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I-Series Computing Concepts
Stephen Haag, University of Denver
Maeve Cummings, Pittsburg State University
Alan I Rea, Jr., Western Michigan University

Nuts And Bolts Of Networks And Computers

ISP

You can choose from five different types of Internet service providers.

  1. Dial up or telephone modem service
  2. DSL
  3. Cable
  4. Satellite
  5. Wireless

You can check locally for dial-up and radio-wave based Internet service. Here we'll compare some DSL, cable and satellite providers with a wide geographic reach.

The speed of Internet access is measured in bps or bits per second:

bps

Bits per second

Kbs

Kilo or thousands of bits per second

Mbps

Mega or millions of bits per second

Gbps

Giga or billions of bits per second



Gigabits per second is a speed that you won't easily find at the moment, but it's hoped that we will all have access to this kind of speed in the near future.

Broadband Internet connections have two data transfer speeds. The upstream speed is the speed at which you're sending information onto the Internet, and downstream speed is the speed at which information is coming to you from the Internet.

The following is a table of some of the nationally known ISPs and some of their characteristics.

 

ISP

Number of states covered

Number of e-mail accounts

Monthly fee

Speed

(upstream/ downstream)

Web Space

Cable

AT and T

14

7

$46

128 kbps/

1.5 mbps

10 MB

Comcast

21

7

50

128 kbps/

1.5 mbps

10 MB

Cox Communications

19

7

35

256 kbps/

3 mbps

10 MB

Road Runner

23

5

50

768kpbs/

2 mbps

5 MB

DSL

Earthlink

49

8

50

128 kbps/

1.5 mbps

10 MB

Verizon

26

4

50

128 kbps/

768 mbps

10 MB

Hughes DirectTV

33

5

50

128 kbps/

1.5 mbps

10 MB

Satellite

Hughes Network Systems DirectWay

50

1

70

60 kbps/

500 kbps

10 MB

Echostar Starband

50

10

70

60 kbps/

600 kbps

10 MB

Computer magazines, many of which have Web sites, have lots of information about ISPs.





McGraw-Hill/Irwin