Internet, Email & Telephones > Getting Connected
Getting Connected to the Internet
Basic
By Lasa Information Systems Team
Getting your computers connected to the internet is an essential part of any ICT provision for community or voluntary organisation. This article covers all the things you need to think about when getting yourself connected.
Getting an internet connection is about linking your computers to the internet. There are a number of ways of completing the puzzle, but they all involve similar pieces.
The Connection
The most obvious part of the puzzle (although not the easiest to solve) is buying a connection to the internet. This is bought from an Internet Service Provider (often referred to as an ISP). Before choosing an ISP, you need to decide how you want to connect to the internet, and how fast you need the connection to be.
In the past, the most common way of connecting to the internet was by Dial-up, using a regular phone line. In the last five years, broadband connections have become more popular, and are the best choice for most organisations.
Broadband
Broadband is the term used to describe fast permanent connections to the internet.
ADSL
Broadband connections over ADSL are now available to over 99% of telephone lines in the UK. For most small to medium organisations, an ADSL connection is the best choice for connecting to the internet.
Broadband ADSL offers many benefits over dial-up:
- Fixed cost – you know how much you will pay each month, and won’t have to limit your usage according to your budget.
- Always on – as long as your computer is switched on, you are online. This is particularly useful if you want to use a server to manage your organisation’s email.
- Doesn’t tie up your phone line – you can be online and make and receive phone calls at the same time.
- Faster speeds – even the slowest broadband connection is faster than the fastest dial-up connection.
ADSL stands for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line. It is asynchronous because the speed you can upload files to the internet is slower than the speed you download from it. In the vast majority of cases, this is not a problem – you will be downloading a lot more than you upload.
ADSL works over regular phone lines – you can get it installed just by calling an ISP, giving them your phone number and placing your order. After waiting your turn (called lead-time) your connection will be ready for you to connect. This can be anything between one week and one month. Once this has been done you connect your connection hardware to the phone line, and you’re off!
SDSL
SDSL is very similar to ADSL – it works over regular phone lines. SDSL stands for Synchronous Digital Subscriber Line. It is synchronous because the speed you upload to the internet is the same as for downloads. This is useful if you want to connect several offices together seamlessly using a VPN for example.
SDSL is currently much more expensive than ADSL. Without a specific need, SDSL is probably not suitable for small and medium organisations.
SDSL is less widely available than ADSL in the UK.
Other kinds of Broadband
ADSL and SDSL will fulfil the needs of most organisations. Other options include broadband over cable, leased line, wireless and ISDN. These are most likely only options you would consider in areas where ADSL is unavailable through your phone line.
ISDN
ISDN is a faster alternative to dial-up which uses special phone lines to connect to the internet. This may be the only fast option for areas where broadband is unavailable, but many organisations will find the cost of ISDN prohibitive.
Leased Line, Wireless, Cable and others
Other options do exist, but are likely only desirable if you have very specialised needs, or your location dictates the kind of connection you can have – for example, some offices may have phone lines supplied by the cable TV company, in which case you would have to get broadband through them too.
If this applies to you discuss your needs and what equipment is required carefully with the available ISPs. In such circumstances, they should be able to give detailed advice.
Dial-up
Slower dial-up connections may be worth investigating if you only very rarely connect to the internet, or other options are unavailable in your area. Most dial-up connections are priced by the minute, and therefore it is difficult to predict how much you will spend each month. Some fixed price dial-up options are also available. For very small organisations with only one PC that only rarely connects, dial-up may be an option worth investigating.
A pay as you go dial up account can be handy as an emergency backup, should your broadband go down at a critical time.
A question of speed
With broadband connections, you choose the maximum speed at which you want to be connected. As of writing, the speeds generally available are 512 kbps, 1 Mbps, 2 Mbps and 8 Mbps. Even higher speeds will become widely available in the future.
What speed to choose
The faster your connection to the internet is the more satisfying it will be to use. This is affected by the number of users of the connection and how they use it. As the number of people using the internet connection increases, the speed they each experience will go down.
When choosing a speed, consider your organisation’s use of the internet. The more people who are online, the slower the connection will seem. The more your organisation needs to visit websites and send and receive emails with large attachments, the more important speed is.
For more than one or two members of staff, 1 Mbps should be considered the minimum speed.
Copyright © 2006 Lasa Information Systems Team
