Buying a computer is an investment. The best return on your investment will be in finding an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that will accommodate your needs. Choosing an ISP can be overwhelming, as they all offer a number of Internet access arrangements. It is important to choose one that best suits your needs. What is an ISP and what do they do? An Internet Service Provider allows you to connect to the Internet with varying degrees of speed or data transfer rate, usually for a flat fee. The data transfer rate is measured in kilobits per second (Kbps), megabits per second (Mbps), or gigabits per second (Gbps). Terms you need to know, describing units of data, when choosing an ISP: - Bit = A binary digit used as the basic unit of information storage in digital computing.
- Byte = 8 consecutive bits.
- Kilobit or Kb = 1,000 bits
- Kilobyte or KB = 1024 bytes
- Megabit or Mb = 1,000,000 bits
- Megabyte or MB = 1,048,576 bytes sometimes called one million bytes by the IEC (International Electro Technical Commission)
- Gigabit or Gb = 1,000,000,000 (billion) bits
- Gigabyte or GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes. The IEC define a GB equal to 1,000,000,000 (billion) bytes
- BPS or bps = bits per second. A rate that shows how fast binary digits can be sent through a channel.
For clarity, the term kilobits and megabits are used when referring to network bandwidth. The term megabytes is used when referring to disk space or the size of an electronic file.The more Kbps (kilobits per second) or (Mbps megabits per second) transferred by your ISP the faster you will download pages (text), and other material such as email, photos, music, and videos from the Internet. So, if an ISP provider tries to sell you their program (usually phone companies), be aware that a data transfer speed of 512 Kbps with a maximum of 700 Kbps is less than 1 MB of data transfer speed. If you want to download family photos, your computer is going to be slow. Download guide: - You can view approximately 20 pages on the Internet for each MB of download.
- An average four-minute MP3 (music file) is approximately 4MB.
- A 5-minute video or movie trailer can be 30 MB.
Connection to the Internet from slowest to fastest: - POTS (plain old telephone service)
- ISDN
- DSL
- Frame Relay
- Cable Modem
- Fractional T1, T3.
The following key features that are important in choosing an ISP: - Price and billing
- Performance
- Help and installation
- Security and service
Some ISPs are better than others when it comes to being efficient in all of these key areas, so you need to do your homework before you sign on with an ISP. An informational website to peruse is http://www.thelist.com that gives you a search of ISPs in your area by location/area code, country code, U.S. nationwide, and Canada nationwide.Copyright 2006 by Pamela Beers. All rights reserved. |
