Simply put, broadband integrates cable modem and DSL and allows the Internet connection to transmit anything faster than 56 kilobits per second, the basic dial up speed. It wasn’t until 2000, that the popularity of broadband Internet increased. It became known as “high speed Internet” and with the blink of an eye, you could travel across the ocean to a whole new world. The performance of broadband Internet is many times faster than a dial up modem. Broadband could also carry another name, “narrowband” which suggests no standard bitrate defined by the industry and the risk of a compromised Internet connection speed.

Cable modems and DSL are the standard technologies used for broadband. Also on the scene are the newer technologies such as optical fiber and VDSL which promises higher speed Internet connections. Depending on what you need the Internet for, speed can make all the difference in the world. It will take time research the best broadband Internet service that will meet your needs as they may very well be different than someone else’s.

Although the use of fiber optic Internet services has become recent, consumers are able to access broadband Internet using cost effective means, even covering larger distances.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of a broadband Internet service is to provide needed services in scarcely populated areas. Thousands of dollars are required in providing equipment to offer Internet services to the people and many times this can not be done. Service providers fear they will not be able to recover their costs and choose not to incorporate low density populated areas. Adding to this dilemma is the type of phone service offered in these rural communities. If it is of poor quality, than broadband Internet will be compromised and there could be problems signing onto the Internet or being “dumped off” at the most inopportune time. There are some areas where Wi-Fi networks take over when there is no access to DSL or cable Internet. In other countries, HSDPA, EV-DO and stationary broadband WiMax are used to gain access to high speed mobile Internet.

Especially in times of economic hardship, many online businesses are now having their beginnings in a private home. Entrepreneurs rely heavily on a reliable broadband Internet service for daily communications and worldwide access. As does the business man with many holdings covering the globe. At times, on the spot decisions need to be made and a reliable broadband Internet access can make all the financial difference in the world for many people involved.

It is estimated that by 2004 there will be more than 65 million DSL subscribers, and 16 million of those will subscribe to broadband media services. The market for broadband media services is driven by:

• content providers pushing new types of content to the Internet
• new broadband access technologies enabling cost-efficient media services
• broadband DSL services which will enable fixed operators to capture part of consumer’s new TV and video services and bundle them with traditional voice services, helping to reduce customer churn and margin pressure
• increasing demand followed by growing market awareness

In addition to media revenues, broadband media services can provide new revenue sources such as advertising, interactive services, and e-commerce revenue sharing. How did the demand for next-generation IP services evolve? Why do telecom operators find broadband media services so compelling? To answer these questions, let’s first take a brief look back at the evolution of broadband media services, and how broadband media services can create new opportunities for telecom operators.

Figure 1. Expected Broadband Media Services Subscriptions (in millions)A little over 25 years ago, operators had no concept of using telephone lines as anything other than carriers of voice traffic to consumers. Before divestiture in the telecom world, and for many years after, the only service operators offered to consumers was basic voice service. The cable and home-video industries were also in their infancy. Other than network television and radio, entertainment meant that consumers went outside the home, to movie theatres, shows, or concerts. The cable industry consisted of a few small start-up companies, basically small groups of people positioning a large antenna, hooking up analogue line amplifiers to feed the signal, and routing the signal to multiple homes. The few cable operators that existed at the time were small and mainly focused on their growing cable-programming customer base. At the same time, telecom operators had a firm hold on voice service. While telcos and cable companies serviced many of the same customers with their respective services, there was otherwise little convergence in the entertainment and telecommunications industries.

Then, beginning in the early 1980′s, and especially in the last 10 years, the telecommunications industry was forever changed. The proliferation of the wireless and home-entertainment industries, including cable, home computing, and widespread use of the Internet, has created both opportunities and challenges for traditional operators. Some have experienced bankruptcy or were merged with other companies. The few that remained were faced with new competition from start-up telecom companies, Internet service providers (ISP) and content providers for a share of the growing consumer telecommunications dollar. As many of these start-ups were forced out or merged, the dominant companies that remained had tremendous opportunities to bring more value to the consumer than ever before by providing first dial-up, then high-speed, or broadband, Internet access. Today, substantial revenue increases for telcos derived solely from voice services are limited, because of market saturation. New revenue sources must be integrated into their existing product lines. Enter broadband media services.

Broadband Media Services Market Potential for Operators

The role and scope of the telecom, Internet, and entertainment industries as global powerhouses have played an important role in the emergence of broadband media services. While cable and satellite remain viable markets for home entertainment, broadband media services delivered via IP have applications above and beyond movies and music, for both homes and businesses, and offers several advantages. As Internet content becomes more sophisticated and media companies expand development of digital content in Internet-compatible protocols, the demand for broadband media services will grow exponentially. As a result of this growth, operators will have significant opportunities for generating additional revenue. The telcos’ huge base of residential voice customers is a ready market for next-generation media services.

