iPedia Free Information Center

Information about Internet Service Provider

“Internet company” redirects here. For Internet-based companies, see Dot-com company.
“ISP” redirects here. For other uses, see ISP (disambiguation).


An Internet service provider (abbr. ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a business or organization that provides consumers or businesses access to the Internet and related services. In the past, most ISPs were run by the phone companies. Now, ISPs can be started by just about any individual or group with sufficient money and expertise. In addition to Internet access via various technologies such as dial-up and DSL, they may provide a combination of services including Internet transit, domain name registration and hosting, web hosting, and colocation.

ISP connection options

ISPs employ a range of technologies to enable consumers to connect to their network. For "home users", the most popular options include dial-up, DSL (typically ADSL), Broadband wireless access, Cable modem, and ISDN (typically BRI). For customers who have more demanding requirements, such as medium-to-large businesses, or other ISPs, DSL (often SHDSL or ADSL), Ethernet, Metro Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, Frame Relay, ISDN (BRI or PRI), ATM, satellite Internet access and SONET are more likely. With the increasing popularity of downloading music and online video and the general demand for faster page loads, higher bandwidth connections are becoming more popular.

Typical Home User connection:



Dial-up

DSL

Broadband wireless access

Cable modem

ISDN

Typical Business connection:



DSL

SHDSL

Ethernet technologies

How ISPs connect to the Internet

Just as their customers pay them for Internet access, ISPs themselves pay upstream ISPs for Internet access. In the simplest case, a single connection is established to an upstream ISP using one of the technologies described above, and the ISP uses this connection to send or receive any data to or from parts of the Internet beyond its own network; in turn, the upstream ISP uses its own upstream connection, or connections to its other customers (usually other ISPs) to allow the data to travel from source to destination.

In reality, the situation is often more complicated. For example, ISPs with more than one Point of presence (PoP) may have separate connections to an upstream ISP at multiple PoPs, or they may be customers of multiple upstream ISPs and have connections to each one at one or more of their PoPs. ISPs may engage in peering, where multiple ISPs interconnect with one another at a peering point or Internet exchange point (IX), allowing the routing of data between their networks, without charging one another for that data - data that would otherwise have passed through their upstream ISPs, incurring charges from the upstream ISP. ISPs that require no upstream, and have only customers and/or peers, are called Tier 1 ISPs, indicating their status as ISPs at the top of the Internet hierarchy. Routers, switches, Internet routing protocols, and the expertise of network administrators all have a role to play in ensuring that data follows the best available route and that ISPs can "see" one another on the Internet.

Virtual ISP

A Virtual ISP (vISP) purchases services from another ISP (sometimes called a wholesale ISP or similar within this context) that allow the vISP's customers to access the Internet via one or more Points of Presence (PoPs) that are owned and operated by the wholesale ISP. There are various models for the delivery of this type of service, for example, the wholesale ISP could provide network access to end users via its dial-up modem PoPs or DSLAMs installed in telephone exchanges, and route, switch, and/or tunnel the end user traffic to the vISP's network, whereupon they may route the traffic toward its destination. In another model, the vISP does not route any end user traffic, and needs only provide AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) functions, as well as any "value-add" services like email or web hosting. Any given ISP may use their own PoPs to deliver one service, and use a vISP model to deliver another service, or, use a combination to deliver a service in different areas. The service provided by a wholesale ISP in a vISP model is distinct from that of an upstream ISP, even though in some cases, they may both be one and the same company. The former provides connectivity from the end user's premises to the Internet or to the end user's ISP, the latter provides connectivity from the end user's ISP to all or parts of the rest of the Internet.

A vISP can also refer to a completely automated white label service offered to anyone at no cost or for a minimal set-up fee. The actual ISP providing the service generates revenue from the calls and may also share a percentage of that revenue with the owner of the vISP. All technical aspects are dealt with leaving the owner of vISP with the task of promoting the service. This sort of service is however declining due to the popularity of unmetered internet access also known as flatrate.

Related services

See also

A Dot-com company, or simply a dot-com, is a company which does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" (in turn derived from the word "commercial").
..... Click the link for more information.
ISP may refer to:

Business classification:
  • Internet Service Provider, an organization that offers users access to the Internet and related services.
  • Independent Solutions Provider, provides solutions associated with a product or a final service to the client

..... Click the link for more information.
Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government
..... Click the link for more information.
hot Dial-up access is a form of Internet access via telephone line. The client uses a modem connected to a computer and a telephone line to dial into an Internet service provider's (ISP) node to establish a modem-to-modem link, which is then routed to the Internet.
..... Click the link for more information.
DSL or xDSL, is a family of technologies that provide digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop, although in recent years, many have adopted digital subscriber line
..... Click the link for more information.
Internet transit consists of two bundled services: the advertisement by an Internet service provider (ISP) of routes to a customer's Internet Protocol addresses to the other ISPs who constitute the rest of the Internet, thereby soliciting inbound traffic from them on behalf of the
..... Click the link for more information.
domain name has multiple related meanings:
  • A name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site's URL, e.g. wikipedia.org. This type of domain name is also called a hostname.

