Modems - Dial up  - Cable - DSL

The WWW or World Wide Web. The WWW is just one gigantic network. Some think of it as a mystical place, and it is. In some respects it is like having your own personal shopping mall and wonder land in your home.

There are two main types of modems in use to day.

The dial up device and the cable/dsl device.

The dial up device is analog where as the cable/dsl device is digital.

The dial up uses a phone line, you connect the device to your computer with one cable and then connect another cable to your phone line. One draw back of a dialup connection to your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is the speed. Speed makes the world go round. Another draw back of a dial up connection is if you have only one phone line, it is blocked while you are using the device.

You also have to turn off the call waiting and call forwarding features while you are using the device.

You could work from home with a dial up if your job did not entail the sending and receiving of large documents.

Surfing the net ten years ago on dial up was not as time consuming as it is today because the web pages were not loaded up with graphics, video clips, moving advertisements, and associated junk.

Cable and DSL devices are connected directly to your ISP.

Some cable companies use different types (of network topology) to make it work but it basically boils down to you are connected directly to the ISP all the time.

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You want to surf the net looking for a new computer? You just start up the old one and "go online" you do not have to wait for a dial up connection.

Different types of devices are:

Dial up (Analog - uses the phone line to connect by dialing a phone number, slow)

DSL (Digital - uses the phone line to connect but does not dial a phone number, is fairly fast [and getting faster], you are the only one using the line, your private network connection to the ISP)

Cable (Digital - uses a coax cable to connect, very fast until the number of users exceeds four, this is because the amount of "bandwidth" is divided up amongst you and your neighbors, like a highway, four cars will move along at the speed limit, twenty will cause a traffic jam.

04/09/2014 - Most cable / DSL devices also have a wireless access point and a USB port for additional storage. If you have such a device you should research the security for these additional features and use the strongest security possible for both if you decide to use either one, or your network will be at risk of being hacked, and once the data is stolen it is no longer yours, it will be all over the internet... Just sayin'.