(NT) analog/digital phone line?

That is correct. DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line. If you don't have DSL then you don't have a digital line. If you do have a digital line you can still use it for a dialup modem by simply using a digital filter between the wall jack and the modem. These usually come with your DSL xmitter but can be purchased separately.

I currently have a digital phone line and I use analog equipment on it though it is all filtered. After 5 years nothing has fried so you are wrong.

Oh and here are the filters I mentioned earlier: http://store.yahoo.com/maxcooler/netezinmicdi.html

Though I guess we?d better call the manufacturers and tell them to stop making this product since Coryphaeus says analog (or pots) equipment will fry anyway. LOL

You don't filter a digital signal. You filter an analog signal. This from that link:

Electrical Specifications: Filter topology is 2-pole Low Pass, DC resistance through T&R to telephone port is 25 ohms maximum, Loading capacity on telephone port is 33 nF, Attenuation Distortion, relative to 1kHz, 300 Hz to 3400 Hz is +/- 1dB maximum, 3dB cutoff point, line to telephone port, 11 kHz +/- 1.5 kHz, RJ-11 modular jack connection for line and telephone port.

Notice the reference to ''Frequencies'' and "attenuation distortion". Analog!!

Please!! Don't try to cross swords with me on telecommunications. You'll loose.

Wayne

There seems a bit of confusion here.

The phoneline mentioned in the original post IS analog.

The phone line can handle BOTH analog and digital signals. DSL, ADSL are some of these. There is a filter box that seperates the 2. Even if one uses a plain Analog phone on this line without a filter, no damage occurs. The phone will work. Its just that the line handles both Analog and Digital signals.

But there are pure Digital lines - ISDN is such a type. You dont have a filter in such a case, you have a network termination (NT). If you connect a Analog phone on this line, well, you will get a burnt phone.

No confusion on my part but I think Coryphaeus might be a tad bewildered.

DSL is an analog signal, not digital. DSL uses an 80 KHz to 1.1 MHz ANALOG signal that rides the telephone cable pair (the voice frequencies are in the 200-3400 Hz bandwidth). It is NOT digital. Hence the term asynchronous, meaning there is no clock signal which requires start bits and stop bits, just like dial-up - ANALOG. The other term you need to know is asymmetrical meaning two different speeds for up and down delivery. A fully digital signal such as ISDN and T-1 are synchronous as they both use a clock signal. ISDN, running at a total of 160 KB/s delivers two B channels at 64 KB/s each, and a 9.6 KHz signal channel. The rest are ''Overhead'' (do the math for the rest) and include the timing signal. T-1 and the above hierarchy use a 1.544 MHz clock signal embedded into the framing scheme. I've been using and teaching this ''stuff'' since 1987.

Please read my ''A Short Course in DSL'' at my web site below.

Good luck,

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to
use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
Click here to see the CNet faces, learn a little about telephones,
internet connections, spyware, and data, and download free software.

Traditional phone service (sometimes called POTS for "plain old telephone service") connects your home or small business to a telephone company office over copper wires that are wound around each other and called twisted pair. Traditional phone service was created to let you exchange voice information with other phone users and the type of signal used for this kind of transmission is called an analog signal. An input device such as a phone set takes an acoustic signal (which is a natural analog signal) and converts it into an electrical equivalent in terms of volume (signal amplitude) and pitch (frequency of wave change). Since the telephone company's signalling is already set up for this analog wave transmission, it's easier for it to use that as the way to get information back and forth between your telephone and the telephone company. That's why your computer has to have a modem - so that it can demodulate the analog signal and turn its values into the string of 0 and 1 values that is called digital information.
Because analog transmission only uses a small portion of the available amount of information that could be transmitted over copper wires, the maximum amount of data that you can receive using ordinary modems is about 56 Kbps (thousands of bits per second). (With ISDN, which one might think of as a limited precursor to DSL, you can receive up to 128 Kbps.) The ability of your computer to receive information is constrained by the fact that the telephone company filters information that arrives as digital data, puts it into analog form for your telephone line, and requires your modem to change it back into digital. In other words, the analog transmission between your home or business and the phone company is a bandwidth bottleneck.

Digital Subscriber Line is a technology that assumes digital data does not require change into analog form and back. Digital data is transmitted to your computer directly as digital data and this allows the phone company to use a much wider bandwidth for transmitting it to you. Meanwhile, if you choose, the signal can be separated so that some of the bandwidth is used to transmit an analog signal so that you can use your telephone and computer on the same line and at the same time.

Where did you get it? Did you read my link? ADSL is still analog, I tell you how it works at my link. I've been teaching and developing courses for all the RBOCs since the 80s.

I'd like to know where you got that information as the digital part is just plain wrong.

Wayne

Look I could have you talk to the tech department of verizon or any other DIGITAL service provider but I'm afraid you would not listen. You are plain wrong and you just want to argue.

Anyone who is following this thread has been given the links to the facts concerning what DIGITAL subcriber lines really are and what they are not.

I will not allow this to be a forum for the preservation of your vanity. If you feel you must continue to misinform CNET forum readers that is your choice but I will no longer answer incorrect posts such as yours.

Would you read this, please, since you obviously didn't read my web site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADSL

Hopefully you can understand it as it describes how the analog signal works. Scroll down to "How ADSL works".

I'm done.