ISPs?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Davej
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Davej

I was just wondering. Have all the ISP's gone out of business now that
everyone either pays their phone company for DSL or their cable
company for a cable modem?
 
I was just wondering. Have all the ISP's gone out of business now
that everyone either pays their phone company for DSL or their
cable company for a cable modem?
Click to expand...

Cable companies and DSL providers *are* ISPs. So, I don't know what
you're talking about.
 
Davej said:
I was just wondering. Have all the ISP's gone out of business now that
everyone either pays their phone company for DSL or their cable
company for a cable modem?
Click to expand...

The 'definition' of an ISP is an internet service provider^1.

My 'internet service provider' is EarthLink. I pay for my cable internet
connectivity on my statement from Time Warner which 'merged' with AOL
long ago.

When that merger took place, it was mandated that the TW/AOL cable
provider offer choices of ISPs, which choices became RoadRunner,
EarthLink, and AOL.

The infrastructure for the cable connectivity is TW/AOL so part of the
'choices' are incestuous, RR vs/and AOL.

If I have 'problems' with my connectivity, I call TW not EL; but if
there were a problem with EL's servers such as mail or their outsourced
news service which is Giganews I would 'contact' (not call) EL or Giga,
depending on the nature of the problem.


^1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Service_Provider#Access_ISPs
ISPs employ a range of technologies to enable consumers to connect to
their network.
 
Cable companies and DSL providers *are* ISPs. So, I don't know
what you're talking about.
Click to expand...

Well, obviously ten or fifteen years ago there were all these
different independent ISPs and each one had a room loaded with 56k
modems. Did all those ISP companies go out of business?
 
Davej said:
I was just wondering. Have all the ISP's gone out of business now that
everyone either pays their phone company for DSL or their cable
company for a cable modem?
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial-up_networking

"A 2008 Pew Internet and American Life Project study states that only
10 percent of American adults still use dial-up Internet access.
Reasons for retaining dial-up access span from lack of infrastructure
to high broadband prices. This has allowed Dial-up providers such as
NetZero to continue spending marketing dollars to obtain customers and
commit to having U.S. based customer support."

I would think the geographic distribution of those 10% isn't uniform,
and more rural users might still be on dialup, through no fault of
their own. Satellite would be available, but with such a small cap and
a premium price, you'd be crazy to use it.

Our local FreeNet still offers dial-up, for around a $35 a year "donation".
If you don't have the money, they have some scheme where you can donate
your time instead.

Paul
 
I was just wondering. Have all the ISP's gone out of business now that
everyone either pays their phone company for DSL or their cable
company for a cable modem?
Click to expand...

And that somehow makes them not ISPs?
 
Well, obviously ten or fifteen years ago there were all these
different independent ISPs and each one had a room loaded with 56k
modems. Did all those ISP companies go out of business?
Click to expand...

Nope! There's still a few that use "rent-a-pop" modem pools to allow web
connection from places without broadband, mainly a backup connection.
Many road warriors have accounts with them.

Dialup can get around local backbone/carrier issues when you *have* to
get online.

http://isp1.us/dial-up/ is a good place to start.



--
"Shit this is it, all the pieces do fit.
We're like that crazy old man jumping
out of the alleyway with a baseball bat,
saying, "Remember me motherfucker?"
Jim “Dandy” Mangrum
 
I was just wondering. Have all the ISP's gone out of business now that
everyone either pays their phone company for DSL or their cable
company for a cable modem?
Click to expand...

Depends on the area. Mine, a small outfit, offers 56K for $60-80 a
year, or broadband 125KB/s VOIP DSL at $22 monthly. Verizon is still
my POTS provider, and when I briefly switched to Verizon for the same
services, undercut to a $15 monthly on Verizon's first-year
introduction, it was a nightmare. Billing (combined telco/POTs) was
invariably a mutli-paged quagmire, (and a separate rant), and DSL
issues were referenced to hours of playing circle-jerk in Verizon's CS
support center, based out of Pakistan.

But, that's why the law frowns on monopolies. I switched back to the
small local provider and have largely resolved my own issues by buying
my own modems (rock-solid ActionTec units), instead of using plague-
infested second-hand Zooms and no-name equipment the independent ISP
(the small ISP rents internet time from Verizon) were sending me.

A DSL modem has to be physically located within certain a distance
limitations to the signal source, Verizon's, of course, and the law
says I can contract an outside DSL subscription through a different
ISP, while having Verizon turn off all its services. The term is
called a "Dry Socket" and and will freak-out Verizon. That's how I
phrased it when Verizon was unsuccessful at switching me over to their
$100 monthly FIFO packaged deal, which supposedly would correctly
address how disgusted I felt after dealing their POTs billing or
support for DSL. All after they got wind of my intents, miraculously
switching me out of the Pakistani connection, entirely to Americans,
who proceeded to cajole me into keeping POTs landline services for one
third the price they'd been charging me for decades -- $30 monthly.

