In this article I’m going to discuss some of the differences between various options for ways to connect to the Internet.
To begin with, allow me to explain the two main types of Internet connection before I get more specific about some of the more specific types within these two general categories.
When when one looks at it as basically as possible there are two commonplace computer terms for ways to connect to the Internet: dialup and “broadband”.
Dialup is, as you may know, the old fashioned way to get on the Internet, where you use a dialup modem. Dialup modems have been around far longer than most people know: I bought my first one around 1986 and they were originally introduced long before that.
It was a “1200 bps” (bps is a way to measure of how fast it works) modem that I bought for something like $200 for back in the day. Dialup modems hit a maximum speed of 56K bps back in the late 1990s, and now sell for less than $10 if you go to the right place.
So in other words that would make it about forty-six times faster, and twenty times less expensive.
At this point you may think to yourself “Wow! That sounds really fast!”
If that’s what you think, you’re wrong.
Dialup is old technology, and hasn’t been updated in about a decade, which means it’s something like 150 years out of date relatively speaking!
So the bottom line is, dialup = slow.
A lot of computer users are using dialup still, either because they don’t see any reason not to, or they don’t have any other option where they live.
However, even if you are still on dialup and are thinking “I’m not upgrading; what’s the point?” — you’re making a mistake.
I’ll tell you why in a moment.
Before I do, I should discuss the primary alternative to dialup. It’s called “broadband”, which basically just means “fast Internet”.
Broadband can be found in a variety of varieties, with a range of speeds, all of them lots faster than dialup.
Beyond a lot faster, 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 make phone calls while you’re online.
The two most used varieties of broadband are cable and DSL. Cable internet comes over the same cable as cable TV, and is offered by many companies with various different brand names — Roadrunner is one example of cable internet.
DSL actually comes in through your phone lines like dialup, but is quite a bit quicker and, like cable Internet, you can place phone calls while you’re online.
You also have less-used options like satellite, which gives you fairly speedy connections to the Internet using a satellite dish like satellite TV. It is kind of slow for broadband, but a lot faster than dialup. It’s mostly used by people away from population centers who don’t have any better option.
What I would suggest to most people who ask is to get DSL, if you can get it where you live. In most cases it’s only a little bit more expensive than dialup is, and in many instances it’s the same price or even cheaper!
It’s not usually as fast as cable Internet, but it is fast enough for most people, and lets you do a lot of things that just aren’t possible (or are very very annoyingly slow) on dialup, for example, viewing videos on YouTube or other sites, or downloading large files.
Which brings us to one of the main reasons I recommend people stop using dialup and upgrade to some kind of broadband — downloading big files.
You might think that you never do that, but not so fast… Maybe you do (or should be) and don’t know it.
To start with, computer users are sending out big pictures (or several smaller images), or even videosby email all the time now.
Maybe you’re using dialup and you’ve tried getting your email and it never seemed to arrive, or it took forever to do it, you may have become a victim of this.
So there’s that reason.
But there’s an even more important one: computers need something called “security updates” or “patches” which are absolutely important to get. It’s important for both Windows or Macintosh computers.
Without these patches, your computer is almost guaranteed to be vulnerable to infection by viruses, worms, and other threats.
But these security updates (like Windows Update, or Apple’s Software Update) more and more frequently can be very large files.
So gigantic that it can take many hours, or even DAYS to download. And if you don’t download them, your computer is left at risk.
Which leaves you up a creek if you’re stuck using dialup.
So think about upgrading if you haven’t already, and forward this to your friends who haven’t. And remember there are a selection of good sites out there that offer computer how to instruction, so don’t be embarassed to look for more help if you need it.