On Dec 16, 6:42*pm, Larry L wrote:
On Dec 16, 3:18*pm, personaobscura
wrote:



On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:45:10 -0800 (PST), Larry L
wrote:

My kid is moving back home while he waits to head off to grad
school. * In the mean time he has three jobs, two of which are as
research assistants for professors and apparently require lots of time
on the Internet.

So, I guess we're in the market for a fast connection. * *Nothing
"wired" is available out here and I'm trying to figure out the
differences between "radio" and satellite wireless providers.

Currently my little tray icon says 26.4 kbps and I'm also trying to
get a feel for how much faster 1.5 megabyte/sec is and how that should
be abbreviated ... MB/sec *MBps *mbps mb/sec etc etc. * *I thought I
knew some of this stuff but it's many many years since I had any real
interest in puters and my "knowledge: has evaporated. *After thumbing
through 3 wireless ISP companies brochures I'm even more confused than
my norm.

TIA

Well, the math is simple enough: if you really can achieve 1.5 Megabytes per
second on a wireless WAN connection available in your location, that's nearly
500 times higher throughput than your 26.4 Kilobit dial-up connection
provides.

From a utility viewpoint, that's a humongous enabler. Indeed, in this era,
your dialup connection is not far removed from Marconi's time wrt
practicality. Just saying...

I know how bad my current connection is, I've been trying years to get
something done about it. * I'm the last house on a dead end rural road
and the phone lines are so old *they actually go through trees in a
couple places ( the wood has grown around the wires, over time.) * The
phone repair guy once told me he had never seen worse or more spliced
lines *BUT the phone company says they meet the minimum data transfer
required by regulations ( enough for a FAX machine, apparently ) and
there is no way they are going to replace a mile of line to make me
happy.

One thing I want to know is there an official difference between mb
and MB * ... are these a million bits and a million bytes and is byte
8 times the data as bit. * * The people on the phones seem to use
"megabit" and "megabyte" interchangeably but I think that is
wrong .... are most advertised speeds in bits or bytes?

TIA,again

Larry, from what I gather from your post, your telephone line is not
adequate for a DSL high speed connection, (hell, it sounds like you
can't even get full speed out of your dial up connection).
Seems to me like you have a couple of choices. First, is there cable
TV (Comcast, Charter, etc) available in your area? If so, they could
provide you with a high speed internet connection. You wouldn't have
to get cable TV, the connection is available separately. Lacking that,
it would seem like a satellite connection would be the next,although
more expensive, choice. Hughsnet is the best known, but there are
others. Don't get hung up on the numbers. If you're far out in the
boonies, your choices will be very limited, and any high speed service
you get will be hundreds of times faster than your dial up.