Page 30 - IT Essentials And Data Recovery For Online Businesses

Although satellite Internet access offers download speeds of up to 1.5 megabytes

per second (about 25 times faster than dialup) and allows you to be online and on
the phone at the same time, it is less dependable than dial-up as far as
interruptions and dropped connections are concerned. Costs for satellite Internet

run between $55 and $70 per month.

DSL

The “Digital Subscriber Line” was discussed earlier. This is a mid-range option and
typically costs between $50 and $150 per month – although we’ve heard of one

company offering DSL for as little as $25 per month. Download speeds range from
144 kilobytes to 1.5 megabytes per second, and upload speeds are comparable,

though generally a bit slower. A DSL connection is made through your computer’s

Ethernet port. If you’ve never seen one, an Ethernet cable resembles an overgrown
phone cable.

The main advantages of DSL are that it has a high degree of dependability and it

does not interfere with telephone communication in any way. In fact, DSL allows
you to have VoIP telephone service, which can offset some of the extra cost of DSL.
The disadvantage is that if you live in a rural area, any kind of high-speed Internet

access may simply be unavailable, since the major corporations who control high-

speed Internet find that serving small communities doesn’t generate enough profit
to make any investment worthwhile.

If you are a cable TV subscriber, your cable company may offer special rates on

DSL through your existing cable. Contact your cable provider for more information.

T1 and T3

This is the “Rolls Royce” of Internet access; a T3 connection offers rock-solid
reliability and blistering download/upload speeds of 45 megabytes per second. This

speed and reliability comes at a price: such Internet service starts at around $350