Most university students already have free accounts on the school's computer. Unfortunately, the rest of you have to pay somebody like CompuServe, America On-line, or a direct Internet access provider for the service of using their computer to access the Internet. The charge is usually just for time spent cruising the 'Net, there are no additional charges to send e-mail, data or anything else electronically over the net. You also may get charged for the telephone call to the Internet linked computer if it's not a local call. So, you see, from your home computer you use both the telephone network and the Internet network to surf the 'Net.
Modems allow computers to communicate with one another via the telephone lines.
When you retrieved files from the 'Net they would be placed on the Internet linked computer and you would have to access them, bring them to your home computer, through software. This was a good system for remotely operated computers, but was slow and cumbersome when compared to machines that were directly wired to the Internet linked computers. This type of connection allows the personal computer to be directly wired to the Internet. This makes data transfer, mail, and all that other cool stuff happen at high speed. We can retrieve documents, pictures, movies and sound right from the 'Net and display all of these wonderful things on our home computers.