The Cisco ADSL2 high-speed WAN interface cards (HWICs) deliver business-class asymmetric DSL (ADSL) services for customers ranging from small-to-medium sized businesses to enterprise branch offices. While the 1-port HWIC card has an ADSL port, the 2-port HWIC card has an ISDN BRI backup port in addition to ADSL port. The ADSL2 standard (ITU G.992.3) adds features and functions targeted at improving ADSL performance and interoperability. In addition, the standard adds support for new applications, services, and deployment scenarios. Among the changes are improvements in data rate and reach performance, rate adaptation, improved diagnostics, and power enhancements. The conventional ADSL standard (ITU G.992.1) provides downstream data rates of up to 8 Mbps and upstream data rates of up to 0.8 Mbps, and ADSL2 provides higher downstream rates of up to 12 Mbps and upstream data rates of up to 1 Mbps. The ADSL2+ standard (ITU G.992.5) doubles the bandwidth used for downstream data transmission, effectively doubling the maximum downstream data rates, and achieving downstream data rates of up to 24 Mbps and upstream data rates of up to 1.5 Mbps. The exact data rates vary depending on the distance from the DSL access multiplexer (DSLAM), DSLAM type, line card and chipset, and firmware, noi(more...)