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An Internet Service Provider, ISP, is a company that provides a gateway to the Internet for individuals and companies. In its simplest form, connecting to the Internet requires a telephone line to dial up an ISP using a computer and modem. The ISP then provides the route onto the Internet.

Choosing an Internet Service Provider requires a simple first step. Ask yourself: “What do I want to use the Internet for?” If you can answer this, you can then start to work out your requirements.

Answers to the question “What do I want to use the Internet for?” can include:

- How much will I use the Internet each month?
- What time of day will I use it?
- Do I need web space?
- Is customer support important to me?
- How many e-mail addresses will I need?
- Can the ISP support online payments?
- How much does it cost?

Another question to ask is “How long has the ISP been in business?” This might not seem important but in this industry ISP’s come and go quite regularly. Running an ISP requires extensive computer knowledge, experience and quality hardware, not to mention a reliable line into the Internet, plenty of good modems and adequate customer support.

Different types of Internet service

Dial-up: connects to the ISP using a modem. This is the most basic, slowest and cheapest option.

DSL: popular high speed internet service. It uses a regular telephone line to connect to the Internet, however it is faster that dial-up and allows you to access the Internet and use the phone at the same time.

Cable: high speed Internet service that uses your TV cable.

Satellite: It connects to the Internet using a satellite dish. It is more expensive than other options but allows people leaving in isolated areas to access the Internet.

Wireless: Connect to the Internet while you are away from home. Allows people to travel with their laptops and access the Internet from hot spots worldwide.

The next step should be to start calling the Internet Service Providers in your area or visiting their websites for more information. A good way to find out about a particular ISP in your area is to ask people who use it or try it yourself. On the Internet there are good ISP’s directories that you may want to visit as well.

The author is Ronald Vyhmeister, visit his website at High Speed Internet Providers (http://www.allisp.info).
Feel free to use this article in your website or newsletter, but keep this author box with live links.

Tags: Cable, dsl, high speed internet, internet service provider, internet service providers, ISPCable, dsl, high speed internet, internet service provider, internet service providers, ISP

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Broadband Internet service has become a “must have” for
those already enjoying the high speed Internet provided by
cable broadband, DSL, or T1 services. Still, many dial up
Internet users are reluctant to make the switch to broadband
due to the increased cost in Internet access, and fail to
recognize broadband’s money saving potential.

Broadband Internet is so much more than lightning fast web
browsing. Along with broadband Internet emerges opportunity
to take advantage of new money saving technologies not
available to dial up Internet users. Broadband phone and the
up and coming IP TV are just a couple examples of the newest
technologies dial up users are missing out on.

Broadband Internet users also save money by downloading
their own music, games, and even movies instead of renting
or purchasing them for a much higher price from a retail
outlet. Of course dial up users can do this as well, but not
in a very timely fashion since it could take up to a couple
of hours just to download a simple song.

Broadband Internet rates have reduced dramatically within
the course of the last five years. High speed Internet can
now be purchased for as little as fourteen dollars a month
in some places, and usually has a top end comfort level of
around fifty dollars or less per month. This means broadband
can sometimes be even cheaper than dial up ISP.

Broadband Internet is probably one of the few services that
end with the customer never having buyers remorse. Broadband
is just one of those things that people find many useful and
even practical applications for. An entire book could be,
and probably has been written about the usefulness of
broadband Internet access.

If you have been considering making the switch to broadband,
you’ll find many vendors these days offer incentives such as
reduced cost for service, free equipment, and rebates to
ease the burden of any start up cost for high speed
broadband Internet service. In the end, broadband is just as
affordable yet better and faster than dial up Internet.

Daymon Hoag is the Editor for Cheapest Service and provisioner of Cheapest-Service.com High Speed Internet

Tags: broadband, cable broadband, dial up isp, dsl, high speed internet, internet access, ISPbroadband, cable broadband, dial up isp, dsl, high speed internet, internet access, ISP

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If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

– George Bernard Shaw

The computer world was similar to all of us having an apple each till some time back. And then the wise men from the industry made networks. Ideas started flowing all over and soon came in the internet. The internet has been the best thing that has happened to the computer world so far. It has created a platform where we can share our ideas.

