Broadband Internet access, which most often shortened to just "broadband", is high-speed Internet access contrasted with dial-up access over a modem. Dial-up modems are usually capable of only a maximum bitrate of 56 kbit/s and require the full use of a telephone line; while at the same time broadband technologies supply at least twice this speed without disrupting telephone usage.

Even though various minimum speeds have been used in definitions of broadband, ranging up from 64 kbit/s up to 1.0 Mbit/s, the OCED report is typical in counting only download speeds equal to or faster than 256 kbit/s as broadband. Speeds are defined in terms of maximum download as several common consumers broadband technologies such as ADSL are "asymmetric", supporting much slower maximum upload speeds than download.

Broadband internet is sometimes called high-speed Internet, as it usually has a high rate of data transmission. Generally, any connection to the customer of 256 kbit/s (0.256 Mbit/s) or more is considered as broadband Internet. As per the International Telecommunication Union Standardisation Sector recommendation I.113, broadband is defined as a transmission capacity which is faster than primary rate ISDN, at 1.5 to 2 Mbit/s.

Practically, the advertised bandwidth is not always readily available to the customer; ISPs generally allow a greater number of subscribers than the backbone connection can handle, under the assumption that most users will not be using their full connection capacity very frequently.

This aggregation strategy works in a way making the users typically burst to the full bandwidth most of the time. As there is an increase in the bandwidth delivered to end users, the market expects that the video on demand services streamed over the Internet will become more popular, though at the present time such services generally require specialized networks.

Raina Kelsey is an expert author, and writes about latest gadgets.
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