When you use the internet or you email someone, it’s my understanding that the data is being transmitted over phone lines. So if I’m viewing a German website or sending email to someone in Norway, my info is getting sent to that location by leaps and bounds over the phone lines. I understand that the data doesn’t shoot directly from my computer to the computer in the other country, but still, we’re talking about some pretty decent distances from computer to computer between hops.
Since this involves any number of long distance “calls,” who is picking up the tab for this? Aren’t computers dialing each other up via long distances? Doesn’t this involve the phone line? Who’s paying? Surely my $14.99 ISP fee doesn’t cover the amount of “calls” long distance or not made during a typical two-hour internet/email session of mine. When I’m surfing the net, I’m bouncing all over the state, the country and the world. Thems a lot of computers dialing each other! If this doesn’t result in phone charges, why aren’t the phone companies raising holy hell?! There’s something I’m missing.
I can definately word this better if necessary, but if you know what I’m getting at and could explain how the internet works in conjunction with phone companies and call charges, that would be great.
The Internet does not run on the phone lines (purists, please let’s not start aruing about DSL), it’s a computer network running on networking equipment (Routers, Ethernet cable, etc.)
If the computers at the two end points are both connected to the Internet via modems, then they each are using a phone to make the connection between their computer and the entry point to the network, but that’s it as far as phone lines are concerned.
It’s also possible to be working in an environment such as an office that has a non-phone connection (like, say, a T1 line) directly to the network - in this case, it’s a direct connection between the office network and the network that is part of the Internet (and this can also be a fuzzy distinction to make, i.e, just when is a network considered part of the Internet?). So then there would be no phone lines involved at all.
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The Internet does not run on the phone lines (purists, please let’s not start aruing about DSL), it’s a computer network running on networking equipment (Routers, Ethernet cable, etc.)
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for an internet request to get across the ocean, i.e. US to Germany, there has to be a phone line involved… doesn’t there? how are overseas phone calls made?
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The Internet does not run on the phone lines (purists, please let’s not start aruing about DSL), it’s a computer network running on networking equipment (Routers, Ethernet cable, etc.)
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for an internet request to get across the ocean, i.e. US to Germany, there has to be a phone line involved… doesn’t there? how are overseas phone calls made? **[/QUOTE]
Sometimes it depends on what you call a “phone line”, also. If a company like ATT sells bandwidth on a fiber cable that runs from town A to town B for a flat rate, and that cable also happens to carry some phone traffic (sold by ATT to a local telco company, say), is it a “phone line”?
I think the question you’re getting at is “who pays for the net traffic?” Your $19.95 to your ISP pays for their connection to the internet, and for them to have a phone line open for you. You pay the local phone company to dial into the ISP, but that’s as far as normal phone lines go. The ISP pays their ISP to get a network connection, and so on until you get to the backbone of the internet. Certain important internet backbones are funded indirectly through the government and universities via research grants, etc.
To send email overseas, nobody makes a long-distance call. More than normal telco traffic goes through via undersea cable.
No, I don’t understand it either, and neither do I think that I would understand all the technical explantions.
But I do know (from my wide experience of all of a few days of having internet access) that there are a lots of advertisements out there.
Now, I don’t object when it’s the hungersite or freedonation, or rainforest etc, but even with my limited exposure to this, I have found the advertisments to be a damned nuisance - still, that is what pays for it, and if I still won’t eat the right burgers or use the right bank (not that many banks would talk to me anyway), then perhaps I am not too badly off. I don’t enjoy it, but it seems to be the way it is. Not, I think, what was perhaps intended, and not what could be, but for the meantime, we are stuck. (As my father would say, we are stuck with a capital F.)
For Internet data to move from one place to another, there does indeed have to be a connection between the two points (radio, copper wire, fiber optic, whatever). Why should it be a phone line?
I believe that, in practice, many phone calls are digitized and travel over the same lines as Internet traffic. However, one could say that the phone calls are using the Internet link rather than the other way around.
Think of the internet as a bunch of perminent “phone lines” between a bunch of big computer networks. The connections are always open and data is always being transmitted, so it doesn’t really operate like your local “phone line” to your ISP. The companies on either end of the perminent lines pay for them to exist, lease them out to others, charge people to transmit across them.
In the early days of the Usenet, the “backbone” machines would actually call up other machines to transmit data. At DEC we had a backbone machine called decvax. We (DEC) got some accounting measurement of how much decvax was costing us, but we ate the cost in the interest of fair play and stuff like that. Plus, people bought Vaxen to play on the Usenet.
Gradually, that “backbone” system was too slow and small to handle the traffic, and a new system of constant connections between large network providers was established. So today, no real “phone calls” are made. New technology means that we don’t even use the original phone interfaces, but data gets transmitted none the less.
I’ve probably screwed up some details along the way.
T1’s and other bandwidth pipes are “phone lines” in that they’re the same type of cables used to carry massive ammounts of telephone service. But they can also carry data service.
If you make an international call, whatever long distance company you use has a deal with a company that owns an international cable and places the call along that route. The cost of using that cable is reflected in your outrageous hone bill.
