Internet
It is true to say that the Internet has gone through a revolution in the UK with the advent of broadband.
There are now more users with it than with dialup and BT claims (almost) all exchanges are now broadband enabled.
More recently we have seen the advent of higher speed links even outside of the metropolitan centres.
For many the Internet means email, and most likely Hotmail, Gmail or some other mass provider.
What is broadband access.
What sort of email account
is best.
Broadband access is an always on, high speed Internet connection. Put simply, you will not
have to dial your ISP and go through all the warbling noises and error messages, the
Internet will be instantly available to you.
For the great majority of users, there are really only three high speed technologies in the frame at present.
ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) - supplied by BT & others
Cable modems - supplied by cable companies
ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) - supplied by BT & others
ISDN isn't really broadband and cannot be considered the media of choice because the user
is still charged for the time on line. However in areas that may never get ADSL, (more than
a maximum of approx 3.5 miles/5.5 kms from the telephone exchange), it may be the only
option. If a leased line is a realistic
solution, then you will be in a company, and will need to leave the choices
to the IT dept (if you don't have one, get in touch with us!).
There is a fourth option, Satellite broadband. This has been trialled by BT as a 500Kbits/s
speed connection, and 150Kbits/s for uploads, and is due to go nationwide. Trouble is,
installation costs a whopping £899 ex vat for single user installations.
Using ADSL or Cable Modems, you should be able to connect from speeds
of 128Kbits/s, up to 24Mbits/s (yes, 24Mbits/s with Be), compared to
the current highest modem speeds of 56Kbits/s. In practice you are unlikely
to get close to even this with a modem, although with a cable phone
line, 53Kbits/s is possible. With ISDN you get 64Kbits/s using one channel
and 128Kbits/s using both channels, although you will be charged for
two calls if you do use two channels.
There are, of course, one or two caveats regarding the services. The ISP you
sign up with should be able to give you a contention ratio for the service.
This is the maximum number of users per circuit. Because of contention,
during peak times the connection will probably slow down. The current
ratio for business users is set by BT at 20:1, which means that up to
twenty other users may be sharing the same bandwidth. The current domestic
ratio is 50:1, and these ratios will not change until the local loop
is un-bundled since all ISP's have to use BT exchanges at present. With
cable modems, each user is technically part of a wide area network,
so it depends on how many other users are connected. The two main players,
NTL and Telewest (now effectively one company), do not give any guarantees
of service levels at present other than saying that a minimum speed
of 256Kbits/s should be attainable.
Not counting the different installation requirements, the other main
limitation is that you may have to move from your current ISP, unless
they decide to offer ADSL. Because of the costs involved, it is possible
that many smaller ISP's will not offer broadband, particularly those
who rely on a percentage of the phone call for their income. Cable modems
will only be available from the cable companies, so there is unlikely
to be any choice there.If you are sufficiently confident, you can now
buy a 'bare wire' self-install service for ADSL, which is cheaper to
install and can use existing phone wiring with plug-in adapters called
micro-filters. Many of the larger ISP's now offer this package.
Click these links for more info on these service providers..
You want email, do you go for a dial-up account or web-based email? As ever it depends
on how you intend to use it.
Web-based
The main advantage of web-based email such as Gmail and Hotmail, is that you can access it from any
place in the world that has a computer with Internet access. There have been one or two security
scares with this type of service, however if you don't have home access to a computer
it is probably the only way to have a personal email account outside of an account at
work. Which may not be suitable for all those jokes and pictures your friends send
you!
POP3
Most ISP's provide multiple accounts for their customers using the POP3 protocol. To use such
an account you would have to use a mail client such as Outlook Express, Outlook or Thunderbird
and messages would be downloaded from the ISP mail server to your computer. With some ISP's you
can create 'virtual' mailboxes also called aliases or forwarders which can all be directed to one
mailbox. If you are a small organisation then
this can give the impression of a well organised company by using separate email addresses
for different functions, ie sales@whatever. Although many ISP's do also allow access to
email accounts via a web-based interface, unless you use it exclusively or have IMAP setup,
you won't be able to view emails you have sent from your main computer.
If you are likely to need to access email from abroad,
and you don't like the idea of Internet email, then ask the ISP how you access their
service from abroad before signing up.
IMAP
In these days of multiple gadgets for email, you may find that you want to access your email from
your main computer, your laptop and your iPhone or Blackberry. Althought there are ways to do that
with a POP3 account using services like Google Mail, it is not exactly seamless or automatic and
you don't get your sent messages from your iPhone in your Sent Message box in Outlook for example.
So you need to use an IMAP service which synchronises all your folders on all the gadgets you have
IMAP set up on. It sounds perfect, but you have to have a live connection to your mailserver for this
to happen and you therefore don't get the same flexibility offline.