Some of the major benefits of broadband media services include the following:

• The infrastructure upgrades that are required for broadband media services do not involve significant civil and building-code regulation. In other words, to deploy broadband media services in an urban area, operators utilize their existing network infrastructure, so less land will need to be dug up to reinstall new infrastructure.
• Broadband media services revitalizes the revenue potential of the telcos’ existing infrastructure by providing new opportunities to service existing customers.
• Broadband media services offers telcos a way to compete with cable (CATV) operators’ packaged “voice + CATV services.”
• A higher level of security is possible with IP networks. Since users are authenticated, or recognized, truly customized services and marketing opportunities based on specific user interests can be created. This is not possible with current broadcast networks.
• New levels of customization and interactivity are possible, combining Internet with broadcast television or DVD, for example. Bundles of services are no longer pre-defined and schedules become obsolete—users decide on the media they want, and determine on their own when they want to experience it.
• The power of the Internet is taken to a new level with broadband media services, in that individuals can create their own content and distribute it to electronic devices around the world (televisions, wireless phones, laptop computers, etc.) at the click of a button.
• Since services are individual and not bundled, upgrades are done on a per-customer basis, unlike CATV where fundamental changes require upgrades to all served on a common/shared infrastructure.
• Pay TV (CATV or satellite) is an established service in many countries, so there is reason to believe that telcos that offer broadband media services will find an eager customer base willing to pay, providing customers recognize the value of broadband media services over existing entertainment services.

Generating marketing messages that will convey the value of broadband media services to customers will be crucial to obtain new subscribers and for consumer word-of-mouth diffusion to kick in and grow the broadband media services market. In order for telcos to be ultimately successful in deploying broadband media services, they will need to work closely with network and content providers to ensure that services are deployed and marketed effectively to their customers. Get more cheap checks online and try out new broadband services in your town to find out who provides best service.

This tutorial describes the evolution and technologies involved in broadband media services delivery. A brief history tracing the evolution of broadband media services will be presented, along with descriptions of multimedia standards, potential services, and the roles of the various entities involved in creating broadband media services–network providers, content providers, services providers, and businesses and consumers. After working through the tutorial, participants will have a general understanding of the scope, technology, and benefits of broadband media services.Broadband and bandwidth
“Broadband” refers to a type of network connection that supports a very high bit rate, as opposed to “narrowband,” which supports a lower bit rate. The higher the bit rate, which is a measure of speed of transmission of bits per second (bps), the faster the transmission will occur in a given period of time. “Bandwidth” is a measure of capacity. Greater bandwidth allows more information to be communicated in a given period of time. Broadband media services delivery requires transmitting large amounts of information quickly, so the combination of fast broadband transmissions and large amounts of bandwidth required to deliver information are the foundation of broadband media services delivery. But this is just the beginning of the broadband media services story, because the true value of broadband media services lies in the actual services that can be delivered across these high-speed, high-bandwidth networks, the entirely new “on demand” way customers will access them and the customized and personalized ways that individuals will interact with these services. With that in mind, we can formulate a definition of broadband media services:

Broadband media services is the seamless, customized, “on demand” creation and delivery of multimedia services to homes, businesses, and mobile users, including entertainment services (movies, interactive games, broadcast TV), infotainment (e-learning, online training) through high-speed Internet protocol (IP) networks.

Beyond fast Internet access
“Broadband media” is sometimes called “streaming media” because the services, or “content,” that is delivered via broadband networks is digitized, and received by users of the content in continuous real-time “streams.” Broadband content is digitized and accessed utilizing IP, the standard protocol used for Internet access today. In fact, high-speed IP access through digital subscriber lines (DSL) that utilize existing voice lines for high-speed transmissions, is the foundation of the broadband media services network, and DSL is available in many parts of the world today. DSL is a group of increasingly high-speed technologies that enables fast Internet access in homes and businesses. DSL “always on” connections will also form the basis of the sophisticated broadband media services networks of tomorrow.

Fast Internet access barely scratches the surface of the powers of broadband, DSL, and IP technology, which, combined in broadband media services, will connect people and businesses around the world like never before. Broadband media services will put the consumer in total control by enabling personal, custom, on-demand viewing of entertainment, e-learning, video games, and other types of content. Individuals will choose what they want to hear, see, or be entertained by on their own, and people will no longer have to plan around preconceived broadcast schedules for home entertainment. Eventually, we will decide our own schedules for much of our entertainment. Furthermore, broadband media services will allow individuals to easily create their own content, personalize it, and distribute it for viewing on TVs, PCs, remote laptops, and mobile phones and other wireless devices around the world, instantly.

