Just a quick poll to find out how you connect to the Internet. This will help us determine how to best present things in the future.

I have cable modem.

I have dial up..mainly because cable is not available out here in the sticks..and Satelite is too expensive.

HI , I have wonderful (not) dialup . All day im either loginin or getting booted cause of phone. ok have a great day everyone :)

I have DSL.............but it still isnt' fast enough...........give me power

DSL but it's still not fast enough!

Hey EB...I didn't realize we said almost the same thing...JINX!

i ues speedtouch broadband

I have to believe there are more than 8 people using the Forums ;). If you haven't voted yet, please do :)

I have cable. :)

I have cable (broadband). Its supposed to be really fast but it seems slow.

I am on a wireless T1 and I also am on DSL 6MB/down 348kb/UP

I have cable

To all with Cable.......I ENVY YOU!!!!!!!!! What I have to say about dial up I can not say in forums:mad:

Corpnet here all the way.

I don't know what kind it is if you go through your sattelite dish. Does anyone do this here or know about it?

I am moving soon out of town into the boondocks where you can't get any cable. But I can connect through sattelite. Its called direcway, and I hear its pretty slow compared to cable.

Its another form of broadband....download speeds are supposedly pretty good (except when it rains) but upload speeds apparently suffer.

another thing about satalite is the lag time it isnt good if you like to do online gaming or if you want to set up a a privet network to log into like a work computer

I currently use a 56KBPS modem, but have just subscribed to DSL and am in the process of setting it up (#*&@#?!?! lack of usable documentation).

What I PREFER is a dedicated T-3, but oh well....


Ken

3 Mbit/s downstream/256 Kbit/s upstream cable service. I could use more upstream bandwidth, however . . . SSH to my system is a bit laggy at times. Remote X is extremely slow.

DSL Works fine for me

I have DSL, and I'm lovin it!(mcdonalds theme) :D

I chose DSL because I couldn't use the asymmetric bandwidth of cable for telecommuting....

Ken

I say other because you didn't list what I use at work, and you didn't give us an option to select more then 1.

at work i use a Gigebit link, sharebed between 60 others or so at a time. :D

at home I use Roadrunner (cable modem)

dsl - and although my son and I are happy with it, the other 50% of the family are not.

I think I have cable ...
yeah ... *asked someone*
I do ... :)

Gotta love the cable internet!!


So, you can say that I am putting my answer in as cable!!

uh. The technological area of computer use is not an area of interest for me. All I want is for it to work. Therefore I am not sure what some of the options on the poll mean. I use highspeed accessed through my phone company. Dunno what it's accronym is.:confused:

OK -- I've worked with or learned about all of them, so I'll try to decipher (I didn't say simplify) this a bit:

Dial-up Modem: Your PC makes a phone call to an ISP (Internet Service Provider), which gives you access to the Internet (see T-1/3 below). VERY SLOW and ties up a regular phone line.

Cable: Using your Cable TV box. Most CTV providers have upgraded their boxes to let them bundle internet access with programming. Lots of data coming into the box (designed for sharp digital video on big screens), but lacks something to be desired going the other way, especially if you like to send big files (like home video). Also, cable is a local monopoly and priced accordingly.

DSL: Digital Subscriber Line. The chief rival to Cable. Owned and operated by phone companies. Uses modified phone lines (not available everywhere at this point). Not as good as cable bringing in data (download), better than cable going the other way (upload).

ISDN: the first digital internet technology sold by the phone companies for using phone lines. Not well supported, hard to configure, overtaken by DSL and cable in speed and quantity.

LAN (corporate): Local Area Network. A true digital computer network. "Local" used to mean "in the same building," but now V(irtual)LANs can be built world-wide on the Internet and use secret codes (encryption) for privacy. All this choice means is that you use your work computer to access the internet.

T-1, T-3: I'm not sure why these are here. These are high-powered digital long-range phone lines that are the foundation of the Internet. All Internet connections pass through "data superhighways" like this, regardless how you connect (the other options). Phone companies own the lines and lease space on them to paying customers (like ISPs). Most people can't afford them, and whatever choice of Internet connection you make uses them.

Caveat: This is sketchy and not intended to be complete or precisely accurate. There is not enough room in this whole Forum for a decent discussion.

Ken

Road Runner cable (pretty fast) but there is always room for more bandwidth. :)

Vinceptor,
Good descriptions.
I'll add a few more that are not quite as popular:

Satellite Systems - Comparable to low end DSL services. Great for remote areas where DSL/Cable and Point-to-Point Broadband is not available. They no longer need a phone line for the uplink like they used to. Downside is the uplink speed is pretty bad, there is a delay (1 second usually) in response times due to the lag from going up to space and bouncing back down to the datacenter and vice versa. Service is more expensive than DSL/Cable and equipment costs a whole lot more depending on which provider and service pack you can use.

Point-to-Point Wireless - This is basically where you have a local ISP that has a tower and patch antennas pointing out to their clients (you?). You have a small tower or structure where a transmitter/receiver patch antenna is pointed towards your ISP and they pass the network traffic between the two. Businesses are starting to use these more and more, especially in some cities and people living out in the country, usually within 20 miles of a ISP's building are using this type of service more and more. You can have RF (Radio Frequency) or Optical (light) options and the bandwidth available is pretty large depending on how much you want to pay, obstructions and distances from the ISP's tower. Costs are pretty reasonable for these. (I looked into it in College Station, Texas and it was slightly more expensive than the DSL service I had).
Downsides are equipment purchases (not that expensive), line of sight from your location to the ISP's tower(s) (buildings and trees), and possible contruction of a tower to get good line of sight.

Moving away from consumer level Internet broadband lines, you can add Fiber Optic lines (OC's) for the larger corporations, apartment complexes, subdivisions and most often, Datacenters like ADDForum's server is hosted. The cost of OC-3 and better fiber lines are huge... Heck, fractional T-3 lines are very expensive. Fractional T-1 lines are reasonable for a small-medium sized business if you do a lot of online work or run a small VPN.

Ok, my 2 cents..