I have always heard that a t1 goes at 1.54 Mbps. My DSL line goes at up to 3 Mbps. I thought t1 was supposed to be faster and more expensive than dsl. what the heck is the big difference and why do companies pay for t1 lines over a dsl line?

A T1 connection (e.g. for a corporate network) is definitely superior to a consumer level broadband connection (e.g. cable or ADSL, for home or for small business users) in terms of overall, sustained, reliable high performance.

holy crap that was fast lol. i just made that post an hour ago. one more thing, adsl goes 3mbps down and 800 kbps up. does a t1 have similar uploading limitations? Also, what kind of wire/plug does a t1 use? (phone line, fibre optics) none of the online definitions include these details.

A T1 is 1.544Mb/s in each direction and is usually gauranteed bandwidth. DSL has no gaurantee and is usually ADSL (i.e. Asymmetric DSL, or faster download than upload). That said, in some areas where there is fiber right to the neighborhood you can actually get 6Mb/s+ DSL (usually with a much lower upload speed, like 1Mb/s). T1s are also wired right into your wiring closet, while DSL is delivered over your existing phone line. You pay a lot more for a T1 because it's more phone lines and because it's a higher level of service.

well, that' very interesting... thanks for your replies. I am sure that answered a lot of other people's questions concerning t1 aswell.

I'm not 100% sure but I think the service is different too. If it 'goes down' for some reason, they are faster to respond to fix it since it is usually a business thing. DSL gets serviced just like any other phone problem or sometimes less.

Later