Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web.
Internet access is sold by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), who offer connectivity at a wide range of data transfer speeds through various network technologies. Many organizations, including a growing number of municipal entities, also provide free wireless access.
The availability of Internet access was once limited, but has grown rapidly. In 1995, only 0.04 percent of the world’s population had access, and more than half of the population lived in the United States, and consumer use was through the dial-up connection.
In the first decade of the 21st century, many consumers in developed countries used faster broadband technology, and in 2014, 41% of the world’s population had access, broadband was nearly ubiquitous worldwide, and the average worldwide connection speeds exceeded one megabit per second.
Over the years, the technology to access the Internet has changed, adapting to the needs of people and resources. The main reason for changing the different types of Internet access has been connection speed. Currently, a very good speed is needed if you want to take full advantage of all Internet resources: animations, online television, virtual reality, 3D, videoconference, etc.
This internet can be accessed by technologies such as DSL, cable modem, fiber optics, wi-fi, mobile telephony, satellite, etc.
Internet access speed
Speeds on dial-up modems
Bit rates for dial-up modems range from 110 bit/s in the late 1950s to a high of 33 to 64 kbit/s (V.90 and V.92) in the late 1990s. Dial-up services generally require the exclusive use of a telephone line. Data compression can increase the effective bit rate of a dial-up modem connection from 220 (V.42bis) to 320 (V.44) kbit/s. However, the effectiveness of data compression is quite variable, depending on the type of data being sent, the state of the telephone line, and other factors. In reality, the total data rate rarely exceeds 150 kbit/s.
broadband speeds
Broadband technologies provide considerably higher bit rates than dial-up access, often without interrupting regular phone use. In 1988, the CCITT standards body defined «broadband service» as a service that requires transmission channels capable of supporting bit rates higher than the primary rate, which ranged from 1.5 to 2 Mbit/s.
A 2006 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defined broadband as having download data transfer speeds equal to or greater than 256 kbit/s. And in 2015 the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defined «Basic Broadband» as data transmission speeds of at least 25 Mbit/s downstream (from the Internet to the user’s computer) and 3 Mbit/s downstream. /s upstream (from the user’s computer to the Internet).
There is a tendency to raise the threshold of the broadband definition as higher data rate services become available.
The highest data rate dial-up modems and many broadband services are «asymmetrical,» supporting much higher data rates for download (to the user) than for upload (to the Internet).
Data speeds, including those listed in this article, are typically defined and advertised in terms of maximum or peak download speed. At the end of June 2016, the average Internet connection speed was around 6 Mbit/s worldwide.
The quality of physical links can vary with distance and for wireless access with terrain, weather, building construction, antenna placement, and interference from other radio sources.
Network bottlenecks can occur at points anywhere along the path from the end user to the remote server or service being used, not just the first or last link that provides Internet access to the user. final user.
For more information read: broadband and mobile broadband.
Read the article: Why is my internet speed slow?
History of internet access
The Internet grew out of the ARPANET, which was funded by the US government to support projects within the government and in US universities and research labs, but grew over time to include most of the major Internet networks. world universities and many technology companies.
Wider public use did not occur until 1995, when restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic were lifted.
In the early and mid-1980s, most Internet access was from personal computers and workstations directly connected to local area networks (LANs) or from dial-up connections through modems and analog phone lines.
LANs typically operated at 10 Mbit/s, while modem data rates grew from 1200 bit/s in the early 1980s to 56 kbit/s in the late 1990s.
Initially, dial-up connections were made from terminals or computers running terminal emulation software to terminal servers on LANs. These dial-up connections did not support end-to-end use of Internet protocols and only provided terminal-to-host connections. The introduction of web access servers supporting the Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) and later the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) extended the Internet protocols and made the full range of services available to dial-up users. Internet services, although slower, due to the slower data transmission speeds available through dial-up.
Broadband Internet access is simply defined as «always-on Internet access that is faster than traditional dial-up access» and thus encompasses a wide range of technologies. Broadband connections are typically made using a computer’s built-in Ethernet networking capabilities or by using a NIC expansion card.
Most broadband services provide a continuous «always on» connection; no dialing process is required and it does not interfere with voice use of telephone lines. Broadband offers better access to internet services such as:
– Faster internet browsing
– Faster download of documents, photos, videos and other large files
– Telephone, radio, television and videoconference
– Administration of virtual private networks and remote systems
– Online games, especially massively multiplayer online role-playing games that require a lot of interaction.
In the 1990s, the United States’ National Information Infrastructure initiative made broadband Internet access a matter of public policy.
In 2000, most home Internet access was provided by dial-up, while many businesses and schools used broadband connections. In 2000 there were just under 150 million dial-up subscribers in the 34 OECD countries and less than 20 million broadband subscribers.
By 2004, broadband had grown and dial-up had dropped, so the number of subscribers was about the same, at 130 million each.
In 2010, in OECD countries, more than 90% of Internet access subscriptions used broadband, broadband had grown to more than 300 million subscriptions, and dial-up subscriptions had fallen to less than 30 million. .
The most widely used broadband technologies are ADSL and cable Internet access. New technologies include VDSL and fiber optics extended closer to the subscriber, both in telephone and cable plants. Fiber optic communication has played a crucial role in facilitating broadband Internet access by making transmitting information at very high data rates over longer distances much more cost effective than copper wire technology.
In areas not served by ADSL or cable, some community organizations and local governments are installing Wi-Fi networks. Wireless and satellite Internet are often used in rural, underdeveloped, or other poorly served areas where wired Internet is not readily available.
New technologies being deployed for fixed (stationary) and mobile broadband access include WiMAX, LTE and fixed wireless, eg Motorola Canopy.
Beginning around 2006, mobile broadband access is becoming more widely available at the consumer level using «3G» and «4G» technologies such as HSPA, EV-DO, HSPA+, and LTE.
At the time of writing this article, 5G mobile technology is being deployed.
Growth in the number of internet accesses
Internet access grew from about 10 million people in 1993 to nearly 40 million in 1995, to 670 million in 2002, and to 2.7 billion in 2013. With market saturation, growth in the number of Internet users is slowing in developing countries. industrialized, but continues to grow in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.
In 2011, there were approximately 600 million fixed broadband subscribers and almost 1.2 billion mobile broadband subscribers. In developed countries, people frequently use fixed and mobile broadband networks. In developing countries, mobile broadband is often the only access method available.
Internet access technologies
When the Internet is accessed through a modem, digital data is converted to analog for transmission over analog networks such as telephone and cable networks. A computer or other device that accesses the Internet will either be directly connected to a modem that communicates with an Internet Service Provider (ISP), or the modem’s Internet connection will be shared over a local area network (LAN) that communicates with an ISP. provides access to a limited area, such as a home, school, computer lab, or office building.
Although a connection to a LAN can provide very high data rates within the LAN, the actual speed of Internet access is limited by the uplink to the ISP. LANs can be wired (wired) or wireless. Ethernet over twisted pair cabling and Wi-Fi are the two most common technologies used today to build LANs, but ARCNET, Token Ring, Localtalk, FDDI, and other technologies were used in the past.
Ethernet is the name of the IEEE standard…