Choosing the Connection for Free Internet Access UK
As the Internet grows in popularity because of its versatility and usefulness, choosing the right connection for accessing it is becoming a very important decision. While modems still despite of their slow connection but economic cost, DSL, cable, ISDN, are becoming popular and are being introduced by many organizations to take benefit of high-speed access.
Speed:
When you read an ad that says: "Our Connection Provides You with an Amazing and Unbelievable 10 Megs per Second Download Speed," you should be amazed, but maybe not as much as you think. Some time back, a quick marketing person decided that Internet connection speed would be better described in bits, not the bytes usually used to describe disk size and RAM space. So that "unbelievable" 10 Megabits per second is actually about 1.25 megabytes per second. This article, not to confuse things further, will continue to discuss Internet speed in bits per second. So, don't jump out of your skin the next time you read about another "unbelievable" download speed. Simply divide by 8.
Types of Access:
Anyone who has used a modem knows the problems associated with dial-up access. Even if you just want to check your email for one minute, you have to wait a couple minutes for your modem to dial a number and establish a connection to your ISP. It often takes less time to check your email than it does to connect the Internet! While this isn't a major problem if you rarely use the Internet, it can be a major annoyance if you use it heavily. For heavy users, a dedicated, "always on" connection such as DSL or T1 is the better alternative. Not only does such a connection provide access "on demand," it is also faster and easier to share with a large group of users.