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Computers & Technology
Net Connection Not Fast
Enough for You? Not without good reason, the World Wide Web has often been referred to as the World Wide Wait. Of course, for those of us who've been on the Internet since before the days of the mouse and Windows, when it was nothing more than text and lots of typing, when modem speeds left the old 900 baud and began to 'blaze' at 2.4k, today's Net and modems are nothing short of amazing. But, of course, there's a catch. ... Today's Modems: The latest breed of analog modems, at 56k, run 50x faster than those first Hayes modems. But, as everyone knows, any space that can be filled will be. Today, with not only text, but lots of images and sounds {not to mention all of the mostly annoying blinking, flashing ads and the marquees that scroll across your screen}, the Web offers much more than anyone dreamed of in those early years. And if you had to access it with one of those 900 baud modems, you'd could have dinner just while one small image downloaded to your screen. 56k Download Speed: The rule of thumb for analog modems is that your download speed will be about 10% of the modem speed. In other words, in order to view one thumbnail image of about 9k {a relatively small file as far as images go}, that old 900 baud would have taken about 1 1/1 minutes plus. With many modern web pages, even without much in the way of graphics, weighing in at well over 30k, that old modem would've taken about 5 minutes just to download a single page. Today's 56k modems, on the other hand, would put that same page on your screen in about 5-7 seconds. But once you begin to add the graphics, not to mention multimedia files or lots of script to post ads, many pages take a lot longer, even at 56k. What's the solution? Alternatives to Analog Modems: For those of us in relatively rural areas, the options are limited. ISDN is generally available, which can double your speed [128k]. But half of a long wait may still be too long. DSL [digital subscriber line] is a possibility, and the speed is more than 100x that of 56k modems. But you have to live within 18,000 feet of the phone company's switches to take advantage, and DSL subscriptions can be somewhat costly. Satellite may hold some promise, with download speeds about 8x that of 56k modems. But the promise is down the road. Right now, satellite ss a one-way street -- you can only download through the satellite to your computer. For simply connecting, not to mention up-loading files if you send a friend a picture attached to an e-mail or you have a web site of your own, you still have to have a connection to an ISP [Internet Service Provider] like sover.net or together.net. Cable Modems: One of the best solutions for those who live along the cable TV route is a cable modem. ... Cable modems have a theoretical upper limit of about 30 megabytes per second [Mbps] downstream. That's more than 500x faster than 56k. But cables lines are shared, so the real-time speeds actually come in around 500k-1 meg ... still 10x-20x faster. On the upstream end, the theoretical limit is about 10Mbps. In fact, some cable providers actually place a bandwidth limit on the upstream end of about 128k. But even with such a limit, that speed is much closer to actual, without the 10% factor you have with analog modems, so you'd still be uploading at far faster rates. Cable modem service is not that much more expensive than a standard dial-up, at about twice the price. In our neighborhood, Adelphia Cable is the primary provider. Currently, according to Adelphia tech, Li Colasanti, Adelphia has its PowerLink cable modem service already available in South Burlington & Middlebury, as well as towns to the north. But plans call for continuous rollouts to the entire Adelphia service region. * For more info on cable modems, check out ZDNet's Cable Modem Guide. * For more info on modems in general, check out our Links to Computers & Tech Info On-Line in this issue. ... ******* ******* |
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