Internet Service Made Simple
There are a lot of different internet services available to choose from. The trick is to choose a plan that best fits your business or residential needs. Your choice of Internet service provider will vary by location, bandwidth, speed, and cost. Having an understanding of how the Internet gets to your business or home will simplify the shopping process. A company will often borrow or rent the âtrunksâ from the bigger companies to provide you with service. Understanding the different services will save you a lot of headache in the future. For example, your current cable company may suffer from frequent outages or poor performance due to line problems. Changing your provider to another cable company may not solve this problem because both companies could be using the same infrastructure and utilizing those same lines that are causing the problems.
The following are examples of types of Internet service that may be available to you:
- Fiber optic: A form of broadband Internet delivered using a newer passive optical network technology. The data is transferred to your house using three different wavelengths in the infrared spectrum:Â one for television, one for upload, and one for download. Fiber optics is usually associated with having the fastest residential speeds due to the higher bandwidth capabilities of the infrastructure. A typical fiber infrastructure uses the following wavelengths:
- 1310 nm wavelength for upload data rate at 155 Mbit/s
- 1490 nm wavelength for download data rate at 622 Mbit/s
- 1550 nm wavelength for QAM cable television with 870 MHz of bandwidth
- Cable Internet Access: A form of broadband Internet access that uses the cable television infrastructure to distribute Internet for business and residential applications. This usually requires coaxial cable (television cable) and Category 5 cable (Ethernet cable) for installation. Your Internet is often installed into an existing network (called a local loop) and your actual speeds might fluctuate depending on your local loopâs current data usage (peak data usage times). The data bit transfer download rate typically ranges from as much as 400 Mbit/s for business and 100 Mbit/s for residential service.
- ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line): A form of broadband Internet access that uses the telephone infrastructure to distribute Internet for business and residential applications. ADSL is an older technology, but widespread availability has made it hugely successful. The data bit transfer ranges between 256 Kbit/s to 40 Mbit/s download rate, and is heavily dependent on the DSL technology, line conditions, and service-level implementation.
- Satellite connections (3g and 4g type connections): A form of Internet access that uses the cellular infrastructure to distribute Internet for business and residential applications. The cellular network is constantly improving and each new generation of hardware provides improvement from the previous generationâs bandwidth capabilities (e.g. 2g, 3g, 4g). The most current generation of cellular towers and network coverage is called 4g. One of the advantages of having a cellular Internet access is the widespread coverage over the air. Satellite connections such as Verizon, Sprint, ATT, and T-Mobile are not ideal for business applications due to high latency. The cellular network is a very convenient option for residential applications when any of the other connections are not available.
We hope that this helps you determine the best type of Internet service for your business or home. If you need more information or further assistance, please do not hesitate to call us at Tech Helpline.
Contributions to this article were made by Devin Sag, Tech Helpline Technical Analyst
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