The ISP is your gateway to the Net
Imagine you are arriving at the international airport of an exotic country. Hordes of tourists disembark at the same time as you. Unfortunately, at the passport control area, only three gates are open. You have no choice but to stand in line for an hour.
A similar thing happens if the ones and zeros sent by your PC's modem to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) clog its computer.
Some of us in Jakarta have been very lucky to have access to the cable-modem service offered by KabelVision. Others, however, have to rely on an ISP for dial-up Internet connection. Dial-up service means that we use the public telephone network to connect our PC with our ISP's computer.
The government has issued 70 licenses to companies that will allow them to provide Internet services all over Indonesia. However, only 35 are reportedly active at present. Which one should you go with?
Find out the bandwidth of the ISP's backbone -- the connection that it has between its computer and its ramp into the Internet. In the past, ISPs would proudly announce they had a 2 megabit per second (Mbps) ramp to the global Internet. Today, some ISPs have an 8 Mbps connection directly to the U.S.
When you dial an ISP, you use a phone line. You will know you are getting poor service if your modem keeps giving the message "The line is busy". It means that the number of telephone lines provided by that ISP is too small for the number of subscribers trying to connect.
An ideal ratio is between 1:10 and 1:20 -- the ISP should provide one telephone line for every 10 subscribers to 20 subscribers. If there is only one phone line for 30 subscribers, for example, everybody will end up fighting to get through the gate.
The modems that we use also have different standards. There is the K56Flex and x2, while the ITU standard is V.90. You should check which one your modem is based on. If you have a new modem, chances are it uses the V.90 standard. Check which standards are supported by the ISP. They may support all standards, or only some of them. Both you and your ISP should use the same standard to achieve the highest possible connection speed.
If you travel a lot, check whether it is possible to read your e-mail using a browser. This will allow you to check your e-mail from a computer at an Internet cafe. This will save you the costly roaming fees. And, finally, get opinions. Ask your friends what their experiences have been with their ISP's technical support. (Zatni Arbi)