3 C H A P T E R © 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved1 Getting Connected  First,you need to subscribe to an Internet service provider.  Second, you need a communications medium through which information can pass to and from your computer.  Third, you need a TCP/IP connection from your computer to the Internet. In order to get connected to the Internet, you need three things:

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved2 C H A P T E R 3 Objectives:  Understand the purpose and function of an Internet service provider (ISP).  Find out who the ISPs are in your locale.  Compare the advantages and disadvantages of the different transport mediums, including plain old telephone lines, high-speed broadband cable, digital telephone lines, and television cable.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved3 C H A P T E R 3 Objectives:  Decide the best way to connect, given your particular circumstances.  Understand how the TCP/IP protocol connects your computer to the Internet and sends information in packets over the Net.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved4 C H A P T E R 3 Internet Service Providers  A three-letter acronym that an Internet- literate person should know is ISP, which stands for Internet service provider.  The ISP provides you with Internet services, including access to the World Wide Web, e- mail, listserv, chat, and newsgroups.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved5 C H A P T E R 3 Internet Service Providers  America Online  AT&T WorldNet  Microsoft Network  Earth Link  Regional and Local Networks  School and College Networks  Free Dialup Sites

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved6 C H A P T E R 3 Transport Medium  The transport medium is the physical connection over which information travels on the Internet.  The physical connection between your PC and your Internet service provider is often the most critical part of the transport medium, because it determines the bandwidth of your connection to the Net.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved7 C H A P T E R 3 Telephone Modems  The most common means of connecting to the Internet from home is via plain old telephone service, also known as POTS  The term modem is a combination of the terms modulate and demodulate, which describe how your computer sends and receives digital information over analog phone lines.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved8 C H A P T E R 3 Telephone Modems

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved9 C H A P T E R 3 Ethernet  Ethernet networks transmit data at high speed, typically up to 10 megabits per second (Mbps).  At Ethernet speeds, a file that takes 10 minutes to transmit over a 14.4 Kbps modem arrives in just 1 second.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved10 C H A P T E R 3 ISDN  ISDN stands for Integrated Services Digital Network.  It is the digital telephone system that the regional Bell companies are installing in most of the United States.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved11 C H A P T E R 3 Cable Modems  A cable modem is a network card used to connect PCs to TV cables in neighborhoods where cable TV companies offer Internet services over TV cables.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved12 C H A P T E R 3 DSL and ADSL  DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line. It provides businesses and homes with a way to connect to the Internet at speeds ranging from 128 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps and higher.  ADSL stands for Asynchronous DSL. The goal of ADSL is to lower the cost of DSL connections for users who need fast download speeds, but not so fast upload speeds.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved13 C H A P T E R 3 Transmission Control Protocol  The complete, formal name for the protocol that connects computers to the Internet is TCP/IP.  IP stands for Internet Protocol.  TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol.

© 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved14 C H A P T E R 3 Comparing the Ways to Connect