Broadband Information

Broadband: A Broad Term

Broadband is term that is loosely thrown about in conversation between people when describing their Internet service. What does broad-band mean?

Ask a dozen people and you are likely to get a dozen different answers.

The classic definition of broad band is a high speed transmission over a single wire or fiber optic line that carries hundreds of channels at one time.

This is accomplished by multiplexing or modulating the signal being transmitted on the line.

Broadband is used primarily to transmit data from one location to another.

There are many different broadband options from which to choose. These include:

Cable – many channels sent over cable vision line with speeds up to 6 Mbps

FiOS (Fiber Optic System) – telephone companies equivalent to cable

DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)– many channels sent over the telephone line with speeds up to 3 Mbps

Satellite - usually rural use with speeds up to 2 Mbps

T1 Line – antiquated telephone line system with speeds up to 1.5 Mbps

Wi-Fi – wireless system, many channels transmitted with speeds up to 2 Mbps

ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) – commonly referred to as DSL upload speed is slower than download

SDSL (Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line) – better than ADSL & DSL because upload and download speeds are the same

Leased Lines – chosen by large corporations and universities because of large volume of data being transmitted over fiber optic line

Another way of looking at broad-band is that it uses a wide range of frequencies to send multiple signals at the same time.

Think of a multiple lane highway, broad-band works the same way. The size of the broad-band is based on the width of the highway to accommodate a specific number of users.

This brings us to another term that is commonly used with broad-band and that is bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data that travels through the broad-band line.

This is referred to as bits per second (bps) or packets of information that move along the multi channels of the broadband line or the highway.

If it is not rush hour, you do not notice any slowdown in the bits or packets of information you are sending or receiving.

But if is rush hour you will notice a slow down as millions of bits of information sharing the same line try to get to and from a location and then a traffic jam occurs, just like a highway.

Usually occurs in afternoons and evenings when teenagers are home from school and also during heavy business traffic time.

When you are using DSL and slower Cable speeds.

Experienced when you are trying to access a popular website or trying to access a website to be one of the first in line to buy tickets to a popular concert.

Evidenced by a slow down in loading of a website you are trying to access, while many people are trying to access it at same time.

Also noticeable when downloading images that take a long time, because of a narrow band width.

Occasionally you will hear bits per second (bps) are referred to as:

gross bit rate

through put

channel cap

maximum bit rate

If you are a small business or home user you will normally need less than 1 GB of bandwidth access to support your broad-band applications.

Large business or small businesses that send and receive lots of data will need access to a larger bandwidth.

For additional broadband tv related issues, such as the broadband technology section here, please check out the following topics: Internet television, live news video, streaming stock quotes and streaming television.

And for more streaming media info, don't forget to visit the streaming media hosting, streaming server, online video sharing, video teleconference, video webcasting and digital media sections.

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