Internet Connections
Homes and small offices use the two most common ways to access the Internet, dial-up and broadband. A Modem (Modulator-DEModulator) connects your computer to the incoming signal, whether it’s a phone line or cable.
The fastest dial-up speed is 56 Kbps, or kilobits per second, although that’s what its theoretical speed is. In actuality, you might see a high of 44 Kbps in the real world.
What’s that mean? 44,000 bits per second, which sounds pretty impressive. But each individual text character, say the single letter “a” or the number 3, is contained in a packet called a byte. There are 8 bits in a byte. That means the throughput, called bandwidth, is about 5500 Bytes per second, or 5.5 KBps (small b for bits, capital B for bytes).
So, in order to download a 1 MB (MegaByte) file, it should take 181 seconds or 3 minutes. It actually takes longer than that because it’s not necessarily a continuous stream and some bits are taken up in the transfer protocol. We’re talking realistically 10-12 MB an hour. That means when Microsoft puts out a 120 MB Windows Update for your computer it’s an all-night download.
On Satellite hookups the upload speed is limited to dial-up speed. But, Cable and DSL will also limit your upload speed to prevent users from running their own server from home. If you have the server you won’t be able to get the bandwidth for more than a few people to access it at a time. They are essentially forcing you into a commercial line.
The next step up is called broadband. It comes in two flavors – Cable and DSL. If your area has digital cable service you can connect that way or connect via a special telephone line called a Digital Subscriber Line. There are many factors that determine the speed of each and the speed may vary from one moment to the next, but generally Cable is a little faster than DSL.
Businesses that need a lot of bandwidth have to use commercial phone data lines called T-1’s and T-3’s.
T-1 lines are really no better than Cable or DSL, which is why the phone companies were so slow to come out with home DSL; they would have to lower their price on commercial services. The T-3 is the fastest at almost 30 times faster than a T-1 but, trust me, they’re expensive.
A final option is satellite. Satellites will only download – you need a phone line to send your request to a web site and the satellite downloads the files. It may be an option for rural areas or highly mobile users (in a boat or RV), but it’s more expensive than broadband.
