Getting the Most from your ISP

This article brought to you by the Colorado Springs ISP firm ZIP Broadband.

If you're reading this, you connected through a phone line, DSL, or cable to the Internet through something called an Internet Service Provider or ISP. You signed in using a Username and Password. That's the first point that can fail and be compromised. If someone nabbed those two items, they could sign on as you and create all kinds of havoc, and it would all be under your name! Not to worry, though, because you can guard against those kinds of silly errors. And they are completely avoidable.

When you sign in, your computer is starting to talk to the ISP. Granted, the language they speak with one another is nothing like a typical adult conversation (or even two children conversing for that matter). Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol or TCP/IP is the official name of the communication protocols that your computer and ISP use to speak the same language.

If you've ever called a computer help desk, the technician may have wanted to know your Internet Protocol (IP) address. After that person directed you to where you would find it, the technician would take down the information (and of course put you on hold for the better part of an hour). When you establish a connection to the ISP using TCP/IP, you are issued an IP address by the ISP. If you actually understand that last sentence, you're further along than you think you are. The IP address is a series of four numbers separated by four periods (or as they say in most computer shops "dots").

Normally you're issued a new IP address every time you log in to your ISP, but not always. You'll need this IP address to browse the world wide web (WWW) because the IP address is a distinct way for the Internet to identify who it is "talking" with. It is also this same IP address that tracks what you do and where you go on the Web. Individual site owners also track where you go on their site to see what you're doing and how to improve their sites.

This was a bare bones description of what happens when you log on to the Internet.

Mort is a business and technical writer, and loves to publish content online about a variety of bloggable subjects such as Capri Jeans and bamboo placemats

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