The ISP is your gateway to the Net
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)