disconnection

Who is your ISP (Internet Service Provider) – in other words with whom do you contract to provide you with your internet connection?

This isn’t the first time that I’ve heard of this and I am quietly confident that it is nothing to do with your computer or the way it connects to the Internet. It is most probably due to your ISP instituting a form of ‘bandwidth rationing’ to their users. This is usually because they only have a finite and limited amount of bandwidth themselves.

At times of heavy internet use, they try to share out their available bandwidth amongst their collection of users. This is often done by selectively and temporarily blocking some URL’s (typically MSN is a high time-use URL) so that some users in selected areas where they have to impose this rationing are repeatedly disconnected.

If you ‘surfed’ the internet, visiting a whole variety of websites over time, rather than staying on the one (or two) sites, then chances are that their equipment wouldn’t auto-disconnect you.

The fact is that everybody has their own likes & dislikes when it comes to ISP’s. I for example utterly dislike AOL principally because they insist on not just providing you with an internet connection, but an entire websurfing experience and to do this they download loads of their bespoke (and really hard to remove) software – whereas others love them.

My personal preference is for BT and I have been using BT now for many many years. I know that some users will immediately fall on the floor and foam at the mouth screaming ”BT’s utter crap” but this is not my experience with them.

OK there are times when their connection speed slows down (primarily because of the ‘local’ traffic to my exchange) but very rarely if ever does this slowing down impair my internet usage.

I have the ”up to” 8MB connection service but my maximum rate is around 5.7MB – this can slow down to around 4.6MB at peak times. I leave the modem on 24/7 as I use the BT Talk facility which is voice over IP or VOIP and I have been auto disconnected twice in two years (I monitor the connection automatically).

Using BT Internet, I get unlimited downloads (‘officially’ it is 40 GB per month); I think it is 12 e-mail addresses with no limit on storage space; anti virus, child and spam and pop up filters / blockers included free of charge; free online help 24/7; a 24/7 telephone assistance on an 0845 number (charged at local rates); a free Yahoo browser which is a tabbed browser and is pretty good; full comapatibility with Internet Explorer; a free of charge wireless modem supplied with all the cables and software; there are loads of other bits and pieces as well but I can’t remember all of them – but you get the general idea.

OK it isn’t the cheapest in the world but they do several packages that you can choose from depending on your need or usage and of course your budget.

I have always found them to be effective and reliable and if there is an issue, they fix it pretty rapidly (they have an army of engineers for example – every street seems to have a BT van on it – how often do you ever see vans or engineers around the place from other Telecom / Internet companies???).

I appreciate that not everybody will agree with me on this – as I say we all have our preferences. However, one thing I have always found to be true and that is you only get what you pay for. As with all things the cheapest isn’t always the best.