If you are interested in learning as much as possible about the technology behind the Internet, this article will provide you with curious details about the fiber technology, Wi-Fi, cellular Internet and other options available to modern users.
Fiber
There was a time when the high speed fiber connection was seemed to be the connection for the Richie rich fellas. DSL providers at the time were already developing the popular fiber-to-node (FTTN) and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) services that would provide Internet, also often the Internet and telephone services over the same connection, which later on made them a direct competitors with the cable companies. Big shot entrants like Google Fiber and local municipalities have added an additional momentum to the whole fiber connection.
For FTTN, the fiber connection runs form the provider to a box in your neighborhood. This box then connects to your home or office with the normal coaxial or Ethernet cable. On the contrary, a FTTP runs straight off the provider to your home or office using just fiber the whole way. Once the connection is inside your home or office, you can easily use any of the standard cabling or wireless to connect your devices to the Internet.
One of the most popular fiber-based service is AT&T Internet. They generally offer download speed from 10 to 100 Mbps and upload speed from 1 to 20 Mbps for the FTTN service. AT&T fiber on the other hand is FTTP service and gives your 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps for download and upload speed.
Wi-Fi
This is needless to say that among all of these how we are predominantly living in the time of Wi-Fi or known as the 802.11 wireless (in the tech world). A Wireless Access Point (WAP) is being placed somewhere, which was designed to serve the public with wireless Internet connection which keeps all those heads nodded to their phones. The 802.11 network which covers a single city is a great example of the metrolpolitan area network (MAN).
Beware of connecting to the public hotspot since lot of middle man lives there, waiting for the right time to grab the piece of information you send and receive. Always visit any website with HTTPS enabled which you should find preceded by the domain name like https://www.something.com.
Line-of-sight wireless connection
Wi-Fi is fantastic as long as it provides Internet access for a dense area but not much of a work if short range makes it impractical in a area where it is not easy to setup an access point. In such cases, your best bet would be using high-powered, directional antennas and Ethernet bridge devices. This gives you the line-of-sight wireless Internet that goes up to eight miles or more. There are lot of use cases that screams for this connection typically good use for business that cover a wide area.
Cellular
Cellular network is one of the most widely preferred Internet technology especially when you wanna have a connection outside of your house or have a private connection of your own and don’t wanna risk your data connecting to a public network. You can also use your phone or tablet to connect to the cellular network and connect your PC or other devices to it. This is called Tethering. You can use either mobile hotspot or direct USB connection. Over the years cellular network has gone through various changes and upgrade using G as generation.
Satellite
Yes, you can connect to satellite as well. The way it works is you have a satellite dish where ever you wanna use it, a receiver that deals with the data flow, then the data is sent via the Ethernet cable to your computer. The whole idea goes way deeper but, of course, this was to give you a general idea on the surface.
These are the common Internet technologies that is out there now and you can always learn more about any of these.