DSL has opened a can of acronyms that hasn't been seen for quite a while. Alphabet Soup, people. Ready to get tounge-tied?
  • ADSL - Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. Most commonly used form. ADSL is called "asymmetric" because most of its two-way or duplex bandwidth is devoted to the downstream direction, sending data to the user. Only a small portion of bandwidth is available for upstream or user-interaction messages.
  • CDSL - Consumer DSL. A trademarked version of DSL that is somewhat slower than ADSL (1 Mbps downstream, probably less upstream) but has the advantage that a "splitter" does not need to be installed at the user's end.
  • G.Lite or DSL Lite - G.Lite (also known as DSL Lite, splitterless ADSL, and Universal ADSL) is essentially a slower ADSL that doesn't require splitting of the line at the user end but manages to split it for the user remotely at the telephone company. This saves the cost of what the phone companies call "the truck roll." G.Lite, officially ITU-T standard G-992.2, provides a data rate from 1.544 Mbps to 6 Mpbs downstream and from 128 Kbps to 384 Kbps upstream. G.Lite is expected to become the most widely installed form of DSL.
  • HDSL - The earliest variation of DSL to be widely used has been HDSL (High bit-rate DSL) which is used for wideband digital transmission within a corporate site and between the telephone company and a customer. The main characteristic of HDSL is that it is symmetrical: an equal amount of bandwidth is available in both directions.
  • IDSL - Also known as ISDN DSL, is somewhat of a misnomer since it's really closer to ISDN data rates and service at 128 Kbps than to the much higher rates of ADSL. It cripples you with bonded ISDN speed at the tradeoff that run length is greatly extended, sometimes on the order of 5 times the distance.
  • RADSL - Rate-Adaptive DSL is an ADSL technology from Westell in which software is able to determine the rate at which signals can be transmitted on a given customer phone line and adjust the delivery rate accordingly.
  • SDSL - Symmetric DSL is similar to HDSL with a single twisted-pair line, carrying 1.544 Mbps (U.S. and Canada) or 2.048 Mbps (Europe) each direction on a duplex line. It's symmetric because the data rate is the same in both directions.
  • UDSL - Unidirectional DSL is a proposal from a European company. It's a unidirectional version of HDSL.
  • VDSL - Very high data rate DSL is a developing technology that promises much higher data rates over relatively short distances (between 51 and 55 Mbps over lines up to 1,000 feet or 300 meters in length). It's envisioned that VDSL may emerge somewhat after ADSL is widely deployed and co-exist with it. The transmission technology (CAP, DMT, or other) and its effectiveness in some environments is not yet determined. A number of standards organizations are working on it.
  • x2/DSL - This is a modem from 3Com that supports 56 Kbps modem communication but is upgradeable through new software installation to ADSL when it becomes available in the user's area. 3Com calls it "the last modem you will ever need."
There are probably many more variants, but these are all the usual ones I could find.

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