SURFING ON THE FAST LANE :: essays research papers

Are you tired of those slow downloads you’re getting when you surf the internet? Bored of waiting just to make a few transactions in your e-billing account? Then forget your old modem and switch to ADSL. For those of you that are not familiar with this new technology, let me explain a little bit about what it is. Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is a transmission technology that enhances the use of existing telephone lines, providing high-bandwidth data and voice services. This is possible taking advantage of unused high frequencies of existing copper wiring in the PSTN (Plain Switched Telephone Network), allowing data to travel back and forth on the high frequencies while voice simultaneously travels back and forth on the lower frequencies without experiencing interruptions. It is asymmetrical because the download speeds (1.4 Mbps) are much faster than the upload speeds (256 kbps); this means that it’s faster to download a file than to upload a file to the sa me server.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Having said this I’ll focus on how to install an ADSL modem, a modem for those of you that don’t know is an acronym for Modulator Demodulator, a modem is a device that converts data from digital computer signals to analog signals that can be sent over a phone line, this is called modulation. The analog signals are then converted back into digital data by the receiving modem, this is called demodulation. In this occasion I have chosen the latest of Microsoft Operating Systems, which is Windows XP, hopefully by the time you read this, Microsoft has not come up with something newer, since they change Operating Systems like we change clothes.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  First we need to make sure that the PC meets the minimum system requirements, for Windows XP they are: a 300Mhz processor or faster, a processor is an integrated circuit that executes the instructions of a program that drives the computer, 128MB of memory, 100MB of free disk space, a CD-ROM drive, a Network Interface Card, a NIC is a circuit board that allows the computer to connect to a network, and a Super VGA monitor (800x600) or higher resolution video adapter.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Well, with all this taken into consideration let’s get started, there are different kinds of modems that accomplish these task, but I will select one with an Ethernet port, Ethernet is one of the most widely-installed local area network (LAN) technologies, that provides transmission speeds of up to 10Mbps, which is more than enough for ADSL speeds.