Since the Internet is a large network composed of smaller networks, it made sense to break the address space into smaller chunks. Network classes enable us to break down this address space. In IPv4 the various classes of networks are -

Class A networks have an address range between 1.0.0.1 to 126.255.255.254 and support 16 million hosts on each of 127 networks.
Class B networks have an address range between 128.1.0.1 to 191.255.255.254 and support 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks.
Class C networks have an address range between 192.0.1.1 to 223.255.254.254 and support 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks.
Class D networks have an address range between 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255 and are reserved for multicast groups.

Class E networks have an address range between 240.0.0.0 to 254.255.255.254 and are reserved for the future

Such a system makes things simple and networks are manageable. However, they cannot communicate with each other. The scenario is very similar to how communities grew around the world. With time people from different communities needed to communicate with each other, however language was the barrier. The solution they found was people who understand both the languages i.e. translators. So if you need to talk to a beautiful French girl, all you need to do is get somebody who understands French and can translate English to French and vice versa. Routers /gateways do the same in computer networks. Different networks communicate with each other using routers.

A router allows hosts that are not on the same logical network, like an IP subnet, to communicate with each other. The router receives packets (chunks of data) on an interface and routes them to where they need to go based on a routing table; the table allows the router to have knowledge of where a given logical network is located.

Most offices and homes have small class C private networks. These networks need to communicate with the servers in the internet. The only logical way for them is to use a gateway/router. Linux has routing functionality in the kernel itself which makes it an ideal choice for as routing box.

One simple way of sharing the internet connection using linux is using the IP forwarding feature of the kernel and network address translation (NAT). For NATing one can use either ipchains or iptables. It is assumed that the private network is in the 192.168.1.0-255 range.
Let us take the example of a simple network. The server is used to connect to the internet. It’s IP address is 192.168.1.1. There are 4 workstations 192.168.1.2-5. They are connected to the server via the switch. All the workstations share the internet through 192.168.1.1

The first step is to enable ipforwarding in the kernel of the server (192.168.1.1).

$ vi /etc/sysctl.conf
Change the line
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

to

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

This would enable ip forwarding.

Then we need to get the server to NAT which can be done via ipchains or iptables.

If ipchains is used, create a file called rc.fw and add following lines

$ vi /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.fw

#!/bin/bash

# First Load the ipchains kernel module. Required only if ipchains is compiled as a module
.
/sbin/modprobe ipchains
insmod ipchains

# MASQ the full 192.168.1.0/24 network
/sbin/ipchains -A forward -s 192.168.1.0/24 -j MASQ

# List the rules
/sbin/ipchains -L -n

If iptables is used instead of ipchains, create a file called rc.fw and add the following lines -

$ vi /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.fw

#!/bin/bash

# First Load the ipchains kernel module . Required only if iptables is compiled as a module
/sbin/modprobe iptables
insmod iptables

# MASQ the full network
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j MASQUERADE

# List the rules
/sbin/iptables -L

This would look after all the entire data traffic from the local network to the internet.

Finally add this to the startup -

$ vi /etc/rc.local

Add the line

/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.fw

This ensures that the settings are retained after a reboot also.

After rebooting the server would do all the routing functions for the entire network.

On the client side all that is required is to set the default router/gateway as the server’s IP i.e. 192.168.1.1. The entire network is now set to share the internet connection.

Amarjyoti Krishnan heads bobcares.com, a tech support company for webhosts and ISPs. He is the co-founder of Poornam Info Vision Ltd., a software and IT services company which specializes in Linux based solutions for Webhosts and ISPs. Poornam Info Vision is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company with a team of over 100 engineers.

Amarjyoti is a Computer Engineer based in India and has over 7 years of experience in the hosting industry. He has spoken and written extensively on the subject. His articles have been published both online as well as in print in magazines.

http://poornam.com

http://bobcares.com

http://amarjyoti.com

Tags: computers, internet sharing, linux, technologycomputers, internet sharing, linux, technology

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