That's $9 now for a landline. If you're urban, out in the boonies,
your options are of course going to be limited to what businesses are
capable of investing into data-provider infrastructures. I'm not.
 
Paul said:
Our local FreeNet still offers dial-up, for around a $35 a year
"donation". If you don't have the money, they have some scheme where
you can donate your time instead.
Click to expand...

I miss the days when the local freenet offered a free dialup terminal
account. It wasn't fancy, but when you just wanted to use it, it was there.

Jon
 
Don't know about other parts of the country...but in Northern California
there are two independents I know of, DSL Xtreme, and Omsoft. So they
haven't gone away completely, just consolidated a lot.
 
Rick said:
What do you think cable or DSL providers are? [.....]
Click to expand...

They're carriers who also provide ISP services to some (not all)
of their customers.
Click to expand...

They provide Internet service. They are therefore, by definition,
Internet Service Providers.
 
Jon said:
I miss the days when the local freenet offered a free dialup terminal
account. It wasn't fancy, but when you just wanted to use it, it was there.

Jon
Click to expand...

If you don't give them a "donation", they close the account :-)

Paul
 
Carriers do not provide the servers, just the connectivity to
the Internet. The ISPs provide the DNS, the mail, the
authentication, sometimes the NTTP (Usenet), sometimes
the Website and database hosting servers. The carriers
connect you to their nearest routers which put you on the
Internet so that you can access your ISP and other service
providers. Frequently, the carrier and the ISP are the same
corporation, but their functions remain different.
Click to expand...

Seems to me that you can read it different ways. But to me, access to
the Internet itself is a service, so any portal to the net is by
definition an Internet Service Provider. Like your local water utility
for access to water when you turn on the tap.

Most commercial ISPs also provide other services like DNS, mail, news,
etc., but they all provide the most basic service, access to the net.
 
Well, obviously ten or fifteen years ago there were all these
different independent ISPs and each one had a room loaded with 56k
modems. Did all those ISP companies go out of business?
Click to expand...

AOL still runs their dial-up service, doesn't it?

I kept an account with a local eastern Massachusetts ISP for a few
years, even after I got cable access and stopped using their dial-up
access. Didn't matter in the long run, though - they went out of
business in 2005 along with most others at their level.

My brother kept with a local free dial-up service in L.A. up until a
few years ago. I don't know if they still operate.
 
Paul said:
If you don't give them a "donation", they close the account :-)
Click to expand...

Heh, yeah, I've still got my free email address, though. Don't use it
anymore, but I'm too nostalgic for the good old days to get rid of it.

They used to have a pool of modems for the paying customers to use, but if
there were at least two of them free, one of those could be used to telnet
in to the server. I miss that.


Jon
 
Heh, yeah, I've still got my free email address, though. Don't use it
anymore, but I'm too nostalgic for the good old days to get rid of it.

They used to have a pool of modems for the paying customers to use, but if
there were at least two of them free, one of those could be used to telnet
in to the server. I miss that.


Jon
Click to expand...
www.ncf.ca still offers telnet sessions to DSL service. Check it out.
613-520-1135
long distance charges may apply!
 
Heh, yeah, I've still got my free email address, though. Don't use it
anymore, but I'm too nostalgic for the good old days to get rid of it.

They used to have a pool of modems for the paying customers to use, but if
there were at least two of them free, one of those could be used to telnet
in to the server. I miss that.


Jon
Click to expand...
www.ncf.ca still offers telnet sessions to DSL service. Check it out.
613-520-1135
long distance charges may apply!
 
www.ncf.ca still offers telnet sessions to DSL service. Check it out.
613-520-1135
long distance charges may apply!
Click to expand...
That's kind of misleading. They still do dial-up. They also still have
the system as everyone would have seen it circa 1993. Or one can access
it with PPP, either to telnet into their system, or to run software on
your own computer.

For some years, I telnetted into their system after registering so I could
use the newsgroups. Anyone can do that. Then they changed the rules so
the newsgroups were available on the newsserver no matter where you
accessed from, so I use the NCF as my newsgroup supplier.

I get the impression it's one of the last remaining "freenets", so many
have withered. There was a whole period when "community networks" were a
big thing, coming at a time when commercial ISPs were just starting to
come into being, yet worried about keeping a common space that isn't
commercial. The "freenets" failed, and I would suggest one reason was
they focused way too much on access, and not enough on what would be done
with that access. So once other outlets arrived to provide access, the
"freenets" too often had little uniqueness. And of course, the masses
didn't come early to define the space, they came later once commerce
became so common, and then letting commerce define the spaces on the
internet when some businessmen decided "social" was important.

Michael
 
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