BASEBAND-BROADBAND
Baseband and broadband are networking terms that
describe whether a given signal gets the whole wire to itself or whether it has
to share the wire with other signals.
Baseband In a baseband network, no carrier frequency is used. The
information that travels down the wire depends on the wire itself for its
carriage. Ethernet, for instance, is a baseband
network technology, because the whole of the wire is dedicated to carrying the
network's traffic. The following
are used to designate the type of baseband network:
Broadband Broadband transmission systems allow multiple
independent signals onto one cable. The most obvious examples of broadband
technology are high-speed Internet access that comes into a home by new cable
TV systems (cable modems) or Digital Subscriber Loop (DSL). In either of these
systems, a layer of electromagnetic waves is inserted on the media, and then
one or more channels of that signal is used to carry the messages. For instance, in a cable TV system the cable
head-end sends many signals down the wire at once. Viewers can select channels
for viewing and recording, and channels are also set aside for use with cable
modems. These signals are mixed onto the cable system wires as if they were
standard television channels, and it is to these channels that the cable modems
connect. In this way, the cable modem is using a broadband service, because it
is connecting to a signal that is riding on the cable, rather than to the cable
itself. Unlike baseband, there is
no standard format for indicating specifications for broadband systems.
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