There is an old film called "Top Gun" with Tom Cruise as a fighter pilot.

And the fighter jet hero declared "I feel the neeeed... The neeeed for speed! "

Well, the internet is a bit like that. If you use a low bandwidth connection, then it can seem a very slow experience as you wait for your pages, music and video streams to download.

Modern internet links are measured in Kilobits per second (Kbps) i.e thousands of bits per second. Or, in Megabits (Mbps) - Millions of bits per second.

These are the bandwidths of some connections to the Internet:

• 300 - 9600 bits per second : Obsolete teletype and early modems.
• 56 kilobits per second: Bandwidth of a modern telephone line modem.
• 64 - 128Kbps: Bandwidth of ISDN
• 512kbps - 2Mbps: Bandwidth of most UK home ADSL internet links
• 2Mbps - 100Mbps: Bandwidth available in cities within Korea, Sweden and Japan.

This is all very well, but what does it feel like to have these different bandwdths? Try the movie on the next page.