MODEM

Modem is short for MOdulator DEModulator. It’s an electronic device used to access the Internet that modulates carrier waves to encode information to be transmitted and also demodulates incoming carrier waves to decode the information they carry.

What is a modem?

A modem is a very important piece of network hardware that allows a computer to send and receive data through a telephone line or cable connection. In simple words, it’s the device that connects a computer to the Internet using telecommunication network.

The Importance of a Modem

Back in the old days, when landline phones were the primary tool to communicate over long distances, modems came in pretty handy to gain Internet connectivity using telephone lines. In fact, without modems, it would have been impossible for most users to connect to the Internet. While computer technology is purely digital, i.e., it relies on numbers to transmit and receive information, telephone technology, even to this day, is partly analog, meaning that it uses continuously varying electrical signals to transmit information.

Since your modem sends information through a telephone line by modulating digital signals, it also needs to have another kind of translator that helps it demodulate the analog signals it receives via the telephone line.

That’s why a modem is named as such, because it both modulates and demodulates signals.