a virtual office at home with the same rapid access to company e-mail, files,