Cable-Road Runner Essay, Research Paper

Cable-Road Runner

Road Runner is a software program that works for cable. The first commercial broadband online service was delivered to customers through a broadband fiber coaxial cable network in 1996. After 15 months after these initial launches, Time Warner Inc. and MediaOne announced their intention to create the nations largest broadband online business.

What Road Runner delivers is blazing speed (one megabit per second), integrates compelling multimedia programming with the latest communication tools, email, chat listings and personal home pages. It also combines simple navigation features, top of brand programming, easy to use help and member services, news and entertainment. Basically Road Runner offers its customers a unique online experience that enables them to enjoy the full potential of the broadband environment.

Cable-Comparisons

There are many ways to connect to the Internet but very few actually hold there one to cable. Some of the more popular methods are listed here:

? POTS (plain old telephone systems)

? ADSL (asymmetrical digital subscriber lines)

? ISDN (integrated services digital network)

? DBS (direct broadcast satellite

? Wireless Cable

POTS are the standard telephone services that most homes use for computer Internet access. This system is generally limited to 52 Kbps. The information is carried out through copper wires in analog voice data.

ADSL uses filters that separate phone lines into three frequency channels. One channel carries the telephone signal; another channel of a higher frequency allows upstream transfers. The remaining portion of the band is used to carry information downstream. Even though this has prototypes it still is largely untested. The cost of this technology is also high and keeping this from being a real option.

ISDN is a digital telephone service that uses existing copper telephone wiring. ISDN works by dividing the telephone line into 3 digital channels, two channels for transmitting information upstream and downstream and one channel to communicate over the telephone.

Some of these cable comparisons can be seen in the diagram below and you will be able to see some of the speed differences.

As you can see from the diagram is that copper wire transfers information at 14.4 kbps, the ISDN phone line transfers data at 128 Kbps and Coaxial cable is transferring data at the amazing of 4,000 ? 6,000 Kbps.

Another type of Internet access is DBS, its works by converting transmissions to MPEG 2 DVB compliant digital format and transmitted to satellite for broadcast over the satellite?s footprint. Then the signal is processed back to Internet (TCP/IP) format and viewed normally on the computer monitor.

Wireless Cable is emerging as the fastest way to access the Internet. Wireless has the ability to transfer data at 27 Mbps downstream. Even though in the past transmitting upstream wasn?t possibly but that has also change a now operators transmit data both up and downstream. So wireless cable once it becomes common and affordable will be the best thing with cable being second.

Bibliography

www.rr.com

http://isds.bsu.lsu.edu