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If you are connected through your cable provider, is that the equivalent of broadband, or is it something else? (Yes, I know, I am a complete ninny when it comes to the terminology.) This will probably be answered half a dozen times, but yes, cable is broadband. Dialup Modem, not broadband. ISDN BRI, not broadband. Broadband is loosely defined and my opinion is that connections of 256Kbit in one direction or higher are broadband. There is more than one definition though. Pretty much everyone will agree that 1.54Mbit(T1) or faster is Broadband. Most cable systems are 2.7mbit download, 256-768mbit upload.

The Cable that's now deploying across northern New Jersey is 6mbit Download, I'm unsure on the upload. I have friends who have it and it's blazing fast for grabbing large files, like movie clips or music, whatever. I live where I only can get DSL, but I have 1mbit up/down, which numerically seems alot smaller, but it only matters if you download large files, often. Browsing the internet is essentially the same once you cross the Broadband Threshhold. There difference between any broadband connection and dialup is lightyears apart. From the slowest to the fastest broadband is hardly anything, again, unless you tend to download large files often.

There's the long version :).

Broadband: A transmission facility having a bandwidth sufficient to carry multiple voice, video or data channels simultaneously. Each channel occupies (is modulated to) a different frequency bandwidth on the transmission medium and is demodulated to its original frequency at the receiving end. Channels are separated by "guardbands" (empty spaces) to ensure that each channel will not interfere with its neighboring channels. This technique is used to provide many CATV channels on one coaxial cable. 10Broad36 is the only broadband Ethernet media type. All other Ethernet media types are "baseband".

Baseband is digital (1s & 0s), but everything on that cable to be transmitted or received must use that one channel. That one channel is very fast, so each device needs only to use that high speed channel for only a little of the time.

An analog modem (your 56k dial-up)communicates over regular telephone lines by converting computer (digital) data into sound. At the receiving end, the data must then be converted back to digital. The speed of the analog modem is very slow compared to digital modems.

ISDN: Integrated Services Digital Network and is a system of digital phone connections which allows voice and data to be transmitted simultaneously across the world using end-to-end digital connectivity. There are two basic types of ISDN service: Basic Rate Interface (BRI) and Primary Rate Interface (PRI). BRI (what I use, consists of two 64-Kbps B-channels and one D-channel for transmitting control information) is a basic service is intended to meet the needs of most individual users. PRI (consists of 23 B-channels and one D-channel (U.S.) or 30 B-channels and one D-channel (Europe))is intended for users with greater capacity requirements.

These versions of ISDN employ baseband transmission. Another version, called B-ISDN, uses broadband transmission and is able to support transmission rates of 1.5 Mbps. B-ISDN requires fiber optic cables and is not widely available.