Broadband media services provides endless possibilities for consumers to choose and personalize their entertainment and infotainment. Broadband media services will also create new revenue streams for operators, media companies, and service providers through enhanced usage of existing networks, branded media portals, interactive “one-to-one” advertising and endless e-commerce possibilities. The proliferation of high-speed broadband IP access and broadband media services will require content creators to distribute large amounts of rich media to a global audience of high-speed users with increasingly greater demand for access to specific services. The challenges for broadband media development include understanding true consumer wants and needs for services and perfecting the technology standards behind the high data rates and significant bandwidth required for seamless delivery of high-quality multimedia services.

I have been telling IT professionals for quite some time that I believe the best way to provide applications to users is through a terminal server. The terminal services make it possible to run applications on machines that never would have otherwise supported them. For instance, I frequently administer my servers by remotely controlling them from a PDA that’s running Windows CE. Normally, Windows CE would be incapable of running User Manager for Domains or any of the other administrative tools. However, because the applications are actually running on the server itself, my PDA makes an excellent administration tool.

Nonetheless, for all their good points the terminal services don’t do well in one area of IT administration. Until recently it has traditionally been a very poor solution for supporting remote users. Let’s look at reasons why the terminal services do not make the best remote admin tool and a way to overcome these limitations.

Limitations of the terminal services for remote users

The terminal services work by sending screen images to the user and by sending a user’s keystrokes and mouse motions back to the server. These transmissions have traditionally consumed much more bandwidth than a remote connection would support. I have personally witnessed users remotely accessing a terminal server over a modem, and the entire session could be best described as painfully slow.

Another reason why the terminal services have been traditionally bad for remote users is because of the way that the user has been forced to access the terminal services. Normally, if a user will be accessing the terminal services they will dial into a RAS server, authenticate into the network, and then begin a terminal session. Again, the concept of dialing in just isn’t conducive to a well-performing terminal session.

Everything changes with Windows Server 2003

Recently there have been two changes that make the terminal services better suited to remote operations. These include the widespread deployment of broadband connections, and the implementation of Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2003’s version of the terminal services relies on the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). This is the same protocol used by Windows XP’s Remote Assistance feature. RDP is designed to be much faster than its predecessor. It also allows for greater color depth than was previously available and supports the transmission of sound.

Since broadband Internet access and the RDP make terminal service access more feasible for remote users, it might be tempting to give all of your remote users terminal server access. However, one big challenge that must be overcome is most companies have a limited supply of IP addresses.

NAT problems

Normally, when a company gets Internet access, the ISP will provide them with one IP address. Since each PC must have its own IP address, it has become common to assign each PC a bogus IP address. The one real IP address is assigned to the router or firewall that is physically connected to the Internet. This machine uses what’s known as a Network Address Translation (NAT) firewall. NAT allows you to create an entire network of bogus IP addresses. When someone needs to access the Internet, the request is sent to the NAT firewall and it makes the request to the Web site on behalf of the person. In doing so, the request appears to have come from the network’s one legitimate IP address. When the Web site replies to the request, the reply is sent to the NAT firewall. The NAT firewall receives the request and then forwards it to the appropriate bogus IP address on the private network.

When it comes to accessing the Terminal Services, NAT presents a couple of problems. One problem is that the terminal server does not have a legitimate IP address. Therefore, the server is not accessible to the outside world. Only PCs on the private, internal network are usually able to access such servers. The second challenge is NAT is configured to block all unauthorized traffic types. This includes terminal server traffic.

Port forwarding

Just because there are challenges involved in accessing the terminal services across a NAT firewall doesn’t mean doing so is impossible. You can access a terminal server externally by using something called port forwarding. The basic idea of port forwarding is that someone from the outside world would configure her terminal server client to connect to the terminal server. However, the connection must be made by entering your network’s one legitimate IP address. Remember that this IP address is assigned to your firewall / router rather than to the terminal server. The trick is to know that the terminal services use port number 3389. Therefore, when connecting, enter the network’s one legitimate IP address followed by a colon and the number 3389 (for example, 147.100.100.1:3389).

In addition, the NAT firewall must be configured to support port forwarding by telling NAT that any traffic coming in on port 3389 must be redirected to your terminal server. For this step you can enter the server’s private IP address. The actual port forwarding mapping procedure varies from firewall to firewall, but in general it simply involves entering the port number (3389) and the private IP address of the terminal server.

Simple registry tweak

The down side to using port forwarding is that you can only access one terminal server from the outside world. The reason is that you can only map a port number to one private IP address. Therefore, if port 3389 is mapped to one terminal server, then it can’t be mapped to a second terminal server. However, there is no reason why you can’t map port number 3390 to your second terminal server. The only trick is that you must configure the second server’s terminal services to listen on port number 3390 rather than 3389.