DSL and cable Internet connections
Using cable connections
Using DSL connections
You’re probably familiar with the ubiquitous dial-up Internet connection: You log on to the Internet, hear that screeching modem sound and — presto! whammo! — you’re online. If you’re lucky, the entire dial-up process takes less than a minute, but it can take longer. And then there’s the fact that Web pages take so-o-o lo-o-ong to build onscreen.
You have a better way to get online, called broadband. Broadband is a generic term for high-speed cable and digital subscriber line (DSL) connections. Cable connections are provided by cable television companies, and DSL by telephone companies. Both are much faster than dial-up connections, and both have their advantages and disadvantages.
TipThe broad in broadband means that wires and cables that connect a modem to the Internet have a wide bandwidth; they can handle more data at faster speeds and with greater reliability. Plain old telephone service (POTS) was created for transferring analog voice data. Needless to say, POTS just doesn’t do as well as broadband media when it comes to the Internet.
The two most popular broadband connections you can use to access the Internet are cable modems (which use your existing cable television lines to transfer data) and DSL (which use fancy-schmancy digital phone lines). Broad- band connections work from roughly 500 kilobits per second (Kbps) to several million bits per second (Mbps). That’s enough to transfer graphics-rich Web pages in a few seconds; it’s also enough to listen to several audio streams or to watch a low-resolution video stream.
If you’re ready to make the switch to a DSL or cable Internet connection, believe us when we tell you that you will never want to go back to a dial-up modem. This chapter describes how to obtain and configure a broadband connection.
TipWe recommend avoiding ISDN, satellite, and mental-telepathy Internet connections. The old ISDN technology is rapidly being replaced by DSL. ISDN is also difficult to configure and isn’t much faster than a dial-up modem connection. Satellite Internet connections are just now being introduced and suffer from problems, such as transmission delays (latency), that wreak havoc with your communications. Some people say that mental telepathy works great, but we don’t think that Intel makes a chip yet. Satellite systems may improve quickly, but until that happens, we recommend using a plain old dial-up modem or, if you can, a DSL or cable modem connection.