For home computer users, broadband Internet connections currently come in two flavors: digital subscriber line (DSL), which piggybacks onto your copper telephone line, and cable, which comes through your coaxial TV cable. Still unavailable in many areas, both promise Internet access up to 50 times faster than a dial-up modem and are being offered for about $40 a month, roughly twice the price of a conventional modem connection. For a six-month commitment, companies providing the competing technologies -- which include phone and cable TV companies as well as Internet providers -- have all been offering deals on free hardware and installation.

Whether broadband is worth it for you depends on what you do online. DSL and cable connections are generally more reliable than dial-up modems and significantly faster at some tasks, like downloading MP3 files with Napster. Online gaming works better and the quality of streaming video is much improved, though still primitive by TV standards. Broadband also lets you use your phone while you are online, which is like having a second phone line if you are a heavy Internet user.

Broadband also should improve teleconferencing, videocams and voice communications over the Internet. But for everyday activities like e-mail, instant messages, chat rooms and Web surfing, I can't say there is that big a difference. The typical Web page loads faster, but nowhere near 50 times faster, and like a conventional modem connection, speed varies by the minute and Web site.

Broadband is a small but fast-growing industry. There are more than 3 million Internet cable subscribers and 1.5 million DSL users today, three times more than a year ago, but still far fewer than the 26 million subscribers to America Online. To grab market share while building infrastructure, broadband companies have been offering the service at cost. Combined with higher interest rates and lower stock prices, many of the smaller companies won't survive the coming shakeout. Analysts predict the so-called Baby Bell local phone companies will end up with most of the DSL market.

But there are already twice as many Internet cable subscribers, most of them customers of cable TV companies. And now that the world's biggest Internet provider, AOL, has merged with the largest cable communications company, Time Warner, it could hook up its millions of Internet and TV subscribers to cable modems, causing DSL to go the way of the eight-track. Yet waiting in the wings are wireless broadband technologies that could make both DSL and cable obsolete.
 

Nevertheless, I eventually decided to try DSL with Earthlink <earthlink.net>, which was already my Internet provider. That way I could keep my e-mail address and upgrade to DSL for $20 a month more than the $20 a month I was already paying. The promo offered a free DSL modem worth $200 and software I could install myself. But when I called to sign up, the customer rep said they would send out a technician because installation was too complicated. The in-home service call was free, but there was a $99 setup fee, he added. Probably because Earthlink is more interested in subscribers than setup fees, when I said there was nothing about a fee on my coupon, he dropped it.

Earthlink has partnered with a company called Covad <www.covad.com> to provide DSL, and when I hadn't heard from either for several weeks I called Earthlink, which said Covad said my phone company needed to install some router gizmo on the phone line, and until it did my DSL was on indefinite hold. Just when I was about to try for a cable connection, Covad told me the phone line problem had been resolved and a technician would arrive sometime between noon and 5 p.m. on a certain day for the installation, which could take up to two hours.

After the ominous buildup, setup was stunningly simple. The technician arrived shortly after noon with a new high-speed DSL modem. He plugged one end into the wall and the other end into my computer. We watched together as three green diodes on the front flickered to life. That, he said, meant the connection was working. Next he walked me through installing the software, telling me to click where it said to click, twice. Then he had me configure the software, which entailed typing in my screen name and password. Finally, he showed me how to connect to my DSL account -- click on the word "connect" -- and the fourth green diode lit up. I checked my e-mail, found a Web site, no problemo. The default settings had worked the very first time.

The technician gave me a couple of filters to plug into my telephones so they'd still work, said have-a-nice-day and disappeared. Staring at the four green diodes silently flickering on my new high-speed modem, suddenly I felt, naked. DSL and cable are "always-on" technologies, meaning you don't have to dial in every time you want to connect to the Internet. It also means your computer is more of a stationary target for hackers and cyber snoops. The entire contents of my computer -- private letters, credit card numbers, passwords, pictures, whatever -- potentially accessible to strangers, and I didn't even know how to disconnect.

Actually, disconnecting turned out to be no more difficult than connecting -- click on "disconnect." And Web sites like DSLreports.com, Cable-Modem.net and "Home PC Firewall Guide" <www.firewallguide.com> had practical tips on minimizing the risks. Simple stuff like making sure the computer's file- and print-sharing are turned off, signing off from the DSL account when not using the Internet, and turning off the computer when not using it. For extra protection while online, Earthlink also provided a free download of Norton's personal firewall software, which I recommend. Although it has to be turned off for some programs to work, two or three times a week the firewall will announce it has denied access to someone or something trying to sneak into my computer.

After shoring up my broadband security, I looked for Web sites where DSL might make a difference. My first stop was "Bijou Cafe" <BijouCafe.com>, an online art house of animations, short flicks and full-length features in streaming video. The Bijou's campy to historically significant archive includes Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps," early Fellini, John Huston and Jack Nicholson, Ed Wood's "Glen or Glenda?" and "Triumph of the Will," Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda classic. Not to mention "The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield." Only every time I'd tried to view the videos with my old 56k modem, my computer had crashed. Not with DSL. At least not as quickly or as often. And even though the picture was nowhere near TV quality, it was scads better than the herky-jerky postage stamps I was used to squinting at.

Although it's only conjecture on my part, if broadband can improve the picture size and quality for such Bijou offerings as Aaron Spelling's "Satan's School for Girls," it seems safe to assume the picture quality for live, online interactive sex shows at porn sites like ClubLove.com might be similarly enhanced.

Another area where broadband beats modems is FTP, or file transferring. To view the Bijou's streaming videos, I needed to download a newer version of RealPlayer software <www.real.com>, a process that used to take 20 minutes or more. With broadband, downloading the software didn't take much longer than filling out the registration form. I began downloading freeware, shareware and upgrades, thinking that made broadband worth having. Only a half-hour later I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to download.

Ah, but there was one more thing to download. This may not be good news for the music industry, but the one computer application most enhanced by broadband may be Napster <Napster.com>, the MP3 music file-sharing program music companies are suing over copyright infringement. With my 56k modem, Napster could download a three-minute song in about six minutes. But that was on a good night, and if I tried downloading more than one song at a time, each would take twice as long. With DSL I can download the same song in under a minute. I can also download three or more songs at once without slowing download times on any of them.

Speaking of Napster, not too long ago the Foo Fighters were on Craig Kilborn's "Late Late Show" on CBS and performed an unplugged version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" that fell somewhere between camp and splendiferous. Just minutes after the show aired on the West Coast, I got on Napster and typed in "Foo Fighters," expecting to find some of their music. What I didn't expect were a bunch of MP3s titled "Foo Fighters - Stairway to Heaven (Live on Kilborn)." That's probably not good news for the music industry either.