http://www.ComputerBob.com/guides/guide_isps.php .
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by ComputerBob
January 6, 2000
Last Updated July 25, 2002
An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a company that you connect your PC to in order to access the Internet, usually through a dial-up connection, using your home's normal telephone line connected to your PC, or increasingly, by using a cable TV connection, a special high-speed (DSL) telephone line, or even a satellite dish. A few examples of the big, nationally available ISPs are America Online (AOL), CompuServe, MCI, EarthLink, JunoWeb, MindSpring, U.S. West Internet, Microsoft Network (MSN), Qwest, and AT&T WorldCom. The List is an ISP shopper's guide that lists information for almost 8,000 ISPs, sorted by country, state, and area code, to help you find the best one for your needs and budget. At FindAnISP, you can enter the name of a specific town or U.S. zip code, and it will show you all of the ISPs available in that town, along with their features and prices. If you don't know the differences between Cable and DSL access, or if you can't decide between the two, PC World's Cable vs. DSL vs. Everything Else explains each one's advantages and disadvantages. To help you choose between cable modem, ADSL, ISDN, satellite, T-1 line, frame relay, WavePhore, or wireless, How To Beat The Bandwidth Blues, from ZDNet, tells you the advantages and disadvantages of each. DSLReports has valuable information about the quality of various DSL, cable, wireless, and satellite access providers and ISPs. Then there's Getspeed, a site where you enter your zip code, address and telephone prefix, and it tells you if your area is set up for cable modems, satellite, DSL, or wireless Internet access. With so many ISPs to choose from, how do you know which ones are good? Students have always asked me to recommend an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to them, but until recently, I hadn't found one that I had been really happy with.
Starting in 1997, I tried more than a dozen different national and local ISPs. I used some of them for a few months; I canceled some of them within a few days; and I even canceled one ISP less than an hour after I signed up for it, because I got a busy signal every time I tried to connect to it. Some of the ISPs I tried were so far from my home that I couldn't get a good high-speed connection to them; some of them had a lot of technical problems that constantly prevented me from getting on the Internet or checking my email; and some of them had either nonexistent or really poor customer service.
As of this writing, there are several ISPs that offer totally free Internet access. I don't recommend any of them to my students as a primary ISP, for several reasons. Almost all of them make you trade your privacy for Internet access. You have to give them a lot of personal information about yourself and they watch and track everything you do on the Internet, giving that information to their advertisers. And they force you to look at (and regularly click on) annoying non-removable banner advertisements that their software automatically places on top of every Web page that you visit. Freei.Net is the only totally free ISP that I know of that doesn't collect a lot of personal information about you. Unfortunately, FreeiNet suffers from the same problem that plagues all of the free ISPs -- it takes time to load the constantly changing banner advertisement that displays on top of every Web page that you go to, and that means that you have to wait longer to see the Web pages that you want to see. In addition, I had to spend over 2 hours downloading FreeiNet's software 3 different times because, the first 2 times that I downloaded it, I got an error message that told me it was corrupt when I tried to install it. Finally, totally free ISPs don't offer the same level of user support as their paid counterparts -- some of them have no visible user support at all, some have only email support, and others charge for telephone user support. Of all the current totally free ISPs, you may want to download and install the less-intrusive FreeiNet as your backup ISP in case your primary ISP has technical problems, but I don't recommend using any of the totally free ISPs as your only ISP.
Update: November 6, 2000: It appears that FreeiNet has gone out of business or has been bought by NetZero. FreeiNet has asked all of their users to download new software to transfer their memberships to NetZero, another free Internet provider that collects a lot of personal information about each user. Since FreeiNet was the only totally free ISP that I used to recommend, I cannot recommend any of the free Internet providers at this time.
Then there's America Online (AOL). AOL is the world's biggest ISP, and I used to own shares of stock in that company, so you'd think that I would have wanted my students to sign up for AOL. However, I've never recommended AOL to my students, for two reasons.
