What Is An ISP (Internet Service Provider)? What Does It Do?

An ISP is a company that provides access to the internet through modems, ISDN, T1s, etc. It is an organization that provides and sells physical internet access for global users. An ISP arranges access to the Internet for organizations and/or individuals. Access services provided by ISPs may include web hosting, e-mail, VoIP (voice over IP), and support for many other applications. You may have tried one of the traditionally big online services such as AOL, MSN, Prodigy, Compuserve, or WebTV to get access to the Internet. They apparently make every effort to assure that your first Internet experiences give you successful access to the WWW. A time may come when you will want to have your own website, with your own domain, and have it hosted with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The big online services can connect you to the internet, so do ISPs. The big difference between the two is the kind of content! The online services provide proprietary (company owned) content; that is, large quantities of materials that include ads and promotional presentations. Most ISPs include very little (if any) original or promotional content; and they may do so only when it is free or at a very low price. You are expected to provide your own subject matter; regardless of quality. You will probably discover that an ISP can provide you with services that are just as good, or better, at the same price or less than the big online services. Not all ISPs are created with the same characteristics. Some are very good, some are very bad, and some are both good and bad. Some Things That An Internet Service Provider Can Do: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) equip users with access to the internet through a connection to the ISPs computer network. ISPs will set up a user with an account user name and password and the account holder can connect to the ISPs computer through an internet connection (usually dial up modems). Once the connection has been achieved, the account holder is able to surf the internet and to upload pages of content to a website. ISPs virtually always set the user up with one or more e-mail addresses; depending on which service program is chosen. ISPs will also supply the account holder with web space for his/her website.

History and development of ISPs.

Prior to ISPs, access to the Internet required an account at a university or government agency and a working knowledge of Unix. The Internet began accepting commercial traffic in the early 1990s, but commercial users had to honor the peering protocol of swapping data free of charge. The National Science Foundation commissioned four private companies in 1994 to build public Internet access points, and in 1995 the federal government closed its own Internet backbone. Those four public access pointslocated in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, New Jersey, and Chicagocame under the control of WorldCom,

Pacific Bell, Sprint, and Ameritech. As Internet traffic increased, those public access points became clogged, and the major telecommunications companies began building their own faster, private access points and building out the Internet backbone. For a while the larger backbone providers established peering agreements with smaller ISPs, whereby they would swap Internet traffic for free. In 1997 UUNET, Sprint, and AT&T stopped peering with smaller ISPs and required them to pay fees to gain access to their networks. At the beginning of 1995 there were approximately 160 commercial Internet access providers in the United States. According to PC Magazine, average monthly fees were about $17.50, with connect time billed at $3 per hour. Some ISPs could only be reached through a long-distance telephone call. ISPs offered Internet access through three basic types of accounts. Shell or terminalemulation accounts connected the user to a Unix system with either a commandline interface or a proprietary GUI (graphical user interface). SLIP or PPP dial-up accounts used a modem to make a temporary direct Internet connection and required TCP/IP software. Permanent direct connections for LANs over leased lines were provided primarily for business customers. At the time America Online, CompuServe, and other online services offered limited Internet access. IBM and Microsoft were in the process of building Internet software into new versions of Windows and OS/2. During 1995 the ISP market became more competitive. The dominant ISPs in 1995 were UUNET Technologies (annual revenue of $94 million), Netcom Online Communications Services ($52 million), and PSINet ($39 million). UUNET was focused on business and corporate customers, while Netcom pioneered flat-rate pricing for the consumer market. In addition to these national and international ISPs, the ISP market included large interexchange carriers, such as AT&T and MCI Communications Corp., and regional ISPs, which numbered in the thousands and were growing daily by mid-1996. Netcom began providing Internet service in 1995 and had 400,000 subscribers after one year in business. AT&T also entered the ISP market in 1995 and claimed it signed up 200,000 subscribers in the first few weeks. Both AT&T and MCI offered unlimited Internet access to consumers for a flat rate of $20 per month, while Netcom charged a flat fee of $20 for 400 hours per month. Sprint Corp. followed with a plan similar to its long-distance competitors, AT&T and MCI. UUNET, on the other hand, charged businesses an average of $1,000 a month for Internet service. Consumers were more interested in low-cost access, while reliability and speed were priorities for corporate customers. At this stage the Internet was growing rapidly, and ISPs were challenged to build out their infrastructure, improve their router technology, and increase their access points. By 1996 regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) and longdistance carriers were forming new subsidiaries to provide Internet service. After AT&T rolled out its WorldNet service in 1995, the RBOCs saw Internet service as a way to leverage their large networks. Pacific Bell, through its newly formed subsidiary Pacific Bell Internet, began offering Internet access in April 1996 to 75 percent of its residential customers in the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego, as well as dedicated frame relay access for businesses. Bell Atlantic's Internet Solutions began offering dedicated Internet service to businesses and flat-rate dial-up services to residential users in mid1996.

What are different ways to connect to internet?

There are 2 general ways to connect to the Internet: A) Wired: 1. Dial-Up 2. DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) 3. Cable 4. T1 Line 5. BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) 6. Fiber Optic Cables B) Wireless: 1. Fixed Wireless 2. Wi-Fi 3. Satellite 4. Wi-Max 5. GPRS 6. EDGE 7. 3g and 4g