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Advantages of Broadband
Further Broadband Resources
What are IPs and ISPs?
You'll come across these two terms regularly in the context of Internet
Connections.
Imagine there are a number of people sitting around a table, two of them called
Bill. If you direct a question to Bill, they may both respond at once. Although
you could then explain which Bill you wanted, a computer can't do this. Unless
the names are unambiguous, conflicts occur and the network will stop working.
Every computer on a network needs an identifier so that it can communicate with
the other computers on that network. This identifier must also be unique for
every computer on the network to avoid the scenario above.
The Internet is also a network (the largest in the world) and creating these
unique names becomes increasingly difficult. These unique identifiers are known
as IP addressesand are made up of four groups of up to 3 digits each group
seperated by a fullstop. An example is 192.168.0.1
Most home computers won't have an IP address and even business networks use IP
addresses that although unique within the network are usually in the same range
as other business networks. This is why an ISP is used to connect to the
Internet.
ISP stands for Internet Service Provider. Your Internet Service Provider is the
company that you use to provide your connection to the Internet. With a dial-up
connection you dial a computer at your ISP and they then provide you with an IP
address so that web pages can be delivered to you. This IP address is different
each time you dial up.
With a broadband connection, you are connected to an ISP all the time and it is
possible that you will have a static IP address. In other words your computer
will have an address that is unique across the Internet.
Why do you need an ISP with a broadband connection?
If as it says above, you can have a unique IP address, then surely you can
communicate directly with other computers without the need of an ISP?
The fact is that an ISP is still responsible for assigning an IP address. ISPs
must register with the authority that regulates the Internet and obtain a range
of IP addresses that they can then assign to subscribers.
In addition ISPs also provide other vital services such as Domain Name Lookup.
This basically involves querying huge databases of IP addresses so that you can
find other web pages across the Internet. Your computer might have a unique
address but no other computers on the network will know about it.
Can I still use my existing email and web site
addresses with broadband?
Another service provided by your ISP is to redirect mail and web page requests.
You'll find that most ISPs provide a mail forwarding service for little or no
cost. This means that no matter who your ISP is, your email address of myname@myname.com
can still be used to get email.
The way it works is that when you sign up with an ISP they will give you an
email address as part of the service and a 'mailbox' on their server. If you
then tell them that you have an existing email address that will enter that
address and your new address into a global database. So when someone sends an
email to myname@myname.com the domain name lookup service will find this email
address in the list and forward any email to your new address. It then arrives
in your mailbox at the ISP where you can dial in and receive it.
Web forwarding works in the same way.
What are the implications of an always on service?
Apart from faster upload and download speeds, a broadband connection provides
you with an always on service. This dispenses with the need to dial a number and
get connected (often a lengthy process).
The fact that its always on opens up many possibilities in terms of how you use
services on the Internet. For example, if you currently use a dial-up connection
you wouldn't dream of looking up a telephone number on an Internet directory if
you were in a hurry. However, with a broadband connection, you could have this
directory open just as if it was another program on your computer.
Other applications that spring to mind are online dictionaries and language
translators. You can also use your web space just like another storage area and
so have a reasonably high speed remote backup facility.
So essentially, a broadband connection means that suddenly you have access to an
almost limitless number of applications from your PC.
This is just an idea of what you could do using existing applications on other
web sites, but you could also have access to your computer from anywhere else
(as you can have a static IP address). So if you were working away from home or
office and needed some files, you could get then directly from any other
Internet connected device.
This latter scenario does come at a price though. Once you have a static IP
address, you'll find that lots of people will also want to try to get access to
your computer. Often this isn't malicious - they are looking for places they can
store files (often of a suspect nature) for their friends to download.
Take a look at Gibson Research Associates site and click the Shields Up link.
You may be surprised at how vulnerable your current dial-up connection is!
Security and Networks
If you have an office network, and indeed if you want to connect up several
computers at home to share a broadband connection, you have to be more aware of
the security implications.
The fact that the connection is always on means that 'hackers' have more time to
probe your computer and find a way in. You may decide that the computer
connected directly to the outside world will not have any sensitive information
on it but if this is part of a network the fact that you will want to share
files and connections means that there may be 'holes' in the security.
We would recommend that if you are serious about broadband then you should set
up a home or office network (this doesn't have to be very expensive) and use a
piece of software to control access to the 'outside world'. One such piece of
software is called WinRoute which actually assigns random IP addresses to all
information coming out of your network so that no one outside can tell the real
IP address of your computer. This means they can't get past this software and do
anything further with your system. WinRoute also comes with its own email server
so you'll be able to send emails around the house or office.
On top of this its more important than ever to invest in some decent anti-virus
software and to keep this up to date. (remember you'll probably be downloading
far more than you ever did with your dial-up connection).
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