Broadband v Dial Up - Speed Matters

By Brianuna Hedderun

Most people in the modern civilized world will have heard of Broadband and will know that it relates to the internet. But how many of you I wonder actually know what broadband means, and what it does? In basic terms broadband refers to the way that you connect up to the internet. When the internet first burst upon the public domain, we all used dial up technology, which meant that we connected our computers to the web via an ordinary telephone line. Broadband however uses a different technology than dial up, and is much faster.

To utilize broadband, a phone line is not strictly necessary, and today for example, a lot of people connect via their satellite TV systems. Even though broadband is often routed through your phone line, it is an additional service and this means no more getting cut off when a telephone call comes in, or having to log off the internet if you want to make an outgoing telephone call. In fact today, with the latest VOIP (voice over internet protocol) technology, you can even make your phones calls over the internet too.

Broadband is very much faster than dial up, and this is exactly what has made it so popular. Because of this increased speed it has opened up a whole new world of possibilities, such as downloading music files and even movies. It is something called bandwidth that enables this faster speed. If you picture a water pipe, you can understand that the bigger the diameter of the pipe, the more water it will allow passing through. Broadband operates on the same principle. The bigger the broadband capacity, (normally referred to in mega bytes), the more "traffic" (electronic data) it will allow through.

In essence, broadband gives you the facility to surf the net so much quicker. Most companies sell their services by extolling the amount of bandwidth they provide. But they also play down the fact that the more people that are using the service, the slower it will be, and also, in some countries, the farther your connection point is away from the closest exchange, the slower the service can be.

Broadband services are usually oversold on the principle that that not everybody will want to surf the net at the same time, and in the great majority of instances this is true. Slowdowns because of heavy traffic are usually few and far between.

The other mitigating circumstance is the fact that not everyone uses the internet in the same way. Most internet users want it simply for browsing, or surfing. Those that use it to download data in the form of music files, or movies, or games take up to as much a 3 to 4 times more bandwidth capacity, but by comparison, "down loaders" are in the minority, relatively speaking.

The broadband systems provide much better service to a consumer as compared to a dial up service. If you tried to download a movie or song using a dial up system you would probably have enough time before it finished to do some household chores or maybe even make a very quick run to the store. There truly is that much of a difference.

The broadband system has offered the internet providers the ability to charge more for their services. You can choose the slower dial up system and save some money per month or you can go with the slightly more expensive broadband or high speed option and experience the internet in the way it was intended to be experienced.

For most people, broadband is the only solution. If you haven't tried it yet, you should give it a go. Once you have experienced broadband speeds, you will never want to go back to dial up. - 31498

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