Home
- Cover
Acknowledgements
Campus Contact Phone Information
Campus Web Page Information
Chapter 2: Internet Survival
Skills
Connecting from Home
Connecting On Campus
Web Browsers- Internet Explorer
Web Browsers-Netscape
Email
Cut & Paste
Netiquette
Bookmark A Favorite Website
Shasta College LRC Online!
Search Engines
Downloading & Plug Ins
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Additional Resources
Glossary of Terms
Online Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, etc...
Connecting From Home
To connect online, your computer must be equipped with a modem, a device that translates the digital signals from your computer into analog signals that can travel over a standard phone line. Those are the scratchy sounds you hear from a modem's speaker. Believe it or not, there is actually meaning in all that noise. A modem on the other end of the line can understand it and converts the sounds back into digital information. By the way, the word modem stands for Modulator/Demodulator. Modems come in different speeds and are measured in bps or bits per second. A 28.8 Kbps modem sends data at 28,800 bits per second. A 56 Kbps modem is twice as fast, sending and receiving data at a rate of 56,000 bits per second. Most modems today are 56 Kbps.
Why does speed matter?
On the Internet, you are constantly exchanging data with other computers. Some of these digital files can be quite large. As you will soon learn, you want this exchange to happen as quickly as possible. If you are purchasing a modem, get the fastest one available.
If you have call waiting, you will want to disable it before connecting online. If you're online and a call comes in, it will disconnect you unless you disable call waiting. In most places you can enter *70 before the number you call for Internet service so that another call will not interrupt you while you're on line.