What is Teleworker Services? Telework means working at any alternative location other than at the central worksite.

A telework program gives selected employees and managers the option of working off-site on a full-time, part-time, or even temporary basis. Staff may choose to work from home offices, telework centers, or satellite offices. How formal or informal the telework arrangement is depends on the company and employee needs. Some teleworking arrangements require nothing more than a phone line, while others involve a full home office setup. How simple the telework arrangement is depends on the companys business needs.

Internet Service Providers Teleworkers require a connection to an ISP to access the Internet. Although ISPs offer their clients many different services, their main role is to provide a connection to the internet. The actual type of connection varies according to the region. Not all connection types are available in all areas. Some connection options provide continuos connection, and others provide connection only when required. ISPs offer various connection options for home and bussiness users include dialup, DSL, cable and satellite connections. The main connection methods used by home and small business users are: Dialup Access DSL Cable Modem Satellite Dedicated Bandwidth Options

Dialup Access Dial-up Internet access is a type of Internet connectivity that operates through a standard telephone line. By running the telephone line to a modem device in the personal computer, and configuring the computer to dial a specific phone number, the computer is granted Internet access.

Dial-up Internet access is offered through a number of Internet service providers (ISPs). Most ISPs lease a set of telephone numbers, sometimes local, sometimes national, that dial into network pipelines that feed into the Internet. Subscribers to the ISP normally pay a monthly or yearly fee. For this fee, the subscriber can access the Internet any time of the day or night to cruise the World Wide Web, send and receive email, participate in IRC chat rooms and USENETnewsgroups. Before a person can subscribe to a dial-up service, he or she must have a computer and dialup modem. A modem is an inexpensive component that fits into a free slot inside the computer. There are also external modems that sit alongside the computer, connected to the computer by a serial or alternate type cable. A telephone line feeds into the modem.

The modem is controlled by software in the computer; for example, the Network Connections utility that comes with Microsoft Windows operating systems. Here you can setup a profile for the ISP, which will tell the modem what phone number to call and how to communicate with the dial-up service. The ISP itself provides this information. Dialup access is an expensive option that uses a phone line and a modem. To connect to the ISP, a user calls the ISP access phone number. With connection speeds of about 56 kbps, dialup is the slowest connection option. At this speed it would take approximately 12 minutes to download a 5-MB file. Dialup is typically used by mobile workers and in areas where a higher-speed connection options are not available. DSL DSL is stands for digital subscriber line is more expensive than dialup but it provides a faster connection. DSL uses telephone lines, but unlike dialup access, DSL provides a continuos connection to the internet. This connection option uses a special high-speed modem that separates the DSL signal from the telephone signal and provides and ethernet connection to a host computer or local-area network (LAN).

Have speeds of 512 kbps and higher are common with DSL services, a 5-MB file would take approximately one minute to download. Upload and download speeds vary based on geoghraphy, distance form the ISP, and the type of service offered by the ISP. Commonly a home user uses an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), in which the download speed is faster than the upload speed. This make this type connection is sufficient for home users as most home users download significantly more than they upload. But, this type of connection is not sufficient for bussiness environment. This because the amount of data uploaded may be equal to or even greater than the amount of data downloaded. A symmetric digital subscriber line (SDSL) service is more appropriate. SDSL offers the same upload and download speeds.

Cable Modem A modem designed to operate over cable TV lines. Because the coaxial cable used by cable TV provides much greater bandwidth than telephone lines, a cable modem can be used to achieve extremely fast access to the World Wide Web. This, combined with the fact that millions of homes are already wired for cable TV, has made the cable modem something of a holy grail for Internetand cable TV companies.

There are a number of technical difficulties, however. One is that the cable TV infrastructure is designed to broadcast TV signals in just one direction - from the cable TV company to people's homes. The Internet, however, is a two-way system where data also needs to flow from the client to the server. In addition, it is still unknown whether the cable TV networks can handle the traffic that would ensue if millions of users began using the system for Internet access. Despite these problems, cable modems that offer speeds up to 2 Mbps are already available in many areas.

A cable modem is a connection option offered by cable television service providers. The connection speed of cable modem is faster than DSL as cable internet connections offer speeds of 5 Mbps to 10 Mbps. A 5-MB file would take only seconds to download at these speeds. The internet signal is carried on the cable connection. Cable is shared-bandwidth service, so as more customers in area connect and use the Internet, the speed is negatively affected.

Satellite Satellite connection is an option offered by satellite service providers. The users computer connects through Ethernet to a satellite modem that transmits radio signals to the nearest POP within the satellite network. Satellite Internet acces speeds range from 128 Kbps to 512 kbps, depending on the subscriber plan. Satellite connection may be the only available technology in many regions of the world.

Figure 1: internet connection for home and small bussiness

Dedicated Bandwidth Options Bussiness customers often require dedicated, high-bandwidth connections to the Internet. There are 3 main types of dedicated , high-bandwidth connection options that are used by bussiness such as T1/E1, T3/E3, and Metro Ethernet. T1 connections transmit data up to 1.544 Mbps. T1 connections are symmetrical, meaning that the upload bandwidth is the same as the download bandwidth. A medium-sized business may need only one T1 connection. E1 is a European standard that transmits data at 2.048 Mbps.

T3 connections transmit data up to 45 Mbps. Although considerably more expensive than a T1 connection, larger businesses may need a T3 connection to accommodate the number of employees. Large businesses with multiple locations might use a combination of T1 and T3 lines. E3 is a European standard that transmits data at 34.368 Mbps. Metro Ethernet offers a wide range of high-bandwidth options, including Gbps links. Large companies with many branches in the same city, such as banks, use Metro Ethernet. Metro Ethernet connects the main office location and all the branches using switched technology. Metro Ethernet allows the transfer of large amounts of data faster and less expensively than other high-bandwidth connection options.

Figure 2: High-speed, dedicated-bandwidth internet connections