Purchasing Internet Service¶
What is bandwidth?¶
The definition of bandwidth is the maximum data-carrying capability in devices. This basically means how much data can go across to you computer at a time. The more bandwidth you have the faster you can surf the web and use other services.
Why is bandwdith important?¶
Having a lot of bandwidth is very important depending on what you would like to do with the internet. For example if your school has an internet connection with a dial up connection for all it’s students, surfing the internet would be very productive. All the web pages will take up a long time to load and you wouldn’t be able to play streaming video. Now if your school has a very high speed internet connection than you would be able to surf faster and play video. Computers would be able to do things that wouldn’t normally be posssible. You see streaming video takes up a lot of bandwidth and it wouldn’t be efficient for everyone to stream video. Even if a school had super fast internet if everybody was streaming video it’ll slow down the network or cause it to crash.
Uploading vs. Downloading¶
These two things are very entirely different. Uploading is the transfer of files from your computer to another computer or server. Downloading, however, is exactly the opposite in that its transfering files from a server to your computer. An example of downloading is when you click on a link from a web page and it connects you with another server. Just like these are different terms they always have different speeds. Downloading is always faster than uploading, and to get a good internet speed your downloading speed has to be greater than uploading.
Speed vs Storage Units¶
Although when abbreviated bits and bytes may look the same, they aren’t. The good rule of thumb is when and “b” in the abbreviated form is capitalized then they are talking about bytes. This is exactly the opposite when talking about bits, which is lowercase.
speed: | storage: |
|---|---|
1 kilobit(kb)=1024 bits | 1 kilobyte(kB)=1024 bytes |
1 megabit(Mb)=1024 kb | 1 megabyte(MB)=1024 kB |
1 gigabit(Gb)=1024 Mb | 1 gigabyte(GB)=1024 MB |
1 terabit(Tb)=1024 Gb | 1 terabyte(TB)=1024 GB |
1 petabit(Pb)=1024 Tb | 1 petabyte(PB)=1024 TB |
1 exabit (Eb)=1024 Pb | 1 exabyte (EB)=1024 PB |
Bandwidth and Speed¶
Now that you know what precisly bandwidth is, it is now time to discuss how it is related with speed. You already know that the more bandwidth that you have the faster your internet connection will be. Some speeds will be kind of related but others will be not even be in the same decade.
DSL¶
DSL(Digital Subscriber Line) transmits data over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL uses high frequency while regular telephone uses low frequency on the same telephone line. This type of internet is considerly fast and has a lot of bandwidth to spare. Streaming video is easy and painless and it uses a different frequency than the phone. You can usually get this internet from your phone company. You need to hook up the DSL modem to the phone line. Setting up the modem isn’t hard but you do have to setup filters on all the other phone lines in your home or office that actually connect to phones. The speed is usually 128 kbps to 3 Mbps.
Cable¶
This type of internet connection uses the existing cable line used with your TV. It uses different frequencies than the TV signals so they are not interrupted. Cable requires a cable modem that is connected using the same kind of coaxial cable used to connect your TV. A fixed channel capacity is shared by a population of users (users in a neighborhood or block of building share the available capacity provided by a single coaxial cable line). Therefore, service speed can vary depending on how many people are using the service at the same time. This can be a disadvantage to cable because your internet speed will change throughout the day depending on how many other people in your neighborhood are using it. This type of internet is usually more expensive than DSL but can be much faster too. Download speeds for cable ranges from 2Mbps to 10Mbps.
Fiber¶
This type of internet is the future. It is the fastest internet connection right now. Fiber is so fast because it is light waves that travel through the fiber optic wires that transmit your data and light is the fastest thing in universe. You first have to have fiber optic cables around your street and running to your house. This type of internet has a maximum speed of 30 Mbps. This type of internet is available in limited areas.