Use this to debunk the broadband Jargon!

ADSL, SIP, VOIP, EFM, FTTC, FIBRE

If you can read all of these then you don't need an eye test, if you know what they all are even better but for those of you who don't know what they are but have heard some of them, please read on...

I want to try to simplify all of them so that next time you look at these technologies for your business, it all makes sense; but you're going to have to use your imagination a little...

Picture a cul-de-sac with enough houses to have 50 cars between all of the houses, they can be any cars you like but there are 50. With a cul-de-sac, there is only one small road to get you out onto the main road that connect to any decent A road of M road, so bear that in mind. Now picture that all 50 cars are looking to leave the cul-de-sac at the same time together, chaos right? Everyone is queuing, there is one guy who won't let the other guy in and everyone is pissed off because it is so slow and no one is getting anywhere; Can you picture that? Nice one, you've just visualised ADSL which is a technical term for broadband. It is slow because it is heavily contended like a small street would be if everyone were trying to use it at once and it is of course both the broadband and the road in this example are the cheapest of its kind and therefore the most ineffective. Taking this example one step further, the people at the front of the queue from that cul-de-sac who have joined the main road and are no longer stuck in the small street, there are fewer cars and they are all moving a lot faster - can you picture that? That's FTTC also known as Fibre to the Cabinet, BT Infinity, Superfast Fibre, Fibre Broadband and a million other names I am sure (if you want to be really technical about it, it's actually VDSL but that's a story for another time). It still only has two lanes line the smaller street had for traffic moving in each direction but there are less cars on that road so everything is moving much faster - that road filters out onto large Motorways and therefore the traffic always flows far better and faster than the previous road. It's more expensive than the previous road but the benefits are there to see.

Now I need you to picture the M25 around London or the M6 - mainly because they are they only M roads I really know - and all of the lanes available if it were empty. Now picture yourself sitting in a nice shiny new Jaguar with no one else on the M25 at all or a Ford Mustang if you're so inclined, anyway I digress; you're sitting on the M25 in a relatively fast car and the only thing that is stopping you hitting 150mph is the speed restriction that has been put on you - that's EFM (also known as Ethernet final mile) it's a private connection for only you to access the internet with a guaranteed speed in each direction (because the road is empty) and is extremely reliable because a lot of money has been put into making it so. It's more expensive that the two roads before but is far less expensive than the next one...

Again, you are back on the M25 with all lanes open, no speed restriction and this time you are sat in a brand new McLaren F1 car with all the skills of Lewis Hamilton, go you! No really, GO! This is the best way to describe leased line fibre, dedicated fibre and so many other variation of fibre. IT IS NOT FIBRE BROADBAND - this is a description that annoys me so much!! Broadband is delivered on a phone line and so is not real fibre - leased line fibre brings the fibre connection right into your building and is the only real fibre in my mind. It is so important to know that when choosing a service for yourself. The best way to decipher it is if it needs a phone line to go with it, you're buying the cul-de-sac and not the M25! This is the most expensive service in the internet access category but it is so much more than an internet connection just like the M25 is so much more than just a road - it can handle so much more traffic than the other roads can, it has so many more open lanes than the other roads, it connects to so many other roads and so much money is plumbed into making sure it's always available for use, it's repaired and maintained so much better than so many other small roads. If you're serious about getting anywhere fast then this is absolutely the best choice every time.

Using my road analogy, I've pretty much covered every type of internet connection there is and tried to make it clear what the differences are but I haven't yet covered SIP & VoIP which can actually be explained with a similar car/road method.

So this one will need you to think about cars and roads slightly differently to make it clear so bear with me...

When you send an email to another person the email is chopped up into packets of data which traverse the internet and meet each other at the other end and put join back up to form your email again. Each of those packets in the analogy is a car or a lorry or a van but a vehicle none the less, hopefully you're picturing that ok? Imagine you have 6 lanes full of cars and lorries and vans all moving along and filling all the lanes of the road - this is your data (the cars) moving through the internet (the road) so every Google search and every email and every bit of data just moving around the internet side by side then, all of a sudden, an ambulance comes along with the blue lights flashing - that's your VoIP or your voice over IP traffic. When you make a voice call it is priorities over all the other data much like cars move out of the way of an ambulance.

Everyone on the road knows that when they hear or see an ambulance with the lights on they have to move out of the way, that's just protocol, right? Well when data does the same thing that is SIP. SIP essentially opens up and closes down a lane for all kinds of special traffic so let's say an ambulance is an IP call and Police cars are Video conferences - SIP is the a protocol which means that special vehicles will always cleanly and effectively cut through all other traffic without disruption or delay because much like an ambulance or police cars, voice calls and video conferencing need that lane to be completely open from end to end for it to actually work. 

Have you ever spoken to someone who is using internet based phones or video conferencing and the call has either had poor quality or the video is choppy? It's the same principle as all 50 cars trying to leave the cul-de-sac at once then an ambulance showing up at the back - sure, it should get through but it will be near impossible for it to happen quickly and all the other cars will suffer for it too - that's why you need to invest in the right internet connection if you want VoIP to work properly.

Hopefully that has cleared up some of the Jargon around broadband and VoIP but it would be great to get your feedback.