Electronics

VSAT Systems uses a satellite connection as a high-speed digital link between a customers location and the US Internet backbone. The data travels from the satellite equipment at the customers location to the satellite, and then to the teleport for routing to the Internet. The teleport is a secure facility where many large aperture satellite dishes are operated. The SES Americom operations center is located at the teleport and our equipment is located in a leased area inside the Network Operations Center (NOC). At the NOC, routers are connected to the Internet using OC-3 optical connections to a Tier-I Internet backbone provider. Proprietary acceleration and advanced spoofing technology is employed to provide IP transparency and increase throughput speed. Spoofing is what makes the service capable of very high speeds. Why is spoofing important? The entire Internet is based on TCP/IP. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) manages and controls transmissions using IP (Internet Protocol)....

One of the greatest things about the Internet is that nobody really owns it. It is a global collection of networks, both big and small. These networks connect together in many different ways to form the single entity that we know as the Internet . In fact, the very name comes from this idea of interconnected networks. Since its beginning in 1969, the Internet has grown from four host computer systems to tens of millions. However, just because nobody owns the Internet, it doesn't mean it is not monitored and maintained in different ways. The Internet Society , a non-profit group established in 1992, oversees the formation of the policies and protocols that define how we use and interact with the Internet. Quiz Corner How much you know about WiFi and what it does? Test your knowledge with our WiFi Quiz ! ­In this article, you will learn about the basic underlying structure of the Internet. You will learn about domain name servers, network access points and backbones. B...

For most of the twentieth century, the only ways to watch television were through over-the-air broadcasts and cable signals. With broadcast TV, an antenna picks up radio waves to transmit pictures and sound to your television set. With cable TV, wires connect to a set-top box or to your TV itself. These wires run from your house to the nearest cable TV station, which acts as one big antenna. Aside from a few options like satellite TV , broadcast and cable were -- and still are -- the main ways to watch television. © Photographer: Robert Mizerek | Agency: Dreamstime.com Internet TV could change the way we access information and entertainment. New technology can change the way we receive news and entertainment, though. Radio challenged newspapers in the early 1900s, and television challenged radio. Now, it looks as though traditional television has its own competitor, but it's not one that's easily separated from television. It even has television in its name -- it...

The term inkjet printer is very descriptive of the process at work -- these printers put an image on paper using tiny jets of ink. The term laser printer , on the other hand, is a bit more mysterious -- how can a laser beam , a highly focused beam of light , write letters and draw pictures on paper? In this article, we'll unravel the mystery behind the laser printer, tracing a page's path from the characters on your computer screen to printed letters on paper. As it turns out, the laser printing process is based on some very basic scientific principles applied in an exceptionally innovative way. The Basics: Static Electricity The primary principle at work in a laser printer is static electricity , the same energy that makes clothes in the dryer stick together or a lightning bolt travel from a thundercloud to the ground. Static electricity is simply an electrical charge built up on an insulated object , such as a balloon or your body. Since oppositely charged atoms are ...

An inkjet printer is any printer that places extremely small droplets of ink onto paper to create an image. If you ever look at a piece of paper that has come out of an inkjet printer, you know that: The dots are extremely small (usually between 50 and 60 microns in diameter), so small that they are tinier than the diameter of a human hair (70 microns)! The dots are positioned very precisely, with resolutions of up to 1440x720 dots per inch (dpi). The dots can have different colors combined together to create photo-quality images. Impact vs. Non-impact There are several major printer technologies available. These technologies can be broken down into two main categories with several types in each: Impact - These printers have a mechanism that touches the paper in order to create an image. There are two main impact technologies: Dot matrix printers use a series of small pins to strike a ribbon coated with ink, causing the ink to transfer to the paper at the point of impact. Charac...

Home video game systems, also known as consoles , are a popular form of entertainment. In 2000, Sony estimated that one out of every four households in the United States had a Sony PlayStation . Since then the numbers have only increased, with systems like the Nintendo Wii luring the Holy Grail of the video game market: the casual gamer. Video Game Systems Image Gallery ©2008 HowStuffWorks Xbox 360 is a top-of-the-line, next generation game console. In this article you will learn what video game systems are, a little about the history of game consoles, what is inside a game console and what the future holds for these systems. You will also learn a little about the games these systems play. Let's start with the most basic question: What exactly is a video game console? In Essence... At its core, a video game system is a highly specialized computer. In fact, most systems are based on the same central processing units (CPUs) used in many desktop computers . To keep the cost o...