It used to be that a dial up modem capable of 56 Kbps provided enough speed for most people to enjoy the Internet from the comfort of their own home. Thanks to the growing complexity of the Internet and the increasing amount of multimedia entertainment available on the World Wide Web, a mere dial up connection really doesn't satisfy anybody these days. In fact, even some of the faster means of connecting to the World Wide Web can be pretty disappointing. For example, even though DSL qualifies in many people's minds as a high speed Internet connection, it's really a light duty Internet connection at best. It may be fine for things like email, text messaging, and even moving around the occasional digital photo, but DSL will start to cause grief when its users attempt to download larger files like software applications, videos, and music over it. Satellite Internet is a little bit faster than DSL, but it has a fair number of problems itself. Specifically, it has a time lag created by the distance that the data has to travel to and from the satellites in orbit. This time lag makes satellite based Internet access a bad choice for VoIP applications, online gaming, or anything else where a slight pause could cause problems. The other problem with satellite Internet is that it's really expensive, both in initial equipment fees and monthly subscription fees.



Most people will find that the best type of Internet service for their homes is a broad band cable high speed Internet connection like what's provided by Comcast Cable TV. This type of Internet connection is faster than any of the others mentioned above. About the only type of Internet access that's faster is a T1 connection, but since that's not available for residential use, it's kind of a moot point. Comcast's high speed Internet technology provides download speeds of up to 8 Mbps. That's about seventy times faster than dial up and several times faster than even satellite based Internet service. Plus, a broad band cable Internet connection is always on, so you don't have to wait for the dial in process to complete. In addition there's no noticeable time lag, which makes it good for video games and VoIP. (Comcast can also provide digital voice phone service bundled with high speed Internet which makes VoIP less attractive, but at least this technology allows you to have the option of using a VoIP service.)

A broad band cable high speed Internet connection gives you access to plenty of the material on the World Wide Web that's simply too data intensive to be practical with a slower connection. This includes things like video files- even ones big enough to contain full length movies. Of course downloading a full length movie will take a lot of bandwidth, but when huge files like that aren't being downloaded, Comcast's high speed Internet service provides more than enough bandwidth to allow several people to do normal web surfing all at the same time. A wireless router is extremely useful for this because it allows different devices to take advantage of an Internet connection without being physically connected to the cable modem. Comcast will provide a free wireless router in addition to a free wireless modem. This will allow you to connect to the Internet both by wireless technology as well as wired technology. If you're good enough at networking, you might even be able to set up a home network so that you can share files among all of your computers over the wireless network enabled by this free router.

These are just a few ways a truly high speed Internet connection can improve your life, and Comcast can supply it for you.