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How to Know What’s the Best Type of Internet Connection to Use
In this article I’m going to discuss a few of the differences between different options for methods to get on the Internet.
Initially, allow me to explain the two general types of Internet connection before I get more specific about some of the more specific methods within these two general categories.
When looked at as basically as possible there are two commonplace computer terms about types of Internet connection: dialup and “broadband”.
Dialup is, as you may know, the old fashioned way to connect to the Internet, where you utilize a dialup modem. Dialup modems have been around for a lot longer than most people realize: I bought my first one around 1986 and they date back to decades before that.
It was a “1200 bps” (bps is a measurement of how fast it works) modem that I bought for about $200 for back in the day. Dialup modems capped out at 56K bps a good ten years or more ago, and now go for less than $10 if you go to the right place.
In other words that’s around 46 times faster, and twenty times less expensive.
At this point you might be thinking “Wow! That sounds really fast!”
If if you’re thinking something along those lines, you’re wrong.
Dialup is old technology, and hasn’t been upgraded in something like ten years, which means it’s around 150 years out of date relatively speaking!
The simple way to think of it is, dialup = slow.
Lots of people are stuck in the world of, either because they don’t don’t know any better, or they don’t have any other option where they live.
What you may not realize is that even if you are currently using dialup and think “Good enough, why bother?– you’re making a mistake.
I’ll get to why that is in a minute.
First, allow me explain the main alternative to dialup. It’s called”broadband”, which generally just means “fast Internet”.
Broadband can be found in a variety of flavors, covering a range of speeds, all of them much better than dialup.
Aside from much better, broadband generally doesn’t tie up your phone line, so people don’t get busy signals if they call you, and you can make phone calls even when you’re online.
The two most common varieties of broadband are cable and DSL. Cable internet comes over the same cable as cable TV, and is available from a variety of companies using various different brands– Roadrunner is one example of cable internet.
DSL actually comes in through your phone lines like dialup, but it’s a lot quicker and, much like cable Internet, you can place phone calls while you’re using the Internet.
You also have less-common varieties such as satellite, which gives you fairly speedy connections to the Internet over a satellite dish in the same way as satellite TV. It’s slow for broadband, but a lot faster than dialup. It’s mostly used by people way out in the country who don’t have any better choice.
What I would suggest to most people is to get DSL, if they can get it where you live. In most cases it’s only a little bit more expensive than dialup is, and in a lot of instances it’s the same price or even cheaper!
It’s not always as fast as cable Internet, but it is plenty fast for most people, and lets you do a lot of things that just aren’t possible (or are very very annoyingly sluggish) on dialup, for example, viewing videos on YouTube or elsewhere, or downloading large files.
Which brings me to one of the most important reasons I think people should stop using dialup and switch to some variety of broadband — downloading big files.
You might think that you never do that, but on the other hand… Perhaps you do (or should be) and don’t realize it.
First off, people are sending out big photos(or several smaller pictures), 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 be able to get the new messages, or it seemed to take forever to do it, you may have become a victim of this.
So that’s one reason.
But there’s an much more important one: computers have things called “security updates” or “patches” which are incredibly important to get. It’s important for both Windows PCs or Macintosh computers.
Unless you have these patches, your computer is almost guaranteed to be vulnerable to attacks by viruses, worms, and more.
But these security updates ( like Windows Update, or Apple’s Software Update) more and more frequently can be very large files.
So large that it can take many hours, or even DAYS to download. And if you skip downloading them, your computer is very much at risk.
Which leaves you left high and dry if you’re stuck using dialup.
So seriously consider about upgrading if you haven’t already, and forward this to your friends who haven’t. And remember there are a good selection of good sites out there that offer computer training CDs, so don’t be embarassed to look for more help if you need it.