You send an email to the same country, you just might be using the same fiber to transmit it. In that case, the bandwidth is rented by your ISP (or their ISP, or their ISP). The cost is reflected in your bill.
All major switching nodes run on ATM (asynchrounous transfer mode) nowadays, and are capable of carrying either voice or data traffic. The analogness of the phone system stops at your local central office.
I think the OP is wondering “How come it costs quite a bit for me to call long distance, yet I can browse Web sites all over the globe for nearly nothing?”. Part of the reason is the difference in the nature of voice vs. data traffic.
When you call someone long distance, the phone company is temporarily reserving an entire data channel just for your conversation. As long as you’re connected, even during all the moments when you’re catching your breath or thinking something over, the line is open; and it stays reserved for you until you finally hang up.
When browsing the Web, you’re sending and receiving packets of digitized data. Each packet is transmitted separately, and as soon as that packet is deliverd, the server can request other data packets and route them to their proper destinations.
To get some idea of the bandwidth involved, compare a five minute telephone conversation with how big a file you could download in five minutes. Especially when you’re reading e-mail or Web pages, you don’t actually spend that much time uploading or downloading the data. Comparitively few people spend their time online continually downloading big files, and the rates the ISPs charge reflect this.
This is why “Web long-distance” can be cheaper than standard long-distance rates: because the voice data is digitized and transmitted as packets. It’s also why peole get nervous when they hear urban legends that the ISPs or the phone companies are going to start charging by the byte, the way the telegraph companies used to.
The telcos tried to impose long-distance charges for internet access, even for local dial-ups, but the courts stopped that, except for the highest speeds.
At least you 'Merkins get the benefit of no phone charges…pity your poor transatlantic cousins still getting screwed by British Telecom with timed local-rate calls.
Amen, mattk! I have to pay about $70 a month for internet service including a toll-free dial-up. Back when we still had to pay for each minute of phone time, we would easily spend $100-$200 a month for phone time. Grrrrr.
Semi-related question: How can US phone companies offer all you can dial local phone service for a low monthly fee when it seems that most other countries have to pay by the call or minute?
it does not cost the phone company any more to have you on a local call than to have you on hook. It is just a way of making money. European telephone companies were until recently state owned and opearted and were pretty inefficient and run as a bureaucracy. They need a ton more money to operate so, rather than have a flat fee of (say) $100/mo they can have a fee of $20 and charge for local service which on average brings it up to the $100 they need. This means people can have phone for less provided they use it less. It is just a different price structure and it has to do with marketing, nothing technical.
I remember reading an article some time ago about how some European PTTs were son inefficient they could be part of any socialist country. I remember it specifically mentioned the German and another which could be the Italian or the Spanish, I don’t remember well. I suppose things have improved since then although it seems they still have a long way to go.
Another aspect is that Europeans want the paternal welfare state but hate to pate the required high taxes to support it. Well, you can’t have it both ways.
Nope, this isn’t true any more (not since the phone companies switched to digital lines). When you make a long distance phone call your voice is digitized, compressed, and sent along the same wire with hundreds of other calls simultaneously. Since voice traffic is mostly silence anyway, the phone company can get a lot more calls in than if each call had its own dedicated channel. This is why the phone companies wanted a to be able to charge a surcharge for data calls (and luckily they didn’t get it) - modem tones are continuous and are not compressible like voice traffic, therefore they use more bandwidth and the phone companies need more wires for the same number of calls.
I’ve got a pretty good deal here in Ireland - £20 a month (with the current exchange rate, that’s about US $23) for unlimited access during evenings, weekends and bank holidays. Peak hours would cost the same as a local call, but I’m not at home during peak hours, so it doesn’t matter. It’s really not much more than I was paying my ISP in America.
I can beat you now, ruadh. I’ve signed up to my local cable company’s scheme, which is £10/month for unlimited calls to any of their Points Of Presence (basically any of their dial-up numbers in the UK). It’s not great but better than sodding BT.
It was a big fat lie. They basically claimed the service was fine and dandy, but none of the newspapers could find a single user. The MD eventually admitted this week that there were no users and the service had never gone live, blamed BT, then resigned.
Try The Register for details (I don’t know if they archive news, though) – they had a bit of an anti-AltaVista crusade going.
I believe that there’s only the big cable companies and the odd independent still offering flat-rate access now.
why, because they are already paid for, but that never stopped the gov. before.
you paid for your phone service, dsl, or other connection already, you isp pays for theirs, and all the computers along the way have lines that are paid already by someone. by connecting to the internet, your computer and its phone line is available for use by the net, your computer and its already paid for line can be used by others.
it’s the same as if you when to aunt mary’s house and she allowed you to use her phone.
or better yet
lets say you call aunt mary in your local calling area, you pay for the call. aunt mary has 3 way calling and unlimited regional (reagional = between local and long distance- not in all areas) calling. so she dials gramps in the reg. calling area and connects you through.
all phone lines are paid for and all calls are according to the calling plan each one has