The Internet is getting more elaborate by the day. Web pages are swarming with animation, downloadable movies and music abound, and even emails from Grandma can contain pictures or even home video clips. The phone modems used by most people to get Internet access have reached the limits of their performance, necessitating new technologies to allow users to surf the Internet without having to wait minutes (or hours) for a page or file to download.

These new technologies are collectively known as broadband. They comprise a variety of different systems, but they all have one major goal: to increase the rate a user can send and receive data, and thus make the Internet (and other online activities, like videoconferencing) easier and faster to use. For the uninitiated, broadband is a bewildering array of acronyms and techno babble, most of which isn't really all that important to someone who's just trying to get a good deal on fast Internet access.

What can NetPort do for you?

The first advantage of NetPort is that it generally avoids the hassles associated with dialup connections. With NetPort, you can surf the 'net freely, without worrying about tying up your phone line or using up a precious allotment of hours.

The second (and for many, the more important) advantage of NetPort is speed: lots of it. If you've sat around twiddling your thumbs while waiting for a web page to download, you know how annoying a slow connection is. With NetPort, those aggravations are reduced or even eliminated. Not only will web surfing be faster in general, allowing you to hop from web page to web page almost as fast as you can click your mouse, but the speed of broadband opens up a host of other possibilities for both home and business users.

Streaming media are movies and music that can be viewed on your computer without first saving them to your hard drive, much like the way you've always been able to watch a television show without having to record it on a VCR first. Downloading a streaming video on a dialup connection is akin to picking up a faint TV signal using a coat hangar as an antenna; the signal can fade in and out, and even at its best, it's not great. With a NetPort connection, a streaming video will come in fast and steady, with much better video quality.

Computer gamers can play online against opponents around the world, without lag or slowdown, and without the worry that a family member's important phone call will interrupt a vital shoot-em-up tournament.

The table below gives some comparative examples of the improvements of a broadband connection over dialup.

“Shared Broadband”
Some service providers employ a daisy chain network design. A common form is rooftop to rooftop repeaters also known as “house-hopping”, “path-type”, or “wireless dialup”. The disadvantages to this design are two-folder. First, the daisy chain is one circuit that is shared, not unlike the “party-line” phone of a generation post. If you are the only one on the circuit at the time you can approach true broadband speeds minus any channel management overhaul. If however, everyone one the daisy chain is on at the same time, speeds will slow to dialup rates. The second disadvantage is reliability. If the power goes out on one house, one piece of equipment fails, one user starts generating noise due to virus or other problem, the entire chain goes down like a string of Christmas lights.

How to Understand Speed - CLICK HERE