Differences in Communication Protocols
            
             Introduction
             Telecommunications is the electronic sharing of information. The information shared may take the forms of audio, data, or video. Technologies for communicating information include traditional telephones, wireless cellular technologies, and networked computers. This paper will cover highlights of historical telecommunications technologies, present telecommunications systems, and future telecommunications technologies.
             Overview
             Telecommunications spans diverse physical media and transmission protocols. This section presents currently used technologies. Advantages and disadvantages of each technology are described in detail. Table 3 shows the comparative bandwidth available for each of these technologies, ranging from 56 kbps to 100 Mbps.
             Table 3. COMPARATIVE BANDWIDTHS. This table summarizes approximate theoretical data bandwidths, as gathered from the references. These numbers should not be taken as absolutes; the following text should supplement the numbers.
             TECHNOLOGY BANDWIDTHS
             POTS & Modems 28.8 - 56 kbps
             ISDN 128 kbps
             Ethernet 10 Mbps
             Token Ring 16 Mbps
             SMDS 56 kbps - 34 Mbps
             Cable 36 Mbps
             Wireless 50 Mbps
             Fast Ethernet 100 Mbps
             FDDI 100 Mbps
             Plain Old Telephone System (POTS)
             The Plain Old Telephone System, also known as POTS, is the most widespread and lowest cost telecommunications technology available today. Since it was designed to carry voice conversations, the telephone companies placed a restriction on the amount of information needed to accurately reproduce voice. First of all, they determined that spoken conversations rarely exceed 4 kHz in frequency (8 kHz sampled); music, however, does involve higher frequencies, up to the 20 kHz detectable by the human ear. By bandwidth limiting telephone conversations to 8 kHz, the telephone companies could multiplex multiple conversations on a single communications channel. This made the telephone companies' inf...