Users who have relied upon dial up modems for all of their online life will be a stranger to the world of xDSL and other high speed internet access sources.

But with more and more users joining up, and faster and faster internet speeds becoming available to everyone, it makes you wonder; beyond all the hype and excitement, is it really worth it? Let us take a look:

ADSL, which is the most common form of DSL available to home and small business users, is available to the vast majority of current dial up 56k modem users and is available in three common speeds, 256/64, 512/128 and 1.5/256. These numbers represent the kilobits in speed that is available on those sized links.

As to the benefits of faster internet access itself, what are they? Well, just remember, not everyone will necessarily benefit from the extra speed. However, ADSL will get you:

Faster Downloads. Instead of waiting several minutes to a several hours (or days!), your download will now be delivered in mere seconds, or only a few minutes. xDSL will provide your internet download capabilities with a huge boost.

Better Quality voice. If you regularly use VoIP (Voice over IP) for internet voice chat, remote support or just to save money on your phone bills when calling friends and relatives, DSL will provide much better quality audio with far less popping, stopping and provide much clearer communication.

Better Quality video. If you have ever used video conferencing on dial up, you will be able to appreciate my comments that it can be slow and jerky at the best of times. DSL to the rescue! DSL will provide much smoother video conferencing via high frame rates and clearer streaming with the capability of more video updates per second than normal. In fact, it can easily reach real time movements and streaming!

Faster Websites. Websites can, depending upon the considerations of their web master load quite fast, but then there are others which are heavy with graphics, Java and Flash animations. These can take a long time to load and slow your machine down while they are starting up and initialising. With DSL, they will be downloaded much faster and your PC will be held up for a much, much shorter time so you will be able to enjoy your downloaded multimedia much more comfortably.

If you share photos with family and friends, even when using really good compressed file formats, with dial up, then can still take several minutes to upload. With DSL, they will take mere seconds which means they are transferred quicker and you can enjoy the rest of your time however you want, without having to sit staring at your computer monitor, waiting for your file to go through. Those who enjoy sharing of files such as documents and spreadsheets will also be able to benefit from this massive speed up when transferring your files between home and work or between your associates and yourself.

So the benefits of DSL are there for your benefit. If you are a light internet user who merely uses their internet connection for email and very little else, you probably wont need to consider DSL unless you really need to. But for those who are high speed internet and bandwidth fans, the advantages of DSL in its popular ADSL form are awaiting your use.