From fibre and cable to ADSL and VDSL, there are many ways of delivering broadband into your home. The United Kingdom is beginning to roll out next-generation broadband and with one of the main providers committing to invest £1.5bn on fibre optics the future looks rosy for lovers of the internet.

The days of dial-up are long gone and broadband has replaced the older, and much slower, way of connecting to the internet. Broadband works a completely different way and allows you faster connection speeds because your telephone line is divided into many different channels meaning information can travel in parallel streams as opposed to one single line.

An average broadband line working at 512Kbps is about nine times faster than the best dialup connection, while a really fast broadband line, working at around 8MBps can be over 100 times speedier than its dial-up counterpart.

Most people download more information than they upload so broadband allocates more channels to downloading thus making download speeds several times faster than those for uploading.

Downloading and uploading are therefore not equivalent or symmetrical processes but instead are asymmetric, hence why the technical name for this type of broadband is Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL). Another type of broadband called Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) allows uploading and downloading at the same speed.

DSL technologies are carried along copper cables which are subject to noise issues whereas the fibre optic cables planned for the future will be less prone to disruption. Fibre optics are encased in cable similar to an ordinary PC cable but inside the tiny fibres transmit digital information in the form of light signals.

As well as improved quality, fibre optics will bring speeds of between 2Mbps and 10gbps, with the added benefit of being able to offer those speeds both upstream and downstream. This would make contributing back to the net, sending video files or images for instance, much easier and significantly quicker.

DSL is changing too with a new variant called ADSL2+ introduced to the UK recently. ADSL2+ offers speeds of up to 24Mbps though this is a distance-dependent service and that must be taken into consideration.

Wireless broadband has been a development that gained popularity since its initial arrival. Wireless routers are devices that transmit broadband wirelessly so that a number of computers and gaming consoles can connect to the internet without the use of wires throughout the home.

When it comes to having broadband in your home there are a few factors to consider. Broadband availability is important as some internet service providers use special technology, such as cable or ADSL2, so you can use your postcode to check the options available to you.

In order to have leased line broadband, whether at home or in the office, you do not need a standard telephone line to get up and running. Apart from this all you need is a little bit of computer knowledge and you could be making use of the internet in no time!