Connectivity

Connectivity

1. Deep Sea Cables

   • What can they be made of?
     • Fibre Optic Cables
       • Much faster for transmission
       • Almost 0 interference, due to lack of friction
       • Expensive, due to microscopic size
       • Data travels through these at a speed of 299 792 458 m/s
         • Speed of light
     • Copper (Coaxial) Cables
       • Much cheaper than fibre optic cables
       • A lot of interference
       • Average broadband connection
       • Bulky
   • Different colours show direction of flow
   • Most connections are in Europe-America and America-China
     • This is because there are many businesses in these areas which need to communicate with one another
   • Usually located near shore
     • Found on both land and water

2. Bandwidth

   • The maximum amount/rate of data that can be transferred at once over a given path
     • Speed measured in Mbps (mega bits per second)
       • Not to be confused with MBps (mega bytes per second)
   • 3 Main Characterisations
     • Network Bandwidth
       • Data transfer capacity of a network
     • Digital Bandwidth
       • Number of pulses per second measured in bps (bits per second)
     • Data Bandwidth
       • Maximum data transfer rate of a network or internet connection
         • Measures how much data can be sent over a specific connection in a given amount of time

3. Broadband

   • High speed connection to the Internet
     • Has superseded the use of dial-up connection
   • Wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals and traffic types

4. Connection Speed

   • The speed at which data is transferred between your computer and the internet
   • 2 Types of Speed
     • Download Speed
       • The speed at which data travels from the Internet to your device
         • e.g. sending an email
     • Upload Speed
       • Usually, download is faster than upload, because people mostly download things on the Internet more than they upload things.
         • However, in the school, upload speed is higher than the download speed because many people are uploading things (eg setting homework, submitting homework etc.)
       • The speed at which data travels from your device to the Internet
         • e.g. receiving an email, viewing a website etc.

5. Wireless

   • Disadvantages
     • Not available in some places
     • Slower
     • Less secure than cabled data transfer
     • A lot more interference
   • Advantages
     • Allows you to link devices
     • Cheap
     • Easy to set up
     • Can be accessed anywhere, anytime

Images and files in the map