Broadband Glossary

This page provides basic definitions for the most common terminology when dealing with high speed internet access. All definitions are taken from Wikipedia, where you will find further information and explanation.

ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is a form of DSL, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional modem can provide.
Bandwidth
For analog signals, bandwidth is the width, usually measured in hertz, of a frequency band f2 − f1. It can also be used to describe a signal, in which case the meaning is the width of the smallest frequency band within which the signal can fit.
Broadband
Broadband Internet access, often shortened to "broadband Internet" or just "broadband", is a high data-transmission rate internet connection. DSL and cable modem, both popular consumer broadband technologies, are typically capable of transmitting 256 kilobits per second or more, approximately nine times the speed of a modem using a standard digital telephone line.
Contention Ratio
Contention Ratio is the ratio of total bandwidth available that is shared amongst subscribers to an internet service.
DSL
Digital Subscriber Line, or DSL, is a family of technologies that provide digital data transmission over the wires used in the "last mile" of a local telephone network. Typically, the download speed of DSL ranges from 128 kilobits per second ( kbit/s) to 24,000 kbit/s depending on DSL technology and service level implemented. Upload speed is lower than download speed for ADSL and symmetrical for SDSL.
Kilobit per second
A kilobit per second (kbps or kbit/s) is a unit of data transmission speed equal to 1,000 bits per second.
Megabit per second
A megabit per second (Mbps or Mbit/s) is a unit of data transmission equal to 1,000 kilobits per second or 1,000,000 bits per second.
Modem
A modem (a portmanteau word constructed from modulator and demodulator) is a device that modulates a carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data.