4. Hardware

You are probably reading this from a school computer. But how do you connect to the Internet from home or a company?

Once you have your computer switched on, you need a MODEM to connect your computer to the telephone line in your house.

A modem (short for MODulator/DEModulator) converts your computer's digital signal into an analogue signal which the telephone line can deal with. It then converts analogue data coming down the telephone line into digital data for your computer to use.

Most of you will probably have broadband or ADSL connections now, although in the past people used to have very slow dial-up connections.

You will also need a method of getting the data from your computer to the Internet. This is usually via the telephone network. However, some people connect to the Internet using satellites, fibre-optic cables or radio waves.

Not that long ago, computers were the only devices that most people could use to connect to the internet. However, over the last few years, mobile phones, PDAs, Blackberries and many other devices are now Internet enabled. Many people can even connect to the Internet via your television.