Network Connection Options

This page is intended to help you compare all of the network access types available. (If you already know whether you're more interested in high-speed access or dialup access, see Choosing a high-speed network provider or Choosing a dialup network provider.)

Because of the number of elements to consider, each type of access has information in two tables below. The top table lists basic information such as equipment needed, speed, cost, and availability for each service. The bottom table lists more details, including notes, the possibility of encountering restrictions from the campus firewalls or difficulties with NAT transparency, UIUCnet access for each service, and links to additional information where available. The link on each service name takes you to the corresponding entry in the other table, to make complete comparisons easier.

Basic information

About the Maximum Speed column: While the figures presented are the theoretical maximums per second possible via the networking currently in place, several factors may interfere with the actual speed experienced on a day to day basis. In the case of dialup, telephone noise and distance from repeaters often makes it difficult to achieve the full speed of a modem, which is limited to 53 Kbps maximum in the U. S., with typical maximum speeds in the 40 to 50 Kbps range. In the case of wireless, the 11 Mb theoretically possible depends on the distance from the access point and is shared among all the users connecting to a given access point. If you are the only person connected and you're sitting next to the access point, you will receive information much faster than if 20 other people are connecting to the same point and you are several rooms away. The same is true of cable modems, where the theoretical maximum is shared among the residents in a neighborhood. And in the case of residence hall Ethernet, several bandwidth limitations are enforced when users download more than a fixed amount each day.

More details

About Network Address Translation (NAT) issues: Because of a shortage of IP addresses, some ISPs implement NAT to make one IP address able to represent several computers on a network. If your computer is behind a NAT device, some systems (such as a VPN server) may not know how to communicate with you, and you may need to enable NAT Transparency to distribute enough information for correct communication. (For more information on NAT, see http://www.howstuffworks.com/nat.htm.)