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I S P

Internet Service Providers are also known as 'ISP', they provide you with a connection to the World Wide Web via a phone, cable or wireless contact. Each ISP operates itself with an aim to make a profit, therefore the offer for their service can be very competitive. In this thread we can examine cost effectiveness of certain types of connections as well as the price for it. We should also look at the new wave browsing known as 'filtered', where ISPs claim to keep all the 'bad' stuff out such as being able to surf and see porn or inherit viruses. What are your views?

P I

I'll field something on the filter part. The filtering I used in the past used proxies. From what I can guess, it uses the proxy (essentually an IP address) to basically "ask" if the material is okay or not. A few issues I can see with this. For one, this won't catch everything. In the same way virus scanners have to be updated, so do proxies (although, they do the updating, so that's less effort on your part ). Two, this creates a higher than usual amount of slowdown. Basically, everytime you access a new webpage, the time it takes to load that page is doubled, because there are actually two pages the browser would have to contact before loading. What's worse is if the proxy can't be contacted, the page may never load. Finally, there's sometimes a possibility that trusted pages get blocked. I can't remember what pages this happened to (it's been years since I used a proxy), but there were times when it would load the page and times where it wouldn't.

Edit: Forgot to mention, when I was talking about filters I was only refering to content filters, not virus filters. Sorry if anyone was confused.

Offtopic but, I have my own method of filtering. If I do a search on Google and go through the images, I resize the screen so that I don't unintentionally run into bad pictures. Since most of my past searches were for pictures of animals, I would be careful if the picture started to show anything other than that animal. It's annoying, but effective.

Edited: Talduras on 12th Oct, 2004 - 5:00pm

I S P Gaming Video & Issues Computer

I will talk about the pricing model that my ISP provides. I get my Internet connection through my cable company. They currently offer 2 pricing models: 29.99US for the 384Kbps connection, and 39.99US for the 3Mbps one. Big difference between the 2 in terms of download speed and only $10 difference. Plus I rent the modem from them so they maintain it and not me. That costs about $3 a month extra.
This might seem a lot to pay and frankly it is, but I use my high speed connection for connecting to my intranet at work. If I didnt have high speed internet through the cable company I may not even have cable at all, but that is another topic. There is also the DSL option through the phone company but I have heard horror stories from friends who tried this, so I've decided to stick with cable, which has been very reliable.

P I

I have cable for my internet access and it costs me $50 per month. However, they take $5 off my overall cable bill because I also use the cable company as my telephone service provider. Not IP phone, just a regular phone but they provide the service. So, in the end, I pay $45 per month.

I had DSL once, but it was continually dropping the connection and the phone company couldn't figure out why.

P I

We have used cable at home. We now use DSL, as it is about half the price of cable.

So far, the DSL has worked out very well. We have a wireless network setup, with up to three computers on the internet through it at any given time. All of them seem to have sufficient speed. There is a small, but noticeable difference in speed between the DSL and cable. If I could afford it, I would continue to use cable.

I S P

My connection is ADSL "broadband" with a speed of 1.5MBS which is the fastest available here at the moment. We don't have "cable" available to us at the present time.

I pay $70 a month for 12 gig max. download and $3 per gig after that. So far my max has been 9 gig. The reason this figure is so low is that on my plan any downloads done between 12 midnight and 8 am don't get added to the tally.

It was reasonable expensive to set up though,

• $70 a month access
• 4 port modem:$135
• Line speed activation:$145

The benefits are that since changing from "dial up", my phone bill has dropped $50 to $60 dollars a month. The other advantage is now all the computers are online at the same time(we have 4).

I P

You mean $60 to $50? I did not understand why you have to pay for downloads in addition to $70 a month, that seems very expensive.

As for me, I use an 128 kb ADSL connection at US $55 a month and the connection drops all the time like Tenaheff mentioned happened to her, but it is a far cry from dial-up which I can never conceive having again.

I P Computer Issues & Video Gaming

Let me explain,

On broadband I pay a flat rate of $70 a month with no additional charges for download unless I exceed 12 gig.

When I was on dial up(56 kpbs) each time you connect to the net you get charged the price of a local call(40 cents) on top of your ISP charge of $30 a month. We have a law here that prevents people remaining online for more than 4 hours at a time(only applies to dial up), so after 4 hours(usually less) you are automatically disconnected. So not only is it inconvenient, it gets expensive when you are reconnecting up to 4 or 5 times a day. Thats why my phone bill dropped so much.