In fact, so many people had serious problems with AOL version 5.0 that an $8 billion class-action lawsuit against AOL was filed on behalf of thousands of disgruntled AOL users in late January, 2000, and a German trade group warned customers not to install AOL 5.0, saying that in many cases, it destroys the entire Windows networking functions of a PC on which it is installed. I can confirm that many students have complained to me that their computers began crashing and/or misbehaving after they installed (or uninstalled) America Online software.
Despite the fact that a few of the ISPs that I've tried in the past few years even offered to give me free Internet access if I would recommend them to my students, I never took them up on their offers, because I never thought that any of them were good enough to recommend to my students.
Then, in early December, 1999, I heard that MindSpring and EarthLink had been rated the highest of all the national ISPs, in terms of customer satisfaction, in a recent survey by JD Power and Associates. So, I signed up for MindSpring. I was impressed by their professionalism and the pile of free software that they sent me on a CD. Unfortunately, the only MindSpring local access telephone numbers in my area were 2 cities away from my home. While it was a local phone call, there was constant noise on the phone lines between the cities that forced me to connect to MindSpring at only 24,000 bps, while I could connect to my old ISP at nearly twice that speed.
The lesson here is that if your modem and software are set up correctly, your slow ISP connection may be caused by noise on the telephone lines between your home and your ISP. If you want to connect at a higher speed, you may have to switch to an ISP whose access telephone numbers are closer to your home. After several days of slow connections, I canceled my MindSpring account. Despite my experience with them, you may be able to connect to MindSpring over clean phone lines where you live. If you would like to try MindSpring, call them toll-free at 1-888-677-7464.
The day after I canceled MindSpring, I signed up for EarthLink. Just like MindSpring, EarthLink charged $19.95/month for unlimited Internet access, and they offered tons of free software and 7x24 tech support. Plus, EarthLink has local access telephone numbers all over the United States, making it easier to connect to them with a local call even when you're away from home.
UPDATE: On February 4, 2000, EarthLink and MindSpring merged to form one company, called EarthLink.
UPDATE: On July 2, 2001, EarthLink raised its fee for unlimited Internet access to $21.95/month.
UPDATE: In March, 2002, in an effort to speed up my Internet connections, I decided to buy a new dial-up modem that uses the new, more efficient V.92/V.44 modem protocols that were approved near the end of 2001. I called Earthlink to see if their modems support V.92/V.44 yet -- they do not, and the Earthlink tech support people told me that they had no idea when they would. So I went to V92.com and looked through their list of ISPs that support the V.92/V.44 protocols. That's when I found a local ISP that uses V.92/V.44 modems and charges only $12.50/month for unlimited Internet access, a savings of $9.45/month from what Earthlink charges. Not only that, but all of their network equipment is high-speed, because their clientele is mostly gamers (people who play games over the Internet in real-time). When I contacted the local ISP, they allowed me to check out their features and connection speeds with a free 24-hour test account. I was very happy with the results of my tests, so I switched to that local ISP and canceled my Earthlink account the next day. With my old modem and Earthlink, the fastest connection speed I ever got was 38,666. With my new V.92 modem and my new ISP that supports the V.92 protocol, my fastest connection speed is now 49,666 -- a speed increase of 28%. Plus, my new modem's V.44 protocol allows my ISP to compress Web graphics before sending them to me, so Web pages snap onto the screen much faster than they did with my old modem.
UPDATE: After my PC suffered from several sudden total shutdowns/reboots in the first few days of using the new V.92 modem, I returned it to the store for a refund. I will wait a few months, to see if any of the major modem manufacturers releases a stable V.92 modem that also has the new Modem On Hold feature. Modem On Hold allows you to put the Internet "on hold" for a few minutes in order to receive an incoming phone call.
I still recommend Earthlink to my students and those who don't need the speed and features of a brand new V.92/V.44 modem. Why? Because Earthlink provides a good service that is easy to set up and use, and it meets the needs of most people who send email messages and casually browse the Internet. For those like me, whose needs have grown beyond what Earthlink can provide, I recommend that you check out some of the links in this article and find an ISP that can meet your evolving needs.
The moral of the story is that you should figure out what your needs
are and do your homework when choosing an ISP. Then, don't be afraid
to move to a different ISP if your ISP changes, if your needs change,
or if you find a better deal that fits your needs! 