Unless you’ve been living on a desert island for the past few years, you probably haven’t failed to notice the explosion in popularity of this thing we call broadband. BT have spent a lot of money advertising their broadband services on TV, in the newspapers and on billboards, and along with the government, are promising to realise an almost entirely broadband enabled country over the next year or so. If you haven’t experienced broadband, you’re probably wondering what all the fuss is about.

So what is broadband? Put simply, broadband is a fast method of connecting to the internet. Of course ‘fast’ is a subjective measure, and one man’s fast is another man’s painfully slow. However, broadband is usurping the long-time standard connection method of ‘dial-up’ which is, on average, ten times slower than broadband; so you can see why we can be forgiven for thinking that it’s fast.

Dial-up connectivity has, until the last few years, been the de facto method of connecting to the internet used by most home users and some small offices. Like dial-up, broadband uses standard BT telephone voice lines to connect (or ‘dial-up’) to the internet using a piece of equipment called a modem to translate the signals generated by the computer to and from signals which can be carried over the telephone line.

Once connected, these signals travel between you and the telephone exchange via a pair of twisted copper wires, under the ground or via overhead cables. This ‘twisted pair’ only uses a narrow band of the bandwidth that the line is physically able to support because our ears can only hear sounds within a certain frequency range (typically 0 to 3,400 Hertz). This spare ‘broad’ bandwidth remained unused for many years until ADSL technology (also know as broadband – get it?) arrived and exploited it. Not only can broadband signals work at much higher speeds, they can also travel at the same time as a voice-call; so you can have telephone conversation at the same time as using the internet.

To ease us in, it is probably best if we start by breaking down some of the standard terms, features and requirements associated with broadband that you will have seen advertised and describing what each of them mean in real terms.

Always On

When using dial-up connections, users are required to ‘dial-up’ to the service every time they need to use it and, like a voice call, are charged for the time that they are connected. This means that any applications that require you to be online permanently (as with office networks for instance) would result in large, unpredictable telephone bills. Even then, Service Providers tend to kick customers off the connection after a few hours so they can ensure everyone gets a turn.

Broadband on the other hand, only needs to connect to the service once and can remain connected permanently, without incurring any call charges (also referred to as un-metered service). Instead, a flat monthly fee is charged to use the service, and the bill remains fixed (unless you use a Pay As You Go Service). This has led to a dramatic rise in internet usage over the last few years as users do not have to worry about how much their bill will be.

Speed & Bandwidth

Broadband is available in various different speeds, the faster speeds generally costing more. The speed of the service indicates how fast data can travel up and down the line between your computer and service provider and this is dictated by the bandwidth. If you think of the connection between you and your service provider as a pipe and the data travelling between as water, the bandwidth is akin to the diameter of the pipe - smaller pipes letting less volume of water travel down the pipe at any one time than a larger pipe. Typical broadband speeds/bandwidths start at 500 Kbps* and go up to 2000 Kbps, in comparison to the fastest dial-up speeds of around 50 Kbps. Some ISPs now offer connections of up to 8000 Kbps to those customers whose line can support it.

*Kbps stands for kilobits per second, which equates roughly to a thousand single bits of data per second. So, 500 Kbps services can download information at up to 500 x 1000 single bits of data per second, or 500,000 bits.

Contention Ratio

When your telephone services provider connects your line to the broadband equipment at the exchange, they typically aggregate 20 or 50 lines together onto the exchange equipment to share the connection (written 20:1 or 50:1). Theoretically, this means that you are sharing your bandwidth with between 20 and 50 users at the same time, and as such could receive just a 50th of the bandwidth. In practice however, two users rarely request a piece of information down the line at the exact same millisecond as each other and as such the connection speed is not noticeably slowed. 1:1 contention ratio services are not shared and are used in applications when the service speed must be almost guaranteed.

Do I have to buy Broadband from BT?

No. BT own most of the telephone exchanges and telephony infrastructure in the UK and therefore ultimately carry most of the traffic (voice and data) from one place to another, around the country. In their former incarnation as the GPO, cables were laid to every house in every street in every town in the country using public money.

Because of this vast infrastructure, BT could feasibly have a monopoly on the all of the traffic and services on their network, and make it very difficult for any competitors to set up their own network and grab a share of the market. Thankfully, this sort of thing doesn't go down well with OFTEL, the independent regulator for the UK telecommunications industry and BT are forced to allow other companies to share their network and offer alternative services, giving you the consumer a much wider choice.

Why do I need an ISP?

