Broadband Services
Before I get into telling you all about the WAN protocols required to meet the CompTIA objectives, I’ve got to talk about cable modems and DSL as solutions for connecting to WANs. I think briefing you on them will really help you understand the practical differences between DSL and cable-modem networking, and they just happen to be CompTIA objectives as well!
Dedicated broadband services include transmissions over media in a broad range of frequencies. The various forms of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services are broadband in the sense that digital information is sent over a high-bandwidth channel above the baseband voice channel on a single pair of wires. Ethernet digital signals sent over a cable modem from your local cable television service provider compete with DSL service.
Although it’s true that DSL and cable Internet services do indeed have a lot in common, they still have some basic, essential differences that are really important for you to...
