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To: JMD who wrote (3062)	2/14/1998 2:00:00 AM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6180

I'd also love to know how some signals can always be 'on'--like cable and broadcast tv while others require you to establish a connection like my beloved AOL (not). Obviously always on is massively more convenient but why doesn't that just suck up beaucoup de bandwidth? You're asking me???? I don't even know how a thermos works. :)) Okay, as I understand it, the copper wire has certain bands that can carry different messages: voice, fax, video, and data. The data link is solely for that, nothing else. Therefore if your computer's on and you've connected to the Internet, you can leave it that way indefinitely. That still leaves all those other services free. As for the bandwidth, you're not using any until you download something whether it's a web page or an e-mail file or live broadcast from your favorite digital station. I suspect 99.9% of the people reading this thread can give you a more scientific explanation --- and I hope they jump in. Cheers! pat

To: JMD who wrote (3062)	2/14/1998 10:08:00 PM
From: SteveG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6180

<... I'd also love to know how some signals can always be 'on'--like cable and broadcast tv while others require you to establish a connection..> The cable wires that go from your home or business to the telco's CO (central office) termnate into a line card that connects into a PSTN voice switch. Based on old estimated averages for a phone call, the switches allow for approximate 25% of the CO's cable to be active at a given time. This allowed significantly lower cost, since the average call was 10 mins, and rarely were more than 25% of a CO's customers "on hook" at any given time. If they WERE, as during a local emergency, you would often find your local CO's switch to be busy (the fast ringing "circuit-busy"). The routing of ADSL lines will bypass the PSTN (and voice networks) and go directly onto the backend data networks. Netspeed markets a "digital off-hook" technology which will step down/off your ADSL connection until you activate it. This will offer a similar kind of rationed use of ADSL (as with the PSTN), with corresponding decreases in telco equipment costs.