..... Click the link for more information.
web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing
..... Click the link for more information.
colocation centre (collocation center) ("colo") or carrier hotel is a type of data center where multiple customers locate network, server and storage gear and interconnect to a variety of telecommunications and other network service provider(s) with a minimum
..... Click the link for more information.
hot Dial-up access is a form of Internet access via telephone line. The client uses a modem connected to a computer and a telephone line to dial into an Internet service provider's (ISP) node to establish a modem-to-modem link, which is then routed to the Internet.
..... Click the link for more information.
DSL or xDSL, is a family of technologies that provide digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop, although in recent years, many have adopted digital subscriber line
..... Click the link for more information.
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is a form of DSL, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide.
..... Click the link for more information.
Wireless Broadband is a fairly new technology that provides high-speed wireless internet and data network access over a wide area.

The Term Broadband

According to the 802.
..... Click the link for more information.
cable modem is a type of modem that provides access to a data signal sent over the cable television infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access, taking advantage of unused bandwidth on a cable television network.
..... Click the link for more information.
Basic rate interface (BRI, 2B+D, 2B1D) is an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) configuration defined in the physical layer standard I.430 produced by the ITU. This configuration consists of two 64 kbit/s "bearer" channels (B channels) and one 16 kbit/s "data" channel (D
..... Click the link for more information.
DSL or xDSL, is a family of technologies that provide digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop, although in recent years, many have adopted digital subscriber line
..... Click the link for more information.
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is a form of DSL, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide.
..... Click the link for more information.
Ethernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks (LANs). The name comes from the physical concept of the ether. It defines a number of wiring and signaling standards for the physical layer, through means of network access at the Media
..... Click the link for more information.
A Metro Ethernet is a computer network based on the Ethernet standard and which covers a metropolitan area. It is commonly used as a metropolitan access network to connect subscribers and businesses to a Wide Area Network, such as the Internet.
..... Click the link for more information.
Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second, as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2005 standard.
..... Click the link for more information.
In the context of computer networking, frame relay consists of an efficient data transmission technique used to send digital information quickly and cheaply in a relay of frames to one or many destinations from one or many end-points.
..... Click the link for more information.
Basic rate interface (BRI, 2B+D, 2B1D) is an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) configuration defined in the physical layer standard I.430 produced by the ITU. This configuration consists of two 64 kbit/s "bearer" channels (B channels) and one 16 kbit/s "data" channel (D
..... Click the link for more information.
The primary rate interface (PRI) is a telecommunications standard for carrying multiple DS0 voice and data transmissions between two physical locations.

All data and voice channels are ISDN and operate at 64 kbit/s.
..... Click the link for more information.
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a cell relay, packet switching network and data link layer protocol which encodes data traffic into small (53 bytes; 48 bytes of data and 5 bytes of header information) fixed-sized cells.
..... Click the link for more information.
Satellite Internet services are used in locations where terrestrial Internet access is not available and in locations which move frequently. Internet access via satellite is available worldwide, including vessels at sea and mobile land vehicles.
..... Click the link for more information.
Sonet has multiple meanings, including:
  • Synchronous optical networking (SONET)
  • Sonet Records, a major European record label of the 1970s and 1980s.
  • Soluciones Integrales Sonet Ltda., a software company from Chile.

..... Click the link for more information.
hot Dial-up access is a form of Internet access via telephone line. The client uses a modem connected to a computer and a telephone line to dial into an Internet service provider's (ISP) node to establish a modem-to-modem link, which is then routed to the Internet.
..... Click the link for more information.
DSL or xDSL, is a family of technologies that provide digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop, although in recent years, many have adopted digital subscriber line
..... Click the link for more information.
Wireless Broadband is a fairly new technology that provides high-speed wireless internet and data network access over a wide area.

The Term Broadband

According to the 802.
..... Click the link for more information.
cable modem is a type of modem that provides access to a data signal sent over the cable television infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access, taking advantage of unused bandwidth on a cable television network.
..... Click the link for more information.


This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus


page counter