Connection speed?

Question

What is the differences between:
T1, T3 or higher, Cable/DSL, and Modem?
I am quite computer illiterate.?? I have ADSL2 connection with 12g.
What should I set my connection as to obtain best performance while downloading??

Thank You.

Answer 1

T3 or higher is generally used as a "backbone" where everything that goes into the internet gets moved around. This is by far the fastest connection speed and have the most compacity. Generally people don't want to subscribe to T3 cables because of the cost. T3 cable is physical cables that must go from hub to hub or hub to a subscriber. If a subscriber wants T3, he is going to have to pay to have the cable installed from the hub to the contact point. This might require several miles of cable.

T1 is used by universities, large businesses and government agencies. T1 is physical wires, so if you want T1, you will have to pay to have T1 cable run from the hub to you. The cable might have to stretch for several miles.

Cable and DSL are used by medium and small businesses plus households. Its fast enough for them. If DSL was used by a SP 500 company, it would be very slow because of the amount of people using the system at any one time. It's like land wires for a telephone system. They they are set for 20% of the population in the area at the same time. If 30% of the population in an area was to call at the same time, they system will crash giving a busy signal (this always happens during big events such as after earthquakes and other major natural disasters). DSL is run through the phone system while cable is run trough the same system as people use for cable TV.

The modem (run off the telephone lines) is the least fast and generally they shouldn't be connected to more than one computer, because the compacity limit would make too slow.

Set it to 12 MBS (megabytes per second) for download.

Answer 2

Simply put, broadband is a faster way for you to gain access to the Internet and the sites or pages that you want to see. Every time that you go to a web page, there are files that must be sent to your computer such as the page itself, images, and other components that make up each page that you look at. These files vary in size and generally, the more files that must be transported, the longer it takes for the page to load.

A broadband line can send those files to your computer faster than a dial-up line can and therefore, you can see the entire page faster.

You have to connect to the Internet and this is always done through some kind of modem. The connection is often referred to as "the pipe" because it carries data. If you were to compare your phone line pipe to a garden hose, then a broadband connection is like a fire hose. More data moves through it in a shorter time.

Broadband generally comes in three varieties:

Cable - Generally available in markets where you have cable television access. It uses the same line that you receive television on. It is easily the most available and can be ordered through many cable television providers.

DSL - Available only through your telephone company, DSL has some pretty severe limitations as to where it can be installed. Unlike cable, the infrastructures are not well established and there are distance limitations. While many metropolitan areas have DSL available, only a call to the DSL provider (your telephone company) will tell you if it is available at your address.

Wireless - This is a form of broadband that while available, it is hardly worth mentioning at this time. It is often faster than either cable or DSL, but the costs are generally much higher, and it even fewer people are in a geographical location where wireless is available.

Broadband advantages

Broadband access is also referred to as an "always on" connection, meaning that your computer is in constant contact with the Internet. You don't go through a dial-up or login process. You simply open a browser window and there you are... on the Internet and ready to go to your favorite site.

Same thing with email. You can just open or leave your email program open and your computer will regularly check to see if you have new email.

Because it is faster, you can go from web site to web site much faster than you can with a dial-up modem. Pages load much quicker. You can also access better quality multimedia (music, movies, etc.) because the files will transfer faster. There are not the breaks or waits while your computer is still trying to access the file.

Downloads are much faster. If you download programs, files, or email attachments, having a broadband connection may allow you to spend a few minutes instead of hours.

There are no automatic cutoffs. Many dial-up providers will cut off your connection, even though you are downloading a file. A broadband connection will not only download the file faster, but you can set it up to do so and go to the store or take a nap without risking your ISP shutting you down.

Broadband disadvantages

While faster, broadband connections are often times twice as costly as a dial-up connection and can cost you $40 a month or more. Part of this may be offset however, if you have a separate line that is only used for Internet access. With broadband, there are no extra line charges.

"Always on" connections offer greater speed, but they also pose increased risk to your system. Because your computer is always connected to the Internet, it is possible (if not likely) that someone will try to access your computer. This can largely be overcome through proper security, but still something that needs to be dealt with.

In order to access a broadband connection, you will also need a NIC (network interface card). If you don't have one in your computer already, you will either have to install or have one installed for you. These are available for $20 - $40 at any computer store plus labor costs if they install it. The NIC is required to connect to the Internet and something that you will probably have to handle before the installer comes.

Do you need broadband?

The answer is generally no, you probably don't need it. If you are work online and time is money, then perhaps you need it. A more appropriate question would be whether you want it or not.

If you spend a great deal of time at your computer, have the desire to download large programs, or often get frustrated with slow loading pages, you may want to consider increasing your speed by 50-100 times with broadband.

When you might actually have a need for it is if you want to do some things that are otherwise virtually impossible, like watch live broadcasts, watch videos, or play Internet games. Trying to do these on any dial-up just doesn't cut it.

Note: While a broadband connection increases your capable speed on the Internet, it doesn't guarantee it. Your speed on the Internet is also governed by the speed of the computer where the site is located. If the server computer on the other end is a slow computer or is over-burdened, a site may still be slow to load. Most sites however, will load significantly faster.

Another issue that can come up from time to time with broadband (specifically cable) is how many other people are connected to it. You won't have anyone else directly on your cable but your cable feeds into a hub along with everyone else. Think of it like a hub on a wheel, or in technical terms, you are on a network. You are sharing the pipe.

That hub can only carry a finite amount of data and if there are several people that are downloading massive files all the time, it can slow down the entire network. Unfortunately, my experience is that few cable companies will do much about it unless everyone revolts. DSL doesn't generally have the same problem.

Answer 3

I have cable/DSL and have 125kb/s while loading. In this scenario I can download things very fast and be able to do whatever I want while it's loading :) I'm not sure about the others however, as I've never had the others. I've had dial-up however and its just horrible. My friend has dial up for example and we'll test and load videos together. It will take me about 3 minutes to load a 3:25 video while it'll take her about 15 minutes.

Answer 4

Set everything to DSL\cable connection it will only confuse your PC and make it run slower if anything when you select speeds higher than what your connection is.

Answer 5

for downloading you use dap ie download accelelator plus...
it ll speed up and grab the contents faster ...

this is the sequence of speed...

t3
t1
cable/dsl
modem...

t3 is faster
wich uses to downloaded torrents contents
like p2p shareing

Answer 6

http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html

Try here.