A simple way to understand bandwidth is to think of a highway. Bandwidth would be the number of lanes on the road and internet traffic would be the amount of vehicles on the highway. If you car is the only one on the road, you can speed to your destination, but if you’re caught in the middle of rush hour, you’ll have a hard time getting there.
| Connection Technology | Explained | Speed | Physical Medium | Comments |
| Dial-up Access | Uses a modem and regular telephone line. | 1200 bps to 56 Kbps | Twisted pair (regular phone lines) | Cheap but slow compared with other technologies. Bad lines may reduce speed! |
| ISDN | Dedicated telephone line and router required. | 64 Kbps to 128 Kbps | Twisted pair | Not available everywhere but becoming more widespread. An ISDN line costs slightly more than a regular telephone line, but you get 2 phone lines from it. 56K ISDN is much faster than a 56K dialup line |
| Cable Internet | Special cable modem and cable line required. | 512 Kbps to 20 Mbps | Coaxial cable; in some cases telephone lines used for upstream requests. | Must have existing cable access in area. |
| ADSL/DSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL is the same as DSL) | This internet technology uses the unused digital portion of a regular copper telephone line to transmit and receive information. ADSL is asymmetric since it receives at 6 to 8 Mbps per second but can only send data at 64 Kbps. | 128 Kbps to 8 Mbps | Twisted pair (used as a digital, broadband medium) | Does not impact normal telephone usage. Bandwidth is dedicated, not shared as with cable. Bandwidth is affected by the distance from the network hubs. Must be within 5 km (3.1 miles) of telephone company switch. Limited availability. Not networkable |
| Wireless (LMCS) | Need a high speed multi-point communications system (LMCS) network and wireless transmitter/receiver. | 30 Mbps or more | Airwaves Requires outside antenna. | Can be used for high speed data, broadcast TV and wireless telephone service. |
| Broadband over Power (BPL) | Uses your electric wires to connect to the internet. | 500Kbps to 3Mbps | Ordinary power lines | New technology but not available everywhere. Low equipment costs, especially if you are using the home version available at BestBUY, Circuit City and more. |
| Satellite | latest have two-way satellite access which removes the need to have a phone line, look for this type. | 6 Mbps or more | Airwaves Requires outside antenna. | Bandwidth is not shared. Satellite companies are set to join the new and future technologies such as Internet TV Latency is typically high Some connections require an existing Internet service account. Setup fees can range from $300-$1200. |
| Frame Relay | Provides a party line type connection to the net and requires an expensive FRAD (Frame Relay Access Device) | 56 Kbps to 1.544 Mbps (or more, depending on connection type) | Various | May cost less than ISDN in some locations. Limited availability. Uses one of the connection types below, fract T1 to OC3 |
| Fractional T1 (Flexible DS1) | There are 23 channels in a T1, a Frac uses just a few of these. | 64 Kbps to 1.544 Mbps | Twisted-pair or coaxial cable | Not as costly as a T1 and lets you grow as needed using 64 Kbps increments. |
| T1 | Special lines and equipment (DSU/CSU and router) required. | 1.544 Mbps | Twisted-pair, coaxial cable, or optical fiber | Video conferencing, large graphics and file transfers Large businesses and ISP will have at least this Expensive |
| T3 | ISP uses for Internet infrastructure connections. | 44.736 Mbps | Optical fiber | |
| OC-1 | ISP uses for Internet infrastructure connections. | 51.84 Mbps | Optical fiber | |
| OC-3 | Large companies use this for their backbone (as well as the internet) | 155.52 Mbps | Optical fiber |
wat is the normal download and upload speed for256kbps
Kbps signifies Kilobits Per Second,
Bits are 8x smaller than bytes.
So if I have a 8mbps, that should entitle me 1MBs
Your 256kbps is only going to allow you 32KBs
why dont you have fios listed and explained
How much download and upload speed should 512kbps connection should give?
How to check my connection is converted to 2mps from 1mps, what will be the upload and download speed, i need to measure it.
When I test my internet speed, it shows that my download speed is 502 kbps but when I download a file the download speed is only 100 kbps. Why?