The Internet is
a global system of interconnected computer
networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP)
to serve several billion users worldwide. It is a network of
networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business,
and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad
array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet
carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the
inter-linked hypertext documents
of the World Wide Web (WWW),
the infrastructure to
support email, and peer-to-peer networks.
High
speed internet is when you have a internet connection that makes you computer
go to the next page quickly. You can download files faster when you have high
speed internet.
Access technologies generally use a modem, which converts digital data to analog for transmission over analog networks such as the telephone and cable networks.
Local
Area Networks
Local area networks (LANs) provide Internet access to
computers and other devices in a limited area such as a home, school, computer
laboratory, or office building, usually at relatively high data-rates that
typically range from 10 to 1000 Mbit/s. There are wired and wireless LANs. Ethernet over twisted pair cabling and Wi-Fi are the two most common technologies used to build
LANs today, but ARCNET, Token Ring, Localtalk, FDDI, and other technologies were used in the past. Most
Internet access today is through a LAN, often a very small LAN with just one or
two devices attached. And while LANs are an important form of Internet access,
this begs the question of how and at what data rate the LAN itself is connected
to the rest of the global Internet.
Dial-up
access
Dial-up access uses a modem and a phone call placed over
the public switched telephone
network (PSTN) to connect to a pool of modems operated by an
ISP. The modem converts a computer's digital signal into an analog
signal that travels over a phone line's local loop until it reaches a telephone company's
switching facilities or central office (CO) where it is switched to another
phone line that connects to another modem at the remote end of the connection.[22]
Operating on a single channel, a dial-up connection
monopolizes the phone line and is one of the slowest methods of accessing the
Internet. Dial-up is often the only form of Internet access available in rural
areas as it requires no new infrastructure beyond the already existing
telephone network, to connect to the Internet. Typically, dial-up connections
do not exceed a speed of 56 kbit/s, as they are primarily made using modems that operate
at a maximum data rate of 56 kbit/s downstream (towards the end user) and 34 or
48 kbit/s upstream (toward the global Internet).
Broadband access
The term broadband includes a broad range of technologies, all of which
provide higher data rate access to the Internet. These technologies use wires
or fiber optic cables in contrast to wireless broadband described later.
Multilink
dial-up
Multilink dial-up provides increased bandwidth
by bonding two or more dial-up connections together and treating them as a
single data channel. It requires
two or more modems, phone lines, and dial-up accounts, as well as an ISP that
supports multilinking – and of course any line and data charges are also
doubled. This inverse multiplexing option was briefly popular with some
high-end users before ISDN, DSL and other technologies became available. Diamond and
other vendors created special modems to support multilinking.
