About computers?

Question

Explain the purpose of a modem in a dial up connection to the internet.

Answer 1

Dial-up access is a form of Internet access through which the client uses a modem connected to a computer and a telephone line to dial into an Internet service provider's (ISP) node to establish a modem-to-modem link, which is then routed to the Internet.

Availability:

Dial-up requires no additional infrastructure on top of the telephone network. As telephone points are available throughout the world, dial-up remains useful to travelers. Dial-up is usually the only choice available for most rural or remote areas where getting a broadband connection is impossible due to low population and demand. Sometimes dial-up access may also be an alternative to people who have limited budgets as it is offered for free by some, though broadband is now increasingly available at lower prices in countries such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom due to market competition.

Dial-up requires time to establish a telephone connection (approximately several seconds, depending on the location) and perform handshaking before data transfers can take place. In locales with telephone connection charges, each connection incurs an incremental cost. If calls are time-charged, the duration of the connection incurs costs.

Dial-up access is a transient connection, because either the user or the ISP terminates the connection. Internet service providers will often set a limit on connection durations to prevent hogging of access, and will disconnect the user — requiring reconnection and the costs and delays associated with that.


Performance:

Modern dial-up modems typically have a maximum theoretical speed of 56 kbit/s (using the V.92 protocol), although in most cases only up to 53 kbit/s is possible due to overhead and, in the United States, FCC regulation. These speeds are currently considered the maximum possible; in many cases transfer speeds will be lower, averaging anywhere between 33-43 kbit/s. Factors such as phone line noise and conditions, as well as the quality of the modem itself, play a large part in determining connection speeds.

Dial-up connections usually have high latency that can be as high as 200 ms or even more, which can make online gaming or videoconferencing difficult, if not impossible. Some games, such as Star Wars: Galaxies, The Sims Online, Warcraft 3, Halo: Combat Evolved and Guild Wars are capable of running on 56 K dial-up. Gamers with dial-up connections are often disconnected from game servers due to the "lag", or high latency, of the connection. Many computer games released in 2005 (such as Battlefield 2 or Star Wars: Battlefront 2) are not compatible for online play with dial-up modems. These first person shooter style games are the most sensitive to latency, making playing them impractical on dial-up.

Answer 2

As most have said before, it is just the device that converts the signal from the computer to match that of the phone line and vice versa. Using a modem does not in any way protect from viruses, it just passes the signal along, virus and all.

The MAC uses a modem too, it is the only way to connect via dial-up, most computers now have an internal modem which is where you plug the little phone cord into when you want to connect to the internet via dialup.

Answer 3

The primary job of a modem in a computer system is to let your computer talk over a phone line. One of the most important commands issued to a modem from the (modem software) is (ATDT) which means (Attention Dial Tone) once the tone has been received then you put in the computer phone number on the other end that you want to call, Then the second important thing that happens is that your modem and the receiving modem starts hand-shaking which is why you hear that high pitch sound. as soon as they do the hand-shake your are connected. and the last important thing that happens is that the software will sent yet another command to the modem when your finished AT&H which is attention (Hang-Up).
Hope this helps!

Answer 4

Modem is the device that allows connection to telephone cabling and does the conversion of the signal to and from the computer to the communications standard.

Older hardware modems took care of checking the incoming signal for data integrity and if an error found, would request data packet again. Today the computer (software modems) does this checking which results in more processor time donated to communications.

Basically a modem is just an interface to the communications system of choice whether it is telephone or cable or dsl.

Answer 5

Well, when my family had dial-up, we didn't have an external modem. My dad has had a mac ever since they came out. All recent macs have modems built in. But since macs don't get viruses I gues we never needed one.

Answer 6

It depens on what type of dial up connection u got. It's one of the safest was to get online so that way ur computer dosen't get a virus. Or it could be a scam sometimes like I said it depens on ur dial up connection.

Answer 7

a modem is a modulator demodulator
it helps anolog signals get converted to digital signals and the reverse
when you dial-up you convert computer digi signals to analog and connect or ping with your isp.
then you request for a page which is sent via analog signals in telephone line.
this is converted to digital and displayed on comp

Answer 8

Hi there

It just simply connects you to the internet by dialling up to a service provider using your phone line. That's all there is to it really.

Scott

Answer 9

On a Mac, shift/administration/3 takes a image of the reveal screen. in case you press shift/administration/4, you may click and drag over the section you desire; the photograph is taken once you launch the mouse button.