One group of companies who benefited from this opening of BTs network are Internet Service Providers, or ISPs. Amongst other things, ISPs provide you with a Username and Password to allow connection to their servers that, in turn, offer a gateway to the internet. The key to unlocking the door to the internet is something called an IP address. IP addresses are the way the internet identifies all of the devices and networks that are connected to it. Ultimately this is what ISPs exist to do - give you an IP address so you can gain access onto the internet and be recognised. The body that look after and distributes IP addresses is called RIPE and they only give out these addresses to ISPs. Much like town planners assign street names and numbers that make up and address - if you were to build a house and then not have and address, nobody could visit you or send you a letter!

Which ISP should I choose?

As always when choosing a supplier, that all depends on what you type of service you are looking for and what is important to you. Some customers require very fast connections, some a low contention rate. For others, price may be the primary consideration. Some customers like to have a friendly, helpful ISP who will hold their hand through any problems they may have, whereas more technically minded customer often just like to have all the facts to hand on a website. At Lixxus we like to think we can cover all of these requirements.

What Equipment do I need?

You will need 'five' things to get started:

1. A computer (PC or Mac)
2. An ADSL modem or router
3. A BT Telephone line
4. A micro-filter for each telephone socket being used by that number
5. An account with an ISP

Pretty self-explanatory this one. However, your computer(s) must comply with certain minimum requirements - most modern computers will have no problems - but if you are running a computer you know to be running old software and operating systems such as windows 98 then there may be considerations you need to make.

In their simplest form, a modem or router is the device that translates the computer's digital language into an analogue signal which can be carried over telephone wires and vice versa.
Modems are used for connecting just a single machine to the internet and consequently are less 'feature rich' than a router. Routers are usually used for more than one machine sharing the connection and have the added functionality of controlling traffic queues in and out of the network and ensuring information is delivered to the correct device and via the 'best' route. You can buy either from any good computer retail store, or from our online store. Which you choose will depend on your budget and requirements. If you prefer, you can choose wireless hardware which gets rid of the need for messy wires. See our wireless guide below for further details.

Again, sounds simple but you'd be surprised how many people get this wrong. Not only does this have to be a BT analogue line, it also needs to be free from any other services other than standard voice calls. In other words, the line cannot be, or support, any of the following:

If you are unsure about what services your line supports, give BT a call and ask them to check their records.

A micro filter (or 'splitter' as they are sometimes known) is a small device that sits between the telephone wall socket and your telephone and modem/router and splits the signal into voice and data signals. When your broadband service is switched on, BT will be using a (very big) splitter at their end to split the signal into voice and data calls too. So if you are plugging any telephony devices into sockets which share the broadband line you will need to plug a micro filter in first to filter out the broadband signal.

Modems and routers often come with one or two micro filters in the box or you can pick them up for less than ten pounds in most computer retail stores. Lixxus supplied modems and routers come with 2 bundled micro filters.

5. An account with an ISP

That's where we come in :) To see more about how we can provide your business with broadband click here

Can everyone get broadband?

In a word, no. Firstly, you need to be connected to an exchange where broadband is available. Secondly, because broadband sends and receives data on a higher frequency than voice calls, the integrity of the signal is harder to maintain over degraded lines or long distances. Some of the factors which may prevent delivery of broadband are:

Exchange Compatibility - to deliver broadband, the telephone exchange which supplies your service needs to have broadband equipment installed (called a DSLAM) to make the exchange 'Broadband Enabled'. BT are currently reporting coverage to 99% to all UK homes and Businesses (Sept 2005).

Exchange Distance - A broadband signal can only travel over certain distances before the signal starts to corrupt and the equipment at either end cannot 'hear' it. This distance is between 3.5km (for 2Mbps services) and 6km (for 1000Kbps services) and represents the distance between your connection point and local exchange. Because of natural geographic features (like rivers) the line between you and the exchange may travel via a more elaborate route than it seems to with the eye. Also, you may find you are not served by the exchange nearest to you - telephone exchanges can often be built after your property was and therefore wasn't around to connect to at the time. Newer properties may find that the nearest exchange is at full capacity and have to be routed to an exchange further afield. Lixxus will test your line for signal loss when we receive your order.

Line Degradation - Copper is very good at conducting signals but has the downside of being rather unstable and prone to degradation. Consequently, older wires may be able to support a voice call but not stable enough to carry a broadband signal. Lixxus will test your line for signal loss you when we receive your order.

Interference - Sometimes the wires between you and your local exchange may run under/over/beside other cabling that may interfere with the broadband signal to such an extent that the 'listening' devices at either end cannot hear it properly. Lixxus will test your line for interference when we receive your order.

If you can't find what you are looking for or would like to speak to a Lixxus representative about your requirements please contact us:

Call: 0845 456 6301 or Email: sales@lixxus.co.uk

An Introduction to Broadband