Obtaining an Internet Account

Most users connect to the Internet by dialing in to an Internet access provider's server that is directly connected to the Internet. An Internet access provider is a company or institution that provides access to the Internet for a fee. The list of providers is long and growing. According to the Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC), there are more than 160 commercial Internet access providers around the country. Access providers offer a range of services and charge for them in a variety of ways.

Tip Using an Internet access provider by way of remote access is a fairly inexpensive way to reach the Internet, but its effectiveness is limited by the speed of the connection and the modem. For a good modem and a normal phone line, this speed tends to be roughly between 14.4 and 28.8 kilobytes per second (kbps).

You can find an access provider by purchasing books or magazines that list them, some of which are included in the preceding section, or by accessing lists through an online service such as America Online® or CompuServe®. Online lists of access providers include:

• PDIAL list, access by sending electronic mail to info_deli_server@netcom.com.
• America Online or CompuServe PCWorld forums.

In deciding which access provider to use, you should consider the following:

• Does the access provider offer full Internet access?
• Does the access provider support PPP?
• Does the access provider offer technical support?
• What kind of connection speeds does the access provider support?
• What kind of search tools do they provide?
• Does the access provider have an adequate number of phone lines and a large enough pipe to the Internet in order to provide good response time?
• What range of services, such as mail, does the access provider offer, and at what charge?

After you have chosen an access provider, obtain the following information from the access provider when you establish a PPP or a SLIP account. You need this information in order to configure Windows 95 to access the Internet:

• Access phone number, preferably local
• Logon name
• Logon password
• Your host and domain name, if electronic mail is part of your connection services. Your host name can include a POP3 host name and a SMTP host name, which are protocols used to send and receive messages on the Internet, respectively.
• The NNTP server name, if Internet newsgroups are part of your connection service.

You also need to know the following:

• Domain Name System (DNS) server and IP address

  Access providers who support PPP will generally automatically assign IP address each time you dial in to the access provider. However, some PPP access providers might require manual configuration of an IP address as described in "Setting the Domain Name System Server and IP Addresses" later in this chapter. You also need, in most cases, to configure the IP address of the access provider's DNS server.

  All SLIP accounts require you to manually configure an IP address on your computer when you connect.

More information is provided about these settings in the following sections and in Chapter 12, "Network Technical Discussion."