Mindmeld - Here's the deal.
Yes, you can talk or fax over the same phone line at the same time that you are accessing the web. I tested this by carrying on a conversation with an engineer friend of mine while I was downloading a 4 meg mpeg music file. He was very impressed.
Pac Bell sent out a subcontracted company vendor to install the ADSL connection. They tested the lines (again, Pac Bell had previously tested them when I ordered the ADSL connection). Then the technician put in a grey box about four inches square on the outside of my house, and ran a connection inside. He then set up the Alcatel ADSL modem, installed a network card in my PC, and set me up.
So, basically, ADSL simply piggybacks on top of an existing phone line. You need at least one working phone line to get ADSL. This is one of the nice things about ADSL, is that it eliminates the need to get a different phone line so that you can you can use the Internet and the phone at the same time. This should help to reduce the number of new phone numbers being needed, being as I right now have three different phone numbers (home phone, fax/data phone and cell phone).
I also have a friend who has ADSL in his apartment. He has the ADSL box installed on the wall in his closet. This same friend set me up with a Linux based firewall PC, so now my ADSL connection comes in to my Linux box, then goes to my PC and my Sparcstation. All of the machines connect to each other, and to the Internet, but the outside world has to go through my Linux firewall to get to my data. It's a pretty nice setup.
Regards.
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