Home & Office Telecom

In this article I’m going to explain some of the differences between various choices for ways to get on the Internet.

Initially, let me discuss the two general types of Internet connection before I get more in-depth about some of the more specific types within these two larger categories.

When looked at as basically as possible there are two frequently used computer terms about different Internet connections: dialup and “broadband”.

Dialup is, of course, the old fashioned way to connect to the Internet, where you utilize a dialup modem. Dialup modems have been around for much longer than most people realize: I bought my first one around 1986 and they date back to in the 1960s.

It was a “1200 bps” (bps is a measurement of speed) modem that I bought for around  $200 for back in the day. Dialup modems capped out at 56K bps a good ten years or more ago, and now sell for not even  $10 if you go to the right place.

Basically that’s about forty-six times faster, and 20 times less expensive.

At this point you might be thinking “Wow! That sounds really fast!”

If that’s what you think, you’re wrong.

Dialup is old technology, and hasn’t been improved on in something like ten years, which means it’s something like one hundred fifty years out of date relatively speaking!

So the simple way to think of it is, dialup is very slow.

Many computer users are stuck in the world of, either because they don’t don’t know any better, or they don’t have the choice where they are.

However,even if you are still using dialup and think “it’s good enough, so why bother upgrading?”– you’re making a mistake.

I’ll get to why in a minute.

Before I do, I should talk about the primary alternative to dialup. It’s called”broadband”, which basically just means “fast Internet”.

Broadband can be found in a number of flavors, covering a range of speeds, all of them lots faster than dialup.

Aside from much better, broadband generally doesn’t tie up your phone line, so people aren’t annoyed by busy signals if they try calling you, and you’re able to place phone calls even when you’re connected to the Internet.

The two main flavors of broadband are cable and DSL. Cable internet comes over the same cable as cable TV, and is available from many companies under a variety of different brands– Roadrunner is one example of cable internet.

DSL actually comes in through your phone lines just like dialup, but it’s a lot quicker and, much like cable Internet, you can place phone calls while you’re connected.

You’ve got less-common varieties like satellite, which gives you fairly fast connections to the Internet over a satellite dish in the same way as satellite TV. It is kind of slow for broadband, but much faster than dialup. It’s primarily used by people out in the boonies who don’t have a better choice.

What I suggest to most computer users is to get DSL, if you can get it where you live. In most cases it’s just a little more expensive than dialup is, and in many cases it’s the same price or even cheaper!

It’s not always as speedy as cable Internet, but it’s still fast enough for most people, and lets you do a lot of things that just aren’t possible (or are extremely agonizingly slow) on dialup, for example, watching videos on YouTube or other sites, or downloading big files.

Which takes us to one of the most significant reasons I think people should stop using dialup and switch to some flavor of broadband — downloading large files.

You might think that you never do that, but on the other hand… Perhaps you do (or should be) and don’t know it.

Here’s why: computer users are sending around big images(or several smaller images), or even videos via email all the time these days.

If you’re on dialup and you tried getting your email and it never seemed to arrive, or it seemed to take forever to do it, you may have become a victim of this.

So there’s that reason.

But there’s an even more critical one: computers require things called “security updates” or “patches” which are incredibly important to download. It’s important for both Windows or Macintosh computers.

Without these patches, your computer can be vulnerable to invasion from viruses, worms, and other threats.

But these security updates ( think Windows Update, or OS X’s Software Update) more and more frequently can be very large files.

So large that it can take many hours, or even DAYS to get. And if you don’t download them, your computer is vulnerable.

Which leaves you between a rock and a hard place if you’re still using dialup.

So think about upgrading if you haven’t already, and tell your friends who haven’t. And remember there are a selection of good sites out there where you can find computer training CDs, so make sure you use them if you need them.