Choosing the best broadband connection

By Joshua Erdman
Digital Foundation, inc.

Congratulations! If you are looking at this article you have chosen to leave the archaic world of dial-up and enter a world of high speed Internet. No more making dinner while you wait for a page to load. With broadband, checking your e-mail or looking at a movie time is now trivial whereas before you had to check your planner.

Broadband is an amazing service for the consumer and a vital one for businesses. While this article is focused on broadband for the consumer, it will still have plenty of info that applies to a business.

Types and speed

The good news is ANY type of broadband is leaps and bounds faster than dial-up (usually 50 times faster). That means that a page that took almost a minute to download over a dial-up conenction can now be displayed in a second or two. No, really! IT is that FAST!

The connections available to you are mostly dependent on the types of services you already have and almost all of them are just as fast. DSL requires a phone line (eventhough it uses your phone line it does not make it busy. You can still make a phone call while browsing the Internet), Cable requires a cable TV connection (if you do not pay for Cable TV service you usualy have to pay an extra $10 connection charge), wireless requires a clear view to the provider's antenna, and satellite has little to no requirements (except it is significantly slower).

Choosing the right connection

For a typical consumer DSL, Cable Modem and wireless are awesome ways to access the internet. You should base your choice on price and length of contracts more than on speed. I really only recommend satellite Internet for that have have no other choice (it is still much faster than dial-up).

Internet Protection

Unlike dial-up your computer is always connected (while it is turned on). Not only does it connect to the Internet faster, computers on the Internet can talk faster to your machine as well. This makes it easier to get virus infections and the like. So take precautions and make sure you have a good anti-virus program installed.

Other Articles of Interest

Internet Accelerators

Sharing your Internet connection

Article last reviewed: 04/21/2005

Created by: Digital Foundation, inc.

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