Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Grandma's Phone, DSL, and the Copper They Share (hackaday.com)

Posted by timothy on from the pattern-continuity dept.

szczys writes: DSL is high-speed Internet that uses the same twisted pair of copper wire that still works with your Grandmother's wall-mounted telephone. How is that possible? The short answer is that the telephone company is cheating. But the long answer delves into the work of Claude Shannon, who figured out how much data could be reliably transferred using a given medium. His work, combined with that of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley (pioneers of channel capacity and the role noise plays in these systems), brings the Internet Age to many homes on an infrastructure that has been in use for more than a hundred years.

5 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What year is this? by JoeMerchant · · Score: 4, Funny

    According to my prof in 1987, doing a paper on Shannon's work puts you back in 1959. (Fuzzy logic was his thing, in 1987.)

  2. Re:What year is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    What the hackaday people need is an ISDN line.

  3. Re:What year is this? by Dragonslicer · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd be thrilled if I could get DSL.

    Your Internet connection is so bad, you only have enough bandwidth for one letter in your username.

  4. F#$^#$^@ by barakn · · Score: 3, Funny

    My grandmas are dead, you insensitive clod.

    --
    "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
  5. Re:Everyone's phone, DSL and copper by bmo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Not unless your grandmas phone was touch tone

    Pulse dialing still works nearly everywhere. Indeed, some people are skilled enough to do pulse dialing by flashing the hook the required number of times.

    Like me.

    Get on my level.

    --
    BMO

    HOWTO: http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/...