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High Speed Connections Will Increase Business
By Andre Hinds
From Income Opportunities magazine, 2000
In the 1980s, the big question was "What is the color of your parachute?" Today, at the dawn of the 21st century, no one's looking to bail out. Instead, the big question is "What is the speed of your Internet connection?"
For the same price you had to pay for a measly 28.8 kbps connection five years ago, you can get a cable modem or DSL Internet connection that will let you surf at up to 10 Mbps.
If you haven't joined the high-speed Internet bandwagon, here are some things you need to know about the new wave of Internet access.
CABLE MODEM
When cable-TV started creeping into neighborhoods in the early 1970s, consumers were given a lot of wild promises. Originally, there were three network stations. Then, there were suddenly a dozen cable stations, which grew to three dozen. They told us one day there would be 50 stations, then 500, then 5,000.
Then something happened called the World Wide Web. Suddenly there were 5 million websites that could give us much more than TV ever could -- interactivity.
The cable monopolies saw the writing on the wall and switched from developing 5,000-channel systems to connecting their fiber-optic networks to the Internet.
The result was a computer network that could connect home users to the Internet at 50 times the speed of the fastest analog modem. The roll-out began little more than a year ago and has been gaining speed quickly.
A cable modem installation is not as simple as plugging a phone cord into the analog modem built into your computer. First, it requires that your computer have Ethernet built into it. In many cases, this means you'll have to obtain an Ethernet card that will have to be installed in your computer.
It also requires a modem-like box usually called a cable modem. This box connects the cable line to the Ethernet cable, which is connected to your Ethernet card.
The advantage of connecting your computer to the Internet via Ethernet is the ability to connect all your computers to the Internet via a local area network. And since you're not connected via a phone line, you can free up your lone phone line or cancel the extra phone line you purchased just for your computer connection.
The main disadvantage to cable modems is that you're usually sharing the connection with other cable modem users in your neighborhood. As more people get on the network, your available bandwidth will continue to shrink until the point at which 56K analog modems seem fast.
DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER LINE (DSL)
For years, the copper line strung from your home to the local telephone-switching station was fine for letting you talk to your friend across town. But when computers came along and started using that same copper line, the limitations of analog connections became clear.
Computer modems gained speed quickly, going from 300 bits per second (bps) in 1983 to 1,200 bps in 1985, to 2,400 bps in 1987 and 9,600 bps in 1989. In the 1990s, modem speed increased to 14.4 kbps, then to 28.8 kpbs and finally reached its logical zenith at 56 kbps. The experts said that was it -- 56k was the limit for copper. In order to go faster, optical lines were necessary. Then someone figured out that if you could turn the signal on the copper line from analog to digital, the bandwidth of copper line could compete with the speed on optical line. Thus, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology was born.
Like cable modems, DSL requires a computer with Ethernet capability. The DSL modem is similar in size to its cable-modem cousin. Rather than attaching the DSL modem to the cable-TV line, it is attached to your existing phone line. The magic here is that you don't need a separate phone line for DSL. The DSL signal can ride on the same copper line as your existing phone line, without the voice and data information interfering with one another.
However, there is one downside to DSL. The speed of your connection is related directly to the distance from your home to the nearest phone-switching station. If the switching station is across the street, you're going to get blindingly fast Internet speed. If you're a mile away, you're going to get very good speed, in excess of 1 Mbps. Go two miles away, and you'll still be faster than an analog modem but don't expect much better than 350 kbps. Three miles away or more? Forget it.
For those of you within that two-mile radius of a phone-switching station, you'll have one big advantage over cable-modem users -- you'll get full access to the entire bandwidth of the connection. You won't have to share bandwidth with your neighbors.
THE FUTURE
High-speed Internet access doesn't end with phone and cable-TV lines. Hundreds of miles of oil and gas pipelines are being converted to carry fiber-optic lines.
Everyone has a spaghetti nest of electrical line running through his or her house, and engineers are furiously working on a way to connect you to the Web through your electrical outlet.
The biggest potential network pipeline of them all is in the air around you. Experiments are under way to convert the radio spectrum to carry network information directly to your computer. Look for the construction of more radio towers and the launching of many more satellites.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO YOU?
What does all of this extra bandwidth mean to you, as a web entrepreneur? It just opens the possibilities to help you develop an idea for a new web business or to help you promote your existing web business. Consider these things that are made possible by high-speed Internet access:
Streaming Video -- This is where the promise of the 5,000-station cable system comes to fruition. Want to show your customers your infomercial on demand? All they have to do is click a button. Want to see it again? Click again.
Compressed Audio -- The success of the MP3 music format was due to two things that didn't exist before -- a super-compression algorithm and access to high-speed Internet access. This has given people the ability to pass along relatively small documents of very high quality with relative ease.
Always-on Services -- Having a constant connection to the Internet will mean that people will begin relying on the Internet to keep them up-to-date on news, events and e-mail.
Mobile Commerce -- A wireless web will untether people from information. Access to e-mail and news will become as second nature to most people as their pagers and cellular phones are right now.
In other words, the continual increase in web bandwidth will mean that people will start depending more on constant, universal web access. You've got to start thinking about how your web business will play a part in filling this need.