Recently, I attended the finals for the Professional Gamers League. The league has an online competition, and the top eight players in each category are flown to the finals. At the finals, there was a 100-megabyte-per-second LAN setup (thanks to 3M), so there were no latency worries. However, some of the players who had competed over the Internet with a modem, not a T1 connection, had a little trouble getting used to playing on a superfast LAN. However, as more high-speed Internet connections are installed in residential homes, I think that the Professional Gamers League will become a success
In the upcoming year, more high-speed Internet connections will be available in the home. In the past, home-users were limited to a slow modem connection or, if they wanted more speed, an ISDN connection. However, ISDN was not practical for the majority of home users because of the high-priced phone lines, service and ISDN modems. Two new technologies that are coming into the home in the near future are DSL connections and cable modems.
Cable modems offer 1.5- to three-megabytes-per-second download rates on average, and about 700-kilobyte upload speed. The connection is through a cable television adaptor. It requires a special cable modem box (rented in service) and an Ethernet card. One cable modem provider, @Home, offers its cable modem service for $29.95 to $49.95 a month depending on the local cable provider. One of the main advantages aside from the speed is that cable modems are always on (i.e. you don't need to connect as you would with an ordinary modem) and therefore don't take up a phone line. However, there are a few cable modem providers that only offer downstream service. The local provider in my area will provide only downstream service and it requires that I connect over a phone line. I'm not too happy about this, but I'll still get it for the extra speed once it is available.
The other high-speed Internet option is that of DSL modems. A DSL modem works over the phone lines at a very high pitch that allows for fast data transfer rates of up to eight megabytes per second downstream and 800 kilobytes upstream. Like cable modem service, DSL is always on and, even though it works over the phone line, the phone line will still function like normal without any restrictions. Like cable-modem service, DSL will also require an Ethernet card (as will any high-speed service) and a special modem.
Both of these services are being tested out around the country and are only beginning to become available. On the DSL side, UsWest just announced that they would provide DSL service to 40 cities across the US by June of this year. GTE is also planning to offer DSL service across the country this year. It's currently is running beta tests. For specific information regarding service to your area, check out GTE or UsWest (depending who your phone provider is). For cable modem service, surf on over to the @Home site. You may also want to check with local Internet providers and your local cable company to see if they will be offering high-speed services in the future.
The services do have their disadvantages however. For one, the pricing on DSL services can get very high. One problem is that the charges are based on speed. It is relatively cheap if you want 256-kilobyte downloads ($40 with UsWest), but for the higher speeds the price keeps going up. As for the cable modems, they have a throughput of 30 megabytes per second per neighborhood, which is shared. So if all your neighbors are using the Internet, it is possible that your bandwidth will drop.
There are two very good sites with information on DSL that are worth a look if you're interested in more information. They are The ADSL Forum and XDSL News